LT
21 June, 3pm
Yesterday (Wednesday) we drove over to Venice, about 150km
away. Peter has started enjoying the
roads here – the motorway is pretty easy going, long and straight and wide… and
fast! The traffic generally moves along
about 130km/hr, with the odd car zooming past significantly faster. The trucks (and there are lots and lots of
them) must be speed-limited, and for the most part stay in the outside lane,
though tend to swerve across without indicating if there is something slower in
front.
We parked at the airport on the mainland and caught a bus
over to the island. Venice is one of
those places you just wonder how on earth it ever came to exist. It’s made up of something like 117 separate
islands with impossibly tall and large buildings built directly on the water’s
edge. There is no sign of any natural contour or shape of the land - the 'islands' are just collections of buildings with canals in between. On top of that there are some
amazing examples of architecture from the 10th century and
onwards. We didn’t really know where we
were heading so we just jumped on a waterbus and hopped off at a random stop,
which turned out to be beside the Rialto bridge. Each ‘island’ in Venice is a maze of narrow
alleyways, lined with tourist traps – mostly selling either some kind of mask
souvenirs, or some variation on Venetian glass.
Some of the items for sale are quite amazing. Peter and Caelan saw the
Rolex shop ,selling watches for around 10 or 20…… thousand euro. Yep I’ll take a couple thanks. We found a pizza shop for lunch and each had
a giant slice of pizza which we wrestled with down the alleyway – not too many
seats anywhere in Venice. After more
alleyways and twists and turns and pretty bridges and orange buildings, by good
luck we popped out at St Mark’s Square…. WOW!
This area was absolutely overrun with tourists, and for good
reason. The detail and the architecture
of St Mark’s Basilica (10th century), on top of the thought that
they had had to bring everything over by boat to construct it in the first
place, just made it an amazing sight. There
are a number of other really impressive structures all around St Mark’s square,
so we happily snapped pics for quite a while until it was time for our daily
gelato.
Icecream in Italy is a serious business. The price is not
too bad, especially when you see the range of flavours, and then taste
them. Vanilla ice cream is a flavour all
on its own, not just the ‘plain’ stuff we have in New Zealand. The texture is
quite different as well – and it melts really quickly at 40deg!
Tummies full of icecream and pockets full of souvenirs, we
just had time for a gondola ride before heading back. Our gondolier had a
lovely accent (not that I particularly noticed of course). We completed a circuit of fairly small canals
so got to see some other parts of Venice that we had missed on foot. We passed a gondola coming the other way
carrying a man and a woman being serenaded by an accordion player and an opera
singer. Conspicuous much?! Earlier in the day we had seen a bride and
groom having photos taken, I imagine it would be enormously difficult to get
many shots without crowds of strangers in the background. Later in the day we
saw her again looking rather hot and bothered, 40deg in a wedding dress is
probably hard going.
The biggest rip-off in Venice is the public conveniences…
1.50 euro per person! It really makes
you decide if you need to go or not!
We arrived back at camp in time for dinner, pasta and sauce
from the supermarket – delicious once again. We have the airconditioning in our
unit set to a ‘cool’ 27deg – and it feels like walking into a fridge.
With Katriel in bed we raced around wrapping up presents and
blowing up balloons. Unfortunately we couldn’t find the sellotape (she probably
could have told us where it was!) so after a quick inventory check we improvised
with ….. plasters. Perfect!
Today was a very special day, and one we had been counting
down to for the longest time – Katriel’s birthday. We started the day with a skype call to Nana
and Poppa which was nice, and Katriel also had an email and birthday wishes
from her class and enjoyed that. We had
to wait until 10am for breakfast at the gelateria, we had intended to have
pancakes but the icecream sundaes looked so yummy they were the preferred
breakfast choice. When else can you have
icecream for breakfast if not on your birthday! Katriel’s next choice was for
us to have a swim, so we took down the water pistols and inflatable tube she’d
got for her birthday and spent the rest of the morning enjoying the sun and
water.
The pools at camp here are a real skin-fest (maybe
skin-cancer-fest). Everyone lies around in the sun for hours on end, no hats or
rash tops in sight, and pretty much every woman wears a bikini… regardless of her ‘assets’ (or maybe liabilities).
It is kind of refreshing in a way, but I think I would have to live in
Italy for a long time before I would go there J
Lunch was a birthday cake we had ordered from the bakery and
picked up yesterday. Ice-cream for
breakfast and cake for lunch – lucky birthdays only come once a year! We’re now having a chill-out/sleep/play time
for an hour or two before we hit the pool again until dinner time. Tomorrow we head for Switzerland. We probably haven’t seen as much of Italy as
we might have (and I would love to come back and experience more) but it has
been nice to have some rest days here, some of us are a bit sight-seeing’ed
out! Venice was amazing though, and I’m
glad we made the effort to get over there.
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