Friday 23 September: Venice

Paul's brother Adrian was coincidently in Venice on holiday with his daughter Evie. Adrian had been here before, and became our de facto tour guide for the day. First stop was the bell tower in Saint Mark's square. A short queue, pay your money, then up in the lift. The views from the top were really spectacular. Well worth the six euro each.

Adrian suggested we should look at the interior of St Mark's basilica, but the queues stretched forever, and we gave that a miss. Maybe tomorrow. We strolled to the Rialto bridge - well we actually fought our way through the crowds to the Rialto bridge, which would have been very beautiful if not for the crowds, the huge banner advertising an exhibition, and the graffiti.

We jumped on a vaporetto (no ticket this time) and headed up the Canal Grande to the train station, where we visited the WCs (one euro) and had some pizza for lunch.

Adrian knows quite a lot about glass blowing, so we headed out to the famous "glass island" Murano. This was much quieter than the main part of Venice, and there were no crowds - we could walk along the footpaths without having to fight our way through. We dropped into a number of shops selling glass artifacts of all types. Some of it appealed, but a lot was quite grotesque, and the prices were pretty high. We also stopped at two factories where we were able to watch the craftsmen working. In one place they were making the components for a chandelier, and at another they were making big vases.

Back to the station the long way round on a vaporetto with a very sick transmission, a quick visit to Adrian's hotel, and to a bookshop to get some maps.

We felt like a nice dinner, so went to a nice looking place just near our hotel. We ignored the rather uninteresting menu touristico and ordered some very good scallopini. The price looked reasonable too, until they added the 3.50 (each) cover charge and 15% "service charge". Grazzie but no tip on top of that lot. Ah well, it's all part of the experience.