Mamma mia!
Tuesday, 12 June 2007
Welcome to Italy! This place is everything, every movie or postcard has ever portrayed. Old buildings that look on the verge of collapse, canals where roads should be, venetian masks and of course gelatti. However, before we made it to Italy we had to endure one of the longest bus trips ever. Left at eight am, arrived at half six! This was due to the compulsory (but completely unnecessary stop for an hour and a half stop at St Johan, Austria!) A really really small town, with not much to do - but it would be an absolute gem in winter. We also encountered what people say about crazy Italian drivers - it's all true, there's no road rules here, you just go for it!!
In Venice we checked out the town, the old buildings, the beautiful glass jewellery, the millions of pigeons and we didn't even get that lost (forget maps in this city, you just need to use your instinct!!) Our first, and by no means last, taste of gelatti was sensational, especially the chocolate flavour. The old lonely planet guide book recommended a restaurant with over 90 varieties of pasta and pizza that we were very keen to try, but after searching for ages and ages we found that it wasn't where they said and once we found it wasn't even open (we even tried the next day) - very disappointing!
We stayed at a flash camping ground and one night played drinking games with red wine - probably not the best idea we've had! Our American friend introduced us to few new games (thanks Aaron!) where one of us started losing very badly and will never be playing that game again!! We met an italian guy who started teaching us italian later on that night (very handy - we even managed to remember some phrases the next day!). Some time later that night (or early morning) we decided to go for a swim in the pool. Em fell off the fence on the way over, Greig fell off (and broke) the fence on the way out, but we did manage to go for a quick dip before being shouted at us to get "Out, out!"
Even though we had thunderstorms every night we were there, Venice was a very beautiful place, and one we also need to go back to in the future.
Labels: Travel
posted by Tim @ 11:46 am,
