Venice!

Well we had another early start today and drove from Innsbruck, Austria down through into Italy. The northern part of Italy is traditionally where the rich people live, it's not half as hot as the southern portion, with large farms and deluxe villas. As you cross the border you notice subtle changes in the way the houses are built and laid out the further we went south. We also noticed a huge change in the way the service stations/food halls work here.
Instead of picking out what you want from their cafeterias and food halls as you do everywhere else, in Italy you go to the counter to pick out the sandwich you want and remember the name of it. You then go to the counter and order the thing you want, reciting the name of it and they give you a receipt once you've paid.
Then you go back to the counter once more and hand the receipt to the person behind the counter and once more recite the name of the thing you want and they'll then give it to you. Of course you then have to show the receipt once more on the way out if you want to take it outside. Now you can do this for most things, but some things you can simply pick up (like drinks) from the shelves and pay for it directly. All in all, rather confusing to say the least and very much Italian.

After a brief stop for lunch - we arrived at the docks and parked the bus. Now Venice (called Venezia by the locals) is a collection of islands (about 70) which have been joined up and to create one massive floating city. You can only get to Venice via boat - and the only boats allowed to do this are the motorscarfi, so we had a boat organised to get us there. We strolled down to the quay where our tour guide beckoned to one of the boats out on the water and it came in to pick us all up and take us to the island of Venice. We had a lovely view from the boats, but soon we arrived on the island itself.

Now Venice was busy. Incredibly busy - though unfortunately more so today as the catholic churches were all celebrating the previous day as special holiday (Assumption Day). It was also rather hot - about 34'C or so today and we could feel it beating down on us. After being sunburnt in Rotterdam I was not keen to get burnt again so the first thing on my agenda was to buy a hat - which I did from one of the many stalls around while everyone was assembling.

We walked to St Mark's Basilica first, though because it was closed for the last two days the queues were incredibly long.
Our tour guide showed us the main locations and where a few things were, including the Doges Palace, the Rialto Bridge, the church tower and how to navigate around Venice. We then headed to a special glass blowing demonstration at the Murano glass factory. Venice is apparently well known for it's glass making skills, the art being passed down from generation to generation. In addition to seeing how he blew the glass into the right shape, we also saw how they added colour to the glass. Red glass in particular is interesting as they use 24carat gold to get the colour - this is also why red murano glass is worth more.
After the glass demonstration we had free time to wander around on our own.
It wasn't worth waiting to go into St Marks Basilica really, the lines were just too long and we simply didn't have enough time to wait, so first up we climbed the church tower and decided to get a view from above. Access to the top of the church tower was via elevator, so after a short queue we were at the top and admiring the view - and it was pretty impressive.

We headed to the Rialto bridge after that to check out the shopping area next. Finding your way around in Venice is a little different from everywhere else. There's rarely street names anywhere, and every place is interconnected via canals, bridges and lots and lots of alleyways. To find your way anywhere you follow the little signs to get to the place you want - and these are simply arrows pointing in a direction as if to say 'up there somewhere'.
In some places there additional signs written in chalk - which got you to the place still, but went through tiny little alleyways and meandered a bit in some places. We followed one of these and I think it was written by one of the shop stalls to give them some more traffic.

After the Rialto we went back to San Marco Square and found that the queue to the Basilica was still really long, so instead we decided to go to the Doges Palace. This place was incredible - the Doge was effectively the ruler of Venice back in the day, and this place was created to not only house him, but also was where the Councils and magistrates/judges of the time all worked. Furthermore, below his palace were the prisons.
These rooms were amazing - decked out with gilded ceilings, beautiful paintings and decorations on the walls. They also had a huge map room with maps all painted on the walls and huge stone globes with everything on the world mapped out on them at the time.

We then met up for our Gondola ride - where we cruised along the canals of Venice. We'd organised musicians to join us on the cruise too - so we had the sounds of music and singing following us as we drifted along the canals. Was a lovely end to the day, and we were very sad to see the end of Venice after that.