London one-way!

We caught the bus into Venice today and went and got an all day bus pass. The first thing we did was take the boat to Maurana, one of the islands most well known for glass blowing. As soon as we stepped off the boat there was a man who sat waiting for the tourists to herd them into his family’s workshop to see a demonstration of glass blowing.

It wasn’t new to me but it is fascinating to watch, and we wandered around the shop afterwards. Every second or third shop on the island is glass goods. They sell jewellery, vases and bowls, miniature figurines – tiny ants, whole orchestra sets, Christmas trees with baubles, Santa Clauses; and the jewellery – just simple square or round glass pieces threaded together to big glass flowers and colourful fish. The great thing about glass jewellery is that every piece is unique, no matter how similarly they try and produce it. The Italians have siesta between 12 and 2pm at least, if not longer, so luckily we were on the boat all this time. We took one boat back to Venice and then took one down the Grand Canal. It was magnificent! We sat up front and watched the other boats sail past, people in gondolas, buildings flooded past their top step because it was high tide, people walking over makeshift paths and those just trying to miss puddles but failing miserably.

We passed heaps of beautiful buildings, very old, lots of sculptures; we went under the Rialto Bridge, all the way down to St Marcs where the Basilica is. There were all these markets along the promenade and I bought myself a Venetian mask, it’s really pretty and now I have to find a masquerade ball to wear it to! Otherwise I’ll just have to organise one myself!

The line for the basilica was pathetically long, and people were pushing in at both ends, so we skipped it and went into the square to take pictures of it. Of course, I took one step too far into the crowd of pidgeons and ended up with about five or six sitting on my arms. Unfortunately it’s a 50 euro fine if you kick them, so I just had to shake them off. You’re not supposed to feed them but a little old lady was standing at her cart packing food for tourists into bags, and she had a stick that she was using to poke them away, it was really quite funny watching her.

We went for a bit of a wander, we were trying to find the ‘Teatro Fenice’ but the sunny morning changed to a pouring afternoon and I only had my scarf and very little money left. Heading to Croatia I didn’t want to get any more euros out. Lis paid 7euros for a brolly and Lija had hers in her bag. I battled on with my scarf over my shoulders and eventually gave in to buy a cheap poncho – lovely bright blue colour which the guy stuck over my head the wrong way! Barely 5 minutes later it had stopped raining. Lija asked me why I didn’t buy one earlier! Well, I looked a sight but hell, I was a tourist. I’ve given up on trying not to look like one.

We got a bit lost searching for the Teatro, Renee had told us on the bus it’s easier to throw away the map of Venice cos they’re all crap and getting lost is an integral part of the Venetian experience. I agree. It’s so frustrating but at the same time just hilarious – eek, we’ve come to a dead end, there’s a brick wall, there’s a canal, that’s just not where we want to be!

We did find it in the end, luckily I brought my condensed Lonely Planet and the map was semi-decent. We couldn’t afford to go in and have a look, so we just went into the shop and peeked around the corner, and Lija and I flipped through a coffee table book about it. She knows about it because of a book she read called “City of Falling Angels” or some such, anyway, I have to remember it so I can pick it up to read.

Lis wanted to go back to a shoe shop she saw when we were wandering around last night, and Lija and I wanted to go to the Peggy Guggenheim collection in her old house, it was all modern art like Picasso and Dali. I found it interesting but not at all on the same level as the Renaissance and Impressionists which I think I prefer.

The two of us caught the boat back to the Rialto and jumped off to get gelato – oh my god last night I had the rum and raisin and it was pathetically strong with rum – Lija didn’t believe me until she had it today! I had crème caramel and cookies.

We met up with Lis back at the bus depo to get back to the hotel – do you need to ask whether she bought a pair of shoes? – but we got stuck in traffic and stood in the bus for twenty minutes until it chugged slowly along.

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was actually really nice and well priced, and the waiter guy spoke good enough English that he was making cheeky jokes. Lis had to pack for the plane but I wasn’t well so I went to bed early, but not before checking my email and finding out I had missed a perfect opportunity in Venice. Severely disappointed.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 7:35 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.