VENICE 12 Sept

This morning we had free time and after a good sleep in, a lovely breakfast and a bit of suitcase sorting, we headed out for a walk amongst the tiny streets of Venice. Owen chose to wonder on his own for a bit of souvenir shopping. Ron and I mapped a path and attempted to stay on track. This is terrible difficult in Venice as you are not able to mark your bearings due to the height of the buildings and narrow streets (some only two person wide).



We didn’t do too badly and found a gorgeous café to stop for a morning coffee and watch Venice walk by.







Here we saw locals out walking dogs and I have to say many of the owners looked like their dogs!

Of course Venice was no exception when it came to the variety of shopping choices on offer and there were some beautiful shop window displays. It was tempting to buy designer goods but didn’t in the end due to the hefty price tags.

We joined our tour group again for the afternoon and travelled by boat to another island called Burano. Burano is famous for its multi-coloured houses, traditional fishing village feel and lace making. Of course it was full of tourists but this did not matter as we sat down to dine with a great deal of wine at hand. Another character on our Tour was a single Australian women (SAW). She was spending up big and would often been seen displaying her purchases to fellow tourees. SAW had a special affinity with Mr & Mrs MOLD who were also often seen buying typical tourist merchandise of the overpriced kind. SAW had bought no less than seven belts, 3 silk ties, two sets of gold earrings, a quantity of bracelets, a hideous black crocheted vest, leather hand bags, two sets of designer reading glasses and a watch. These items were all on display at every opportunity and SAW was often heard telling anyone that was in hearing range that she only had this once in a lifetime chance to buy such goods from Italy. The only tasteful items that she had bought were the designer glasses!
Returning to Venice for the evening we headed out and bought a Grande Prosciutto and Fungi pizza. While watching the shop keeper make the dough a pigeon pooped on my head! I could not get back to the hotel fast enough which proved tricky as we got lost again in the narrow allies. After our pizza we rearranged our suitcases and headed to bed. Our wake up call was to be 4am the next morning.