Ah Venice!!!!

Thursday 14th September 9.30pm

Been cruising the canals of Venice today - are you jealous!!!???

We arrived in Venice yesterday afternoon. We are staying at a campsite on the mainland so to speak, about 20mins bus ride from Venice city. The brochure of Camping AlbaDoro said in between the airport and the casino. They failed to mention in is right NEXT to the airport and under the flightpath! The planes stop at about 10.30pm and start at 7am and at least it isnt Heathrow! They have a bus that takes us as far as cars can go and we walk the rest. Yesterday we didnt have a comprehensive map of Venice and as a result spent two hours going 2kms as the crow flies. You wouldnt believe how many little streets and alleys there are. It was amazing though. As soon as you got off the bus there was the Grand Canal and beautiful bridges and gorgeous houses. Just like the photos. We wandered the streets in search of Piazza San Marco (a big courtyard with a church and palace at one end). We mainly followed other people and random signs. We have the dazed and confused tourist look down pat now.
When we finally arrived there was quite a few people around and I got very excited - this was a place I always imagined myself but never really thought I would get here. There were people feeding pidgeons and taking hundreds of photos (I joined them in the later). We wandered a little but headed back to where the bus dropped us off because we were beat and knew it would probably take us another 2 hours to get back. We made it back a little quicker, mainly because we saw major landmarks for us - the place we went past 3 times, the gelati shop we bought an icecream from, the jewellery shop we ogled the 200 euro necklaces, the place we walked past 2 times, the ventian mask shop (which are amazing) and the place we went past already, oops lost again.
Our Tour-de-Venice ended at 8.30pm (once we saw the sunset over a building Monet painted - another highlight for me). The place we are staying is half a caravan. We have stayed in a multitude of places. 3 star boutique hotels, hostels, 1 star hotels marsquerading as 3 star hotels and now a caravan park. What will be next? A 5 star (that would be good)?
We headed out there again today at noon (because my roommates said it is absolutely mad with tourists in the middle of the day). We found out how many tourists are in Italy when we went to Piazza San Marco this time. If you found a bit of pavement you were probably looking between someones legs. Crazy!!! Bloody tourists!!! (We used the public transport today so we are locals!!)
We went to Murano island which is famed for its glass. We watched a deomonstration and WOW! How clever was the man we watched!!! We wandered through the showroom and I saw the most GORGEOUS (note the capitals!) teacup and saucer. I was in love! You all told me I would fall for an Italian and never return home!!! Anyway, it was 250 euro for ONE cup. Ah, love is brief! I would have bought it if it was 50 euro ($100 AUS) which goes to show how enamoured I was. Again I wish I was rich.
Then we went to the cemetary island of Isole the only place to be buried in Venice or should I say buried briefly as they "recycle" the graves. We went back to the main island in search of the Rialto bridge. We eventually found it and sat down and had a cup of tea in its shadow (I am not telling you how much the cup of tea was!) It was a lovely moment, I soaked up the feeling of being in Venice. We caught the boat back to the bus and it was beautiful. The sun had set and the lights were reflected in the water.
Tomorrow we hope to find a museum to find out the history of Venice and will get back early to do mundane jobs like washing and packing, getting ready for the next part of the journey. But at least I am doing the washing in Venice!! I am off to Rome on Saturday evening and then to Egypt Sunday morning. I will blog before I go to Cairo but am not sure what kind of internet availability there will be throughout Egypt.

The day before we arrived at Venice we went to San Giminano and Siena in Tuscany. It was very pretty and was exactly as we expected it. Olive trees, pencil pines and rolling hills. It has rained a little over the past 3 days but I know I will in 40 degree heat soon so am not complaining.

Thanks again for all your comments. I love hearing from you!

Talk to you soon.
Kym