From France, we departed to Venice, Italy. We sat at the back of the coach today and past through many tunnels and mountain. The tunnel made me doze off easily.
We had an afternoon stopover at Verona. Verona's most famous Casa di Giuletta (Juliet's House). On the little courtyard, there's a bronze statute of Juliet. We were told that one of Juliet's boobs is more shiny than her counterpart due to incessant rubbing by tourists who believed they will have good luck from rubbing 'the' boob.
Again Verona is also famous for its amphitheatre which is still used in the present day for internationally famous opera performances. Coincidentally when we were there, KISS was holding a concert there. There were very many KISS fans on the square. Some also had the make up of the KISS bands.
Above were just photos of Verona. There's a big square and we walked through narrow cobblestones path to Juliet's House. We also took picture of the ' love graffiti' by Juliet's House.
Not long after, we reached Camp Fusina in Venice. See collage above. Looking back on my diary, I wrote the following:"Fusina is by far most decent cabin with own bathroom and 3 beds. Unfortunately, the shower is unpredictable. It either burns you or freeze you'.
Dinner tonight was Spaghetti bolognaise with garlic bread and salad at the Contiki marquee.
The bus in the collage is the cyber bus in the camp ground.
The inset pic of the big marquee was where we had dinner the next day. That was part of the facility of the camp.
14.5.08
The next day we took a boat to Venice itself. The jetty is just 5 mins walking distance from our camp ground. The boat ride takes about 15-20minutes.
When we reached venice, we went to 2 demonstrations. One was the making of the Murano glass. Glasses and chandeliers and brooches and whatever you can think under the sun is aplenty in that shop. Because it is such specialised form of craft, price wise was pretty expensive too. 4 glasses in the first left pic would be about AUD 220 (from memory). Somebody in the tour group bought them as gifts to bring home.
Next was to a lace school. Lace making is a slowly disappearing art. The laces are really pretty even to a non-lace person like me. It comes in all sorts of fashion. After the two demonstrations, we were left to explore the island on our own.
Anyhow, the must go place for us or rather the must snap pic of Venice was the San Marco basilica, and the campanile which is sort of like the first thing you see when you walked into the square.
We were told by Gianni our Italian Australian friend that in Italy, designers like Versace, Armani Prada take turns to win contracts to make police uniforms for the country. How cool is that?
Below, we took picture of the police. They do have very attractive uniform..
Below were just more pictures of Venice. We walked to Ponte Rialto (the bridge and overlooks) the building. It's just very pretty. My mission was to get a mask but mission failed badly because the more masks I saw, the uglier I thought they were. So I end up with a Murano glass cross. Jake found a police who would take a pic with him hehehe..
Below was our lunch. Hm..what can I say..I thought it's a little mediocre, and that all the places serve 'tourist' menu. I couldn't find one which the locals dine.
Highlight in the afternoon was riding in the gondola. We went on the gondola with Kaz, K and C&D. They graciously let us have the couple seat. hehe. Our gondola man wears some sort of a uniform amongst all the other gondola men. A white or stripey shirt. He would expertly manoerve his way on the canals. One thing I note, the canals are actually stinky..but it's worth the ride.
Sampler shows us on the gondola, the pigeons of Piazza San marco, the queue of the St Mark basilica, Jake and the campanile, and we took the pic of St Anne cathedral (if i am not mistaken) and finally, we had gelato icecream as the weather gets really hot.That night we had dinner at the beergarden. Dinner was BBq ribs and chicken with salad and bread.
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