Venturing out in Venice

For a larger selection of photos goto: https://goo.gl/photos/7sLVqK4vFrr8otQy7

If I hadn't mentioned it before, clicking on an image enlarges it.

Josh says:
Venice was really cold and I think the food wasn't as good as Rome, mainly fish stuff. It's easy to get lost with all the winding paths. Venice loves its glass and masks. The pricing of food is ok, but the Gondolas and water taxis are rip offs. The islands are nice especially the one with all the colourful houses. The place we were staying at was very nice and big but was missing some simple things. I didn't like Venice that much, I think it doesn't have that much to see in terms of History and was cold all the time.

P.S. People love dogs and smoking, they let their dogs go every where, they also don't believe in mowing the grass, you can lose a kid in the grass.

Alicia says: 
When I first saw Venice it didn't look like I imagined it to look like. I liked the gondolas, bridges, all the glass shops, alley ways, the taxi boat ride and the colourful houses.

I didn't like the, bus boats which took us to place to place or island to island, as they were too wavy for me. I bought 2 glass dogs and 1 pair of ear rings from Venice.


Dad says:
On our second day in Venice we walked around the main island and saw the parks, harbour, naval base and lots and lots of tiny shops down tiny alleys. I didn't think of Venice as having many (or any) parks, but they were quite big especially near the university.

It may be a bit cold, but Alicia is still praying for some gelati

We bought ferry tickets this afternoon that are available for 24 hours, enough to cover us tomorrow, then took the #1 down the main canal. This stopped at every stop and made its way back to the train station in about 45 minutes. It was a crowded ride, but we did get some seats on the bow of the boat with a nice view.

That night we walked back, shopped, ate and got lost a bit. Josh bought some more army men from a model shop and Alicia tried an egg and tuna sandwich. They both seemed to like the cat food.

On our last day in Venice we had plenty of time to explore as our train was not leaving until 7:20pm so we dropped off our bags at the train station (EU6 per bag) and went exploring the Venice islands, St.Michele, Murano and Burano. We still had our ferry pass valid from the other day so it was easy to hop on/off. Mind you no-one was checking the tickets.

St. Michele is an island dedicated to a cemetery and is easily the smallest of the three islands. It has a lot of 10m high walls with three levels of burrial sites build in. Murano, the largest has a few factories dedicated to glass blowing. It is again typical of Venice homes and the canal layout, but nothing that interesting.

Burano on the other hand was interesting. Every (only saw a couple of exceptions) home is painted in a bright vibrant colour and different than the next. It was a real picturesque area and made everyone feel happy.

Another lesson that I learnt is that the gmail app does not store all your emails offline. It stores your inbox and outbox, but since I moved all holiday items to a special 'holiday' folder it was inaccessible off-line. Our train tickets for the overnight train were stored in this folder. I asked at the ticket agency and regardless of passports, id etc, without the PRN number they were unable to print our tickets. So I had to run around to find an area to get some wifi. Unfortunately free wifi is potentially dangerous and Google blocks this, so I had to run around until I found a suitable location. After 90 minutes of ticket queues, running around finding wifi etc we managed to get the tickets with 30 minutes remaining. Lucky we checked the email early enough. I will now ensure that I have off line versions of everything for the next place or two.

Hidden figures

Bunny: 1
Crowie: 1