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Published: June 25th 2008
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Friday 20th June We manage not to have TOO early a start today, but we’re still in Punta Sabbioni for 9.15am, where it takes a while to find a good deal for the ferry over (4 Euro though). As we’re taking 2 packed lunches today and are staying out to see Venice at night, it’s too late to get a return deal - we’ll need to get the regular ferry back tonight. Send group with Paul and arrange to meet them at 2.30pm in San Marco Piazza, whilst Freddie, John & I head off to the airport to pick up the 5 new people joining the group today. We make it to the airport for 11.20am - expected landing 11.10am. Soon see that the flight was delayed for 35 minutes, so suss out the waterbus tickets into the city (12 Euro, every half-hour or so), and eat my lunch whilst we wait. Not sure who I’m looking for so reliant on the group to come and find me in my Oak Hall t-shirt - they do by around 12 noon. We take the bags to the coach, give them the lunches that the group have already made (and they’ve already put
the tents up also), and head towards the waterbus terminal. We queue up for the boat already there, but it’s full, so wait half-hour for another one. 1 hour 10 minutes later, we’re docked at San Marco, and at 2.30pm precisely we find ourselves in San Marco Piazza… to find that most of the group have headed off on an afternoon tour of Murano, Burano and Torcello! They have, however, arranged to meet us back at 6pm, so we head off to check out the streets of Venice, and the Rialto Bridge - where they explore the market, whilst I get more credit on the Italian phone (such a busy shop!) - head down more side-streets, find some ice-cream, some decide to chill out by the side of the Grand Canal in the spot Matt & Caroline found last time, whilst others arrange to meet us back there. John and Freddie (who’d taken the coach back to Punta Sabbioni) made it in for around 4pm, having been put on the wrong boat… we all made it back to the Piazza for 6pm, and the boat cruise guys found us about 6.20pm (they’d negotiated a great deal - 13 Euro for
the cruise, plus a free place). Several wanted gondolas (before, as they’d heard, the price went up at 7pm) - so we worked out how many boats we had - went to find where I’d got my 75 Euro deal before - first guy didn’t want to play, but soon came running after us as he watched 15 people walk off, so they got their gondola boat ride, 5 to a boat (more comfortable than 6) for 15 Euro per head! Not bad! The rest of us headed to the Rialto to take pics of them coming underneath (missed the first boat) before heading back to the starting point. Arrange to meet everyone back on the Rialto Bridge, to leave it at 10pm, so they can see it in the dark. Most head off for pizza, ice cream, coffee, etc. and we meet up with another group to try and get mildly lost in the backstreets of Venice - a must-have experience! In fact most are at the Rialto by about 9.30pm and ready to leave by 9.50pm, so we head back to San Marco Piazza where we get 20 minutes to listen to the music/enjoy the lights before heading
for the 11pm ferry (slight panic about the tickets as the office was shut, but you can buy them on the ferry!). Tired group collapses into camp knowing that we have 9am breakfast tomorrow!
Saturday 21st June Nice late start, 9am breakfast, 9.45am prayer, and then people disappear off into different directions. Anne, Susan and Adele, who missed the islands yesterday, headed off to see those, whilst everyone else found a shady spot to read or headed down to the beach. I tried to do some work, but the heat was pretty draining so didn’t get too far, but did, FINALLY, get a chance to go online and download my emails - first time since Prague, and not sure when the next time will be! In the evening we had a BBQ at 7pm, then people shared some experiences from the last couple of weeks (as we’ve reached the half-way point for those on the whole trip!), before we had a bit of a party with nibbles, musical chairs, and ‘Spacejump’. Got people to make a creative headpiece or neckpiece, but many had forgotten so there were several scarves/pairs of pants on people’s heads, etc.!! Forgot to judge the
creative competition OR the extreme brochure reading competition we’ve been running… but we’ll do that another day!
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