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Published: April 25th 2010
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On day 28 we woke up in a tiny smelly cabin to the sound of roaring planes.
We got ready, didn't have any breakfast because they don't have any food at the campsite, and headed into the city.
We headed straight across the road from the train station to the Plaza Hotel, and had a look at a few of their rooms before deciding that even the cheapest one of them would be a huge upgrade from where we were currently staying (in fact, even the hallways were nicer than the campsite) and so we booked it and decided to go back later that evening to get our luggage.
We found some brekkie at the train station, and caught a train over to the San Lucia train station on the island of Venice. And so we began loving Venice.
We started with the intention of exploring the city and maybe going into a few of the main attractions, and so we started walking across the island in the direction of Saint Mark's Square. This is a bit of a hike, even if you just walk non-stop, but as I am easily distracted, and the streets and alleys of Venice
are lined with shops, I kept stopping, and the day quickly became a day of shopping. And for one thing in particular: masks.
I am now a mask-a-holic and am completely and totally addicted to them. I firmly believe that I need more masks, and my life will be better if I have more than I do right now. We spent about a half hour in the first main shop we went into, run by a very nice man who makes his own masks out of paper mache. He showed us the whole process, and even started modelling them for us! He showed us the photos of the Carnivalle they have every February in Venice where everyone dresses up in masks and crazy outfits (so keen to go back for that) and then he showed us how they wear just a black cape and a black hat with the mask to make it stand out. He put on the costume, and completely transformed! It was very cool, he was a totally different character with the costume on and was very dramatic. We had a great time in there (despite him making me try on masks and then getting Danny
to take photos of me, much to my dismay!) and ended up buying about four masks from him. Mmmm, the collection grows.
By late-afternoon we finally made it to the Square, and spent a little while there looking at the Bascillia and the different buildings, and then walked along the water, bought some pastel sketches of Venice, and decided to head back to the hotel. Since we had a ridiculous amount of masks and other souvenirs in two enormous bags (which were mostly full of packaging which we were able to get rid of) and it was a long walk back, we took a ferry, which was fun, but got very full!
We left all the shopping in the new hotel room, and took the long journey back to the campsite.
We packed, checked out (very apologetically - we didn't want to be rude and tell them how terrible we thought it was!) and waited for the bus to come and take us back.
By the time we got back to the hotel it was about 8pm and we were very hungry! So we dumped all our luggage in the room and went looking for some food.
We
found a restaurant, and ordered three things (two for Danny and one for me) and I ended up swapping mine for one of Danny's (I had ordered potato dumplings, which turned out to be pasta with potato inside of them - not what I thought dumplings were!)
And then we headed back to the room with the nice shower, where Danny even took advantage of the bathtub to soothe his sore legs from the day of mask shopping, while I opened all the packaging to look at my new acquisitions!
A good day!
I love masks.
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mum
non-member comment
good move
Hope you were able to get a mask for Manford! Glad you are enjoying Venice now. You will be recommending that anyone stays in town! Hope you had a good night sleep. Love you mum