Venice
Ahh Venice. The only city I have ever been to where no matter where you point your camera, you get a great picture. Even the caravan park outside the city was most excellent. It had a restaurant, pizzeria and outside toilets. And very cold nights. Very very cold nights. We ended up pushing our beds together and scaling 2 extra sets of bedding from a open cabin to try keep ourselves warm because the built in electric heater gave off as much heat as a sleeping cockroach. Although the cabin did get a bit warmer after we plugged up all the ventilation holes with toilet paper. The next day we set out to explore the island itself, so we got on a ferry and hopped off when the boat driver started to yell at us. I decided that it was my mission to spit off every bridge in Venice. But after the 8th bridge my mouth started to get really dry and I just couldn't be bothered anymore. Besides, there was too much to look at.
The first bridge I spat off in Venice
The entire place is a postcard. Some of the postcard was undergoing construction work but even that was pretty. We walked around the whole day taking pictures and generally being as touristy as possible. I managed to take over 200 pictures that day which ate up all the memory on the SD cards. Unfortunately all the sight seeing made us miss the last ferry which we only figured out after we asked some guys walking past the docks to translate the timetable. Apparently they stopped running earlier because of the carnival. Fucking weird Europeins.So we had to walk from one corner of Venice to the other where the bus station was. So after 5 minutes of shouting at the clerk in the ticket office we bought a ticket and jumped on a buss. 30 minutes later the buss drove off and dropped us 5 km down the road. Then we found that the bastards don't run busses to where we wanted to go past 17:00. At this point we gave up and hailed a cab. I wanted to try walking home but after a 20 minute cab ride i was glad they talked me out of it.
The Venice Carnival was on at the same time we were there. That's when hundreds of people dress up in costumes and masks and parade around the city all day. You kinda feel like you are in a posh jesters reunion. They really go to town with their costumes and masks, some of witch are worth upwards of €200. Of course you can buy your own mask for a low low price of €30 and over from any of the thousands of vendors. Got to admit, I was really tempted to buy one.
A few days into it, after a cup of coffee and something cheep to eat, we head off down a side alley with loads of teenie shops selling teenie things that you could only afford if you have a not teenie bank balance. I found Cannabis beer and the biggest jar of Nutella I have ever seen in the one shop. I couldn't help it so I bought the beer and took a picture of the Nutella.
As we were walking down the rest of the ally we saw a small brown bag stuffed in a corner. 'Brilliant!' we thought. Maybe it's drugs or cash or something. Ceri went over to check it out, picked it up, opened the bag, screamed and made puking noises. Turns out someone must have been really desperate for the toilet and decided that a brown paper bag was as good any place to take a dump.
Bag of shit
Later on that night we started to feel a powerful hunger so we headed off to a restaurant that would let us in and tucked into the best Marinara pizza I have ever had. No Cheese. Just tomato paste and olive oil. It blew my mind.
Towards the end of the holiday we finally found the Rialto bridge. It is one of Venice's greatest landmarks and it also has a shop that sells nothing but plastic fridge magnets shaped like meat.
