Venice; Churches, Gondola's and Great food!

Day 521 Steps 18176
We woke up to miserable weather... bucketing rain with no signs of letting up. We reset the alarm and changed our plans, boycotting Verona (the home of Romeo and Juliette) and heading straight to Venice (the capital of Love!). Arriving in Venice a couple hours later we dropped off our bags at our cute little ensuite cabin at Jolly Camping (happy we hadn't decided to camp!) and headed into the city. In the dreary weather San Marco's Square was pleasantly quiet, we wandered past the tourist shops, extravagant cafes and restaurants, orchastra's, the grand Duomo and the beautiful Palace. With daylight fading we opted for an early dinner at Oniga Restaurant (which was soon to become our favourite Italian restaurant). After delicious Pumpkin and risotto lasagna, gnocchi with tomato and buffalo moz for starter, we shared an amazing duck and rice and a lovely house red...we were sold. Shattered to find out they weren't open the following night we vowed to return on our last night in Venice and in Italy for that matter.

Day 522 Steps 29103
Waking to beautiful sunny sky we set off to explore the sights of Venice, grabbing a danish and crossiont along the way. By the time we caught the bus to the city St. Marco's was already packed with tourists, most strangly covered pigeons feeding them and kids trying to kick them.. hilarious! Once exhausted the people watching talent we checked out the inside of the Duoma cathedral (tip: drop your bag off and walk straight in.. there is no need to join the hidious cue!) filled from floor to ceiling with beautiful mosaics. From here wandered along the Grand Canel and through the maze of streets eventually finding the famous Rialto Bridge. Here, we ran into uni friend from home Tim Morris after catching up on each others travels we decided to met for a drink later and continued exploring. Carly marvelled at the leather and glass souveniers (insanely expensive and glass just isn't practical to send home) and we stopped for a supermarket lunch under our little unbrella as it started to rain again. Fortunately the rain eased off and we made our way to Santa Maria della Salute Church , paying the extra two euros (it all adds up!) to admire the beautiful Titian trio of paintings. Past the Peggy Guggenheim and Accademia Museums we met Tim at the busy Margarita Square for beer. We accepted his offer to join him and some mates on their evening gondola ride and the three off us hot footed it back to the Rialto underestimating just how far away it was.
We boarded our gondola with Tim and his two accomplices cruised the canels, passing Marco Polo's Palace, passing underneath the Rialto and arriving back to our launching point 45min later. Not exactly the romantic ride of the movies with a little Italian playing accordian whilst the couple sip champagne looking longingly into each others eyes but fun just the same. Particulary when we decided to change seats for some pics, without warning our driver as he careared our gondola into the wall and quickly explained there would be for no changing of seats under any circumstances! We joined our gondola crew for pizza and pasta back at Margarita Square, getting rediculously lost on the way back to the bus (although we didn't think we were lost at the time) running the final stretch so not to miss it!

Day 523
Up late and the rain had set in.. for good. We took a day off touring; phoning home, catching up on emails and blogs, doing washing and relaxing in preparation for Octoberfest!
The day somehow disappeared quickly and we caught the bus into town (for the last time) stored our luggage and headed to our favourite restaurant for last night in Italy. We treated ourselves to entree; Carly antipasto seafood and Jez Ravioli, followed back mixed fish and beef and some more wine!!
Stuffed we took another route back to the station, picked up our bags and boarded the overnight train to Munich.

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