JULY 22nd

bless me father for i have sinned...

into Venezia (Venice) by lunch time. we'd booked online a hostel called Casa Domus or something like that. found it with relative ease. we were expecting to be in a room with 3 beds and judging from the fact that it was fairly booked out online, we thought we'd have to share with someone. no biggy.
when we checked in with the guy at the reception who looked like a priest and couldn't speak a lick of english, he handed us keys for two different rooms. were a bit annoyed with this cos it looked like we were going to have to be split up and share with people. tried to ask him to put us in the same room, but he said come back at 430pm and speak with the receptionist then becoz she speak english.headed to our rooms and we were happy to find that we both had single rooms. of course we would have prefered to have been in the same room, but this way we didn't have to share, so all was peachy!

i'm sure the hostel used to be a nunnery! just had that feeling. very sparse but cheap and clean. but hot! Venice is pretty humid - that's what happens when you build a city on top of the water i guess! and there was bugger all airflow in my room and no fan, so i was sweating almost as much as when i was walking from Monterosso!

SIDENOTE:when we did the Cinque Terre walk, i sweat (past tense of sweat? swot? ;-) ) so much that my t-shirt had a white ring of salt around the back from where my backpack had been sitting against my back. there was a pamphlet in my backpack that had been against the part touching my back that was very damp by the end of the walk. sorry Dan, your pack now comes in a new flavour... Salty evBSc Sweat pour homme...

enough babble...

once we'd escaped from our personal saunas, we trekked around Venice in the vague direction of St Mark's Basilica.
Venice is definitely a special city. yes it had hordes of tourists, but what part of europe doesn't at this time of the year? what i mean is that we've been to a few major cities in europe now and besides language and architectural differences, you could be in the same place time and time again.
but not Venice...
there are canals, not streets...
there are boats and gondolas, not cars...
the place is magical...

we wound our way thru the streets and came upon the Grand Canal. there aren't many bridges which cross the Grand Canal and so the Venezians use trachetto - gondolas specifically for making the crossing. they cost 50cents per crossing. twas quick but fun. jee wanted to get a photo of the gondoleer cos he was handsome, back she only got a photo of his back and butt. :-)

finding St Mark's Basilica from there was pretty easy. just follow the tourists!they say in the Lonely Planet that the pigeons in St Mark's Plaza are only outnumbered by the tourists... they were right! hordes of both of them!the line to get into the Basilica was pretty long and in the direct sunshine, so we grabbed some gelati and a drink before lining up.
took a photo of me between the two big columns that you often see on tv shows about Venice. one has St Mark's winged lion on top, the other has St Theodore, the ex-patron saint of Venice. the great thing about the photo is that just as jee was taking it, a pigeon flew straight towards jee's direction just to the right of me. i think he wanted to be in the photo too!

the story of St Mark's Basilica is something i'll have look into a bit more. the basic run down is the Venezians nicked off with his body from Egypt and smuggled it back to Venice in a barrel of pork. then they built the Basilica to entomb him in somewhere special.there's a great painting on the outside of the Basilica that you can check out as you're waiting to get in. it shows the basics of the tale and i just loved the centre picture. shows a bunch of guys around what i guess is the open barrel of pork that they put his body in. and it looks like it stank! there's one covering his nose and i'm sure another is dry retching!

to get inside was just like the Duomo in Milan. you can't be baring shoulders or knees. tough call in the middle of summer, but thankfully the Venezians have their heads screwed on better than the Milanese. as you enter, if you aren't appropriately attired, they give you large square of orange cloth that can be draped around your shoulders or wrapped around you legs! jee's dress bared both shoulders and knees, but she just wrapped my bandana and her shoulders and they didn't worry bout her legs."

the inside of the Basilica is pretty damn amazing. the artwork and mosaics are great. entrance is free, but if you wanna see some of the displays, you've gotta say a coupla euros. one display was of all the stuff the Basilica had looted from other places! most 800 to 1000 years old. things like cups and urns and various other religious paraphernalia. the other display was of St Mark's tomb and this absolutely amazing altar piece called the Pala d'Oro. it's made from gold and has jewels galore all over it. i overheard a tour guide reeling off how many of each gem were on the piece. i only heard "250 sapphires and 300 emeralds" but there were a lot more diamonds i think. the thing was absolutely covered in gems!

