Venice

So we saved the best Italian spot till last, Venice! Along with almost 100 Disney-Adventure-full-on-American parents, and their loud-full-on-American- kids, we arrived via train in Venice. This pic is from the train coming into the Venice Station.
Now, every guide book will tell you that one of the things you must do in Venice is get lost... This is something you don't have to try to do. This is something that just happens, very quickly. Within the first half hour we were lost, after lunch and checking into the hotel we were lost again. Didn't take long. See, in Venice at the start everything just kinda looks the same and at the end, to be honest, it's not much different. From very early on we ditched the maps. They are useless in Venice! Only half the streets have names. We decided to just follow the arrows that were on the wall every now and then that would eventually lead us to Piazza San Marco, the main square of Venice. From here we could find everything and we followed the same route everyday. On the way to the square we passed so many stores with masks of every size and glass from the island nearby. Everything was so beautiful.


When we arrived at the square we had a quick look around then made our way to the place where our Gondola ride would begin. We ended up being in a fleet of 11 gondola's for a trip through the tiny canals of Venice. Once Gondola, which remained in the middle, had a singer and an accordion player on it so we could all hear them.

The next day we followed the same route down to the Piazza (everyday we took a different route home, unintentionally) for an on land tour but not before I fed the pigeons!

It was actually a bit scary, I didn't want any pigeons to land on my head or arm which made me a bit jumpy so I didn't get as many pigeon fans as the other people. Not to mentioned there was an annoying Asian boy scaring them all off. We joined the tour and it was boiling hot so she was kind enough to always find the shade. We went inside the church (wearing our Catholic Clothes), saw the place where the story from the bible about the two women one baby decision was made and where Marco Polo lived for a short time. The guide was great because she was so passionate about Venice. She highlighted many of the problems that the city is having due the rising water which means that fire boats and ambulance boats can't make it under the bridges to help people. She also told us that every house in Venice has two doors, one from the canal and one from the footpath. There are no roads here.
We went for one more little tour after that one which was kind of joined on. This part though was on a boat and it went up the Grand Canal showing where all the rich people lived, the Rialto Bridge and some other things. The guide here sounded just like Heidi Klum somehow and let us stand up on the boat and all which was funner than just sitting. I don't know how she did it in heels though.
For our last day of Venice we just finished up a few things. We stole some rolls from our hotel breakfast to feed the pigeons. Today we got more and mum even had some on her arm. She was so brave, wearing her Rome dress and Florence shoes and all.
We also went up the bell tower today but it was better than all the others because... it had an elevator!!
During the time we were waiting to go up mum was worrying that it would go off because it was almost 12 or 1. Funny thing is that it did, and it was very loud.

After this we had lunch along the Grand Canal and saw the original Bridge of Sighs. That night Mum sent Sophie and I out to find some chips. Just chips. This is extremely hard in Italy to find Take Away chips. Now you may be thinking McDonald's but I never saw one in Venice, the only fast food related thing here that I witnessed was a paper Burger King Bag. But I don't know where they got it from because there was no Burger King as far as we knew. After what seemed ages of walking around our Piazza Roma we finally found somewhere. Mum got her chips, so did we, and we were able to watch the FIFA World Cup final in peace.

A long time ago, back when I was still in Australia, we had booked all flights for this trip. A few months ago EasyJet emailed us declaring that they cancelled our morning flight to Paris and put us on a more expensive afternoon flight. The next we made it to the airport and the first problem arose. Mum got the times wrong so we had to wait even longer for check in. Luckily Sophie had her Ipod touch so I could watch St. Trinians and she could go on the internet on her phone. Once we could check in a giant lined developed but I noticed everyone was kinda in the wrong one, so I went over to the next lady. Well, this didn't go down to well with the fellow passengers. They all began yelling at me in Italian and French, so I got back in the wrong line. Then they figured out I was right, so this giant stampede formed as people moved to the next checkouts. Stupid, stupid people. By now I just wanted to get out of Italy, I had really had enough of been taken as an American (because no other country speaks English so we must have been American) and dealing with people like this. It also must have been bitchy Italian day because the ladies working in the store we wanted to get some M&M's from just snatched the food from us. Then our flight was delayed, then there was another stampede to the gate, then another off the bus onto the plane. We told Sophie to not wait for us and to just get on the plane luckily she did and got us seats together. Finally we were in the air. Thanks EasyJet for the easy transfer. This was the only bad part of Venice.