Venice

Some stats on Venice for you:

117 islands 400 bridges 150 canals

It is impossible not to get lost (even with the nice little yellow signs they have for tourists)

We arrived into Venice about 5pm and after quickly checking in and putting our stuff in our room we got the 6pm shuttle bus into town (our hostel is a camping ground and is about a 20 minute drive from the center of Venice).

I'm pretty sure this is the first and only time i looked at the Venice map, a map in Venice is pointless, half the fun is getting lost along the way :-)

We spent several hours walking around exploring little alley ways and admiring the canals.

A canal!!!

We had dinner near the Rialto bridge (expensive but great views out over the canal watching gondolas, water taxis and ferry's come and go) and did some window shopping.

The sun setting over Venice was so pretty

The next day we were up bright and early to catch the first bus into town determined to make the most of our day. Firstly we got the ferry to Murano island (THE place to buy murano glass), we some how ended up on the right number ferry but it was going in the opposite direction than we expected so instead of a short 10 minute ride it was about an hour with lots of stops but this was OK it gave us the opportunity to see more of Venice, we got to see St Marks square from the water and also an island that is a cemetery, yep the entire island is a cemetery!

The cemetery island

When we finally arrived at Murano Island it was about 11am and we were starving so after a quick snack stop we started our shopping. About 3 hours later we had been in and out of every store at least twice and were happy with our purchases, a murano glass clock, a couple of pendants and some earrings.

Murano island

A display of Murano glass on Murano island

A glass making demonstration, we only had time to snap this photo then had to leave, the guy made it pretty clear we couldn't watch for free by indicating his tip bowl fiercely with his fire hot stick and as we only had a 20 euro note we left quickly

We got the ferry back to mainland Venice and after some lunch (where i got to taste my first Bellini which is the cocktail of choice here in Venice) we went in search of St Marks square.

My Bellini

St Marks Square
Also in St Marks Square, apparently it is over run by pigeons the council have started adding contraceptives to bird feed and putting it in the square for the birds to eat. We didn't think there was any more pigeons than you would normally see in a square. I think those crazy Venetians are just over reacting :-)

Here we went into Doges Palace, this dates back to the 9th century. The prison was also housed here. The palace was incredible, full of paintings and massive clocks that we didn't understand. They also had rooms and rooms full of different types of knights armour and guns and swords that were twice the height of me.

Ewen with the side of the Palace in the background

Ceiling in the palace

A photo taken from a window showing what the middle square in the palace looks like

We also went to the prison, to get here you go over an enclosed bridge called the 'Bride of sighs' named because the prisoners got their last glimpse of Venice on this bridge before been lead into the cells.

It's a bit hard to make out, but this was the prisoners last view of daylight and of Venice.
Me in the palace

Ewen in front of the palace
It took a lot of stalking to get this photo, this guy had on tie down pants AND top and a bum bag!

After leaving the palace we walked around for a while before having some dinner (where our rude Italian waiter put things on our bill we didn't order and a service charge even though he did nothing so we short changed him and ran away, for a second Ewen though he was Bourne and was trying to get me to go a different way back to the bus in case they followed us) and getting the shuttle bus back to our hostel. It was a massive 12 hour day of sight seeing.

The crowds on Rialto bridge

Some of the more 'individual' masks you can get in Venice

The next day we had a little bit of a sleep in and then got the 11am bus into town, our plan was to post some stuff home, got on a gondola, go to the church and then get the bus back to the hostel.
Their was a post office quite close to the bus depo so we headed there and boxed all our stuff up when we got to the counter the guy told us that is would cost us 60 euros but if we went to the main post office near the Rialto bridge it would cost us half that price. Trying to save us some money i agreed and we paid $13 euros to jump on a ferry that took us to the Rialto bridge, after a bit of searching we finally found the post office (in a large, pretty nice, but kind of abandoned looking building) and after lining up for ages we were told they couldn't post a package as big as ours and that we had to buy three smaller boxes to put all our stuff in and the price would come to 60 euros, that's right!!! We also had the slowest post office worker in the world helping us but finally after 2 hours we paid and hopefully our parcels make it back to Australia.

Dear Italian Post Offices,
I hate you.
Love Pieta

After this we were both pretty grumpy and hungry so we got some pizza slices and sat in the middle of the post office to eat them. Then, after paying 1.50 euros to use a toilet we set off in search of a gondola.
This took longer than you would probably expect... we couldn't find a vacant one anywhere!
Finally we found one, Ewen tried to negotiate a price but they wouldn't budge, i agreed with the guy we'd pay the 80 euros he was asking (our guide told us 80 euros was a pretty good price anyway) and off we went. It was incredible, it was just what we needed after an annoying morning. 40 minutes of quietly coasting along canals, under bridges, down narrow gaps between buildings. Our gondolier (?) was really good, he told us little bits of information about things we were passing, then he would quietly sing and then say nothing so we had a nice peaceful, traditional but informative gondola ride. It was truly incredible i loved every minute of it, although it went way too fast for me!

View of the Rialto bridge from our gondola
Another view of the Rialto bridge
About to go down one of the narrower canals
A boat garage
Some decoration on our gondola
Enjoying our ride
Casanova used to live here
Going under a tunnel, the poor gondoliers have to duck down every time they go under a tunnel, i think it was the gondola coming towards us in this photo where we saw the gondolier bump his head on the ceiling of the tunnel, poor guy!
View of a canal from our gondola
Gondola ride!!!
After the gondola ride we decided to continue our Italian experience with was gelato sitting by a canal. I was greedy and had three flavours, strawberry, cherry and meringue! Soooo good!

After our gelato we went in search of St Marks square again to go to the church. The line was huge but luckily it moved quite quickly. This was definitely one of the most impressive churches we have been to on this trip, the ceilings were completely done in mosaics of gold with pictures scattered throughout, the floor and columns were marble and decorations were everywhere. the only thing spoiling the effect were two flat screen tvs near the alter. I read in our lonely planet book that the church (or basilica) was originally built to house the remains of St Mark whose body was stolen from Egypt and smuggles to Venice in a barrel of pork... just thought you might find that interesting.

The Basilica