Ah.. Venice!

EUROPEAN CAMPING TOUR 35 DAYS 12 COUNTRIES

DAY 23 VENICE FRI 29-JUL-05

8am Breakfast. Stood out on the back deck for pretty views of Venice. Even the derilict run down buildings are pretty. Docked at Trieste. First stop on the coach was at Grada for 2 hours. Shopping & gelati. Oh yeah, that space age button pushing sensoring squat toilet. Let's move right along..
Onto Verona, home of Juliet's balcony. Legend or mythology (or whatever) has it if you rub her right breast you'll have good luck in love. (Honestly who makes this stuff up?) Spent 3 hours in Verona shopping.
Into campsite just after 6pm. Pitched tents then a camp restuarant dinner of pork and ribs.
Q. Why are they called spare ribs?
A. Well the pig doesn't need them anymore...
Theme night at the campsite bar - Pimps and Prostitutes. Most of our camp dressed up (or should that be down?) for the event. I went all out with some cleverly applied electrical tape and my only skirt. It was too hot to contemplate anything else. Also rather cleverly I had a beige (ie skin coloured) bra which looked rather non-existant adding to the look.. Totally unclassy but a bit of fun. (Relax Dad it was completely safe) Great pics. Some people got into it.. some other's didn't. Just socialised (met the ugliest chick ever - the site rep *can't remember his name* in some lace get up I think he nicked from his mum) till closing.

DAY 24 VENICE SAT 30-JUL-05

Ferry into city of Venice. Our meeting point was the main square. Pigeons, flagpoles and St Marks.
Went to our lace making demonstration and saw the last hand-lace-making school in the world. Of all the demonstrations and tours I've had in Italy this lady was the easiest to understand of all of them. That's not a hard task though. Most I could only half understand and I had to concentrate dubiously hard to work that much out. Anyway, this lady explained lace and it's making and showed off the products they sell. Even after seeing someone weave away in front of me I still think it's a big fat porky pie that they are made by hand at all. That stuff is just so incredibly intricate it just boggles my mind. Ok I don't mean to call them liars. It's meant to be a complement. Honest.
After awing at the lace works we saw a glass blowing demonstration which was over almost as soon as it began. Many many years are dedicated to becoming a master glass worker. If you are gifted you might be able to manage it in 20 years. The guy we saw in the demo whipped out a glass jug with handle and a glass cat in less than 3 minutes total. Before you could say 'hustle' we were in the gift shop being shown super little glasses specially designed so they always sat upright and the special package box we could send them home in. The pieces I liked were so expensive and I just had no way of safely transporting them around till I got home so I left them.
Now we were free to do some more exploring so Jennie, Christie, Anita & I went shopping, had a pizza lunch and took the No. 1 Riverbus to city-see along the main river. Mid afternoon we walked back to our meeting point for our Gondola ride. A well-positioned bar made us purchase a bottle of champagne for our gondola journey. It was a very sweet ride. Beautiful. Life felt complete. Our gondolier was cute too. Some singing but mainly by George on one of the other gondolas.
Home via ferry. Dinner. Beach party theme at the pub tonight.

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