next we caught the vaporhetto (water bus) to the Rialto which is the largest bridge in Venice.headed back to the hostel for a bit before we went out for a coupla drinks at a bar recommended by the Lonely Planet.
Cafe Noir. nice atmosphere and friendly staff. next time you have a Hoegarden, try it with a coupla slices of lemon! ;-)

JULY 23rd

off to Lido - Venice's beach. 8 euro for a single deck chair but in the shade so it was worth it. swam for a bit. pretty crowded and water wasn't very clear but was refreshing after all the heat.
headed to Murano next which is a specific island in Venice famous for its glass making.
the glass work is fantastic. really beautiful pieces and designs. we went into one display shop called Fenace Cam (i think!) that was the oldest in Murano - supposedly since 1030. talked with a nice guy called Marco who took us to the upper floor which has a lot of large single pieces and lots of different designs of glasses in various colours. those Murano glass masters really know what they're doing. it's unbelievable how beautiful some of the glasses were. we were really set on getting one and spent about 15min looking and trying to decide which one. finally chose a black and white tall wine glass and asked how much it was...

five hundred and eighty five euro...

that number again: 585 euro

he could see that we a tad (very) taken aback by this price so he said he could do 515euro for credit card or 450euro for cash.

bargain...

he explained that each piece in the showroom was a handmade original and you get free shipping with 100 percent insurance to your home country and a certificate for the piece.
we declined his generous offer.

585euro is close to 1000 australian dollars i think.
i could buy an Xbox360 and a few games for the same price.

let's compare the two...the Xbox360... a machine of beauty and grace that would provide me with hours upon hours of entertainment.and the glass... a piece of overheated sand of grace and beauty that would sit there looking amazing on the mantelpiece of my non-existant fireplace and gather dust until a next door neighbour's child smacks a cricket ball thru our window and reduces our glass to 585euros worth of black and white shards.i think even jee would prefer the Xbox360... and that's saying something! ;-)

Marco told us that the factory and showroom is only open to the public during the summer months. the rest of the year, they make and export glass pieces en masse.jee and i decided that the next time we come back to Venice we'll be rich and we'll buy a few glasses!
;-)

back into Venice proper by water bus again and bought a couple of masks.
had to... it's Venice!
was going to go for the Eyes Wide Shut style, but went for something very different and original in the end.jee wanted to ride on a gondola and i was up for it too, but for 60euro, how much is a boat ride really worth? not even sure he the dude sings! that was another thing we decided to do next time we come back to europe! ;-)
the night was thankfully cooler than the previous one and was able to sleep a lot easier. was woken up at about 520am by a thunder storm! since we've been in europe, it hasn't rained once and the first time it does BOOM!

JULY 24th

morning was nice and cool in Venice thanks to the rain which had only lasted an hour or so. 2 and a half hours on a first class train to Florence. i sat next to a nun! jee took a photo of us... i'm a happy camper. saw a nun with a rope belt. looked really cool. wanna get one for myself, go ultra retro style!
Florence's tourist info office at the station was closed - bloody helpful...used map from Lonely Planet and directions off net to find the Hotel La Noce. was quick and easy and close to the station.
Dan, where would we be without you?
2star hotel but really nice and clean and comfortable beds. reception dude very friendly and helpful too. good location too, near majority of sights.was hot when we got in but an hour later BOOM! thunder storm comes thru! rained really hard for about an hour but cooled things down very nicely.
walked around to the Duomo. fourth largest cathedral in the world. started in 1294 and took 150yrs to build! view from the top is great and even the 463 steps to get up there weren't too bad. thank god it had rained earlier cos it was hot enough going up!the inside of the main dome is painted with visions of heaven and hell. funky stuff!

signing off
evBSc