Venice

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From Dubrovnik we flew to Venice and spent three nights in an apartment right in the centre of Venice just off St Mark's Square. Venice is made up of 117 small islands, 150 canals and 409 bridges and as we flew into Venice airport we were lucky enough to have sensational views of Venice as it bathed in the late afternoon sunshine. From the air you really get to see how isolated from the mainland the city is.

We arrived at Venice airport around 7pm (an hour late) and missed catching a bus into Venice by around 20 metres. The driver either didn't see us running towards the bus dragging our luggage madly waving our arms in the air or had no heart. Anyway, after waiting 40 minutes for the next bus we finally arrived in Venice around 8.30. We then found our way to the rental office to pick up the keys to our apartment (where we had to wait for 40 minutes for our contact to turn up as he had gone home to have dinner) and were given directions to the boat station to catch the boat to St Mark's square where we had just a short walk to our apartment.

Guy, feeling pretty happy with himself for successfully navigating the way to the apartment office, decided that we should not follow the instructions given to us, but instead walk all the way to the apartment (Guy's logic was that by the time we walked to the ferry stop we would have covered a third of the distance anyway, and the boat trip was going to take 20 minutes not to mention the waiting time for the ferry. We could therefore walk there and arrive at the same time if not earlier, and see some of Venice on the way - excellent logic I might say). Anyone who has been to Venice knows that it is just a maze of streets and canals which all look the same and that the signposts directing you to St Mark's Square aren't always exactly accurate. So, finally, after 1.5 hours of dragging our suitcases up and down the bridges that cross all the canals, feeling like we were walking in circles (we were walking in circles), we eventually end up at our apartment around 11.00 pm, exhausted, and 3 hours later than we had anticipated.

Venice was very enjoyable. It is a city besieged by tourists, but if you avoid both St Mark's Square during the day and the main thoroughfare from the square to the station you can avoid most of the masses. St Mark's Square is certainly worth a look once, simply to see how many people can fit into the area, and to see the greatest number of pigeons you are ever likely to see anywhere eating out of the hands of silly tourists. Away from the masses it really is a very pretty city, with plenty to see and do, or to be enjoyed by aimlessly wandering the streets and squares. We did all of the main tourist things including visit St Mark's Cathedral and the Bell Tower from where we got amazing views, the Rialto Bridge, and catching a number of vaporettos (ferries) to see the canals, including two complete circuits of the Grand Canal and Canale de Giudecca, one in daylight and one at night. The amount of traffic on the canals is amazing and it is remarkable that there aren't more accidents with vaporettos, gondolas, water taxis, barges carrying provisions and private boats all vying for a bit of space. We visited a couple of the less popular churches, including the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, which offers great views of the city across the Giudecca Canal. We also went into a couple of art galleries, including the Penny Guggenheim Collection, which was quite impressive but was fairly small given the admission price. We didn't really consider a gondola ride as the cost was just too probihibitive (upwards of 100 Euro).

The weather was very kind to us while we were in Venice. It actually started raining during the first night we were there and although we had some rain on the first morning this cleared and we had a couple of cool clear days.

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Photos

St Mark's Square
The crowds aren't too bad yet

Campo (Piazza) Santo Stefano
Another nice square in Venice.

The Island of San Giorgio Maggiore
Viewed from the belltower of St Mark's Cathedral

St Mark
Viewed from the belltower of the San Giorgio Maggiore Cathedral