Day 2 – Introducing Venice

To get from Venice Mestre to Venice you have to take a 10 minute train ride. Don’t try and buy a ticket from the ticket machine in the station though. This just means that you get to wait in a queue for 20 minutes to get a chance to read a tiny notice on the machine that tells you these tickets are available from a little office with the words “Venice Tickets” written outside on a big sign. Which of course we hadn’t seen. Oh, and get your tickets validated before you get on the train,  or the ride might be more exciting than you really want.

Venice is like nothing on earth. Except Venice. Someone must have said “What if we had canals rather than roads?” and a bunch of other people must have gone along with this. The thing that I loved was the way that people actually live here. Going to work on a boat and treating all the fantastic architecture and stuff around them as part of the furniture.  Some bits are rather annoying though. There is nowhere to sit apart from at cafes. And when you do you are very aware that a clock has started ticking, and at some point a bill will have to be paid. It is expensive, but we managed to eat for reasonable prices.

What you get if you ask for “the fish”.

We didn’t go on a boat. It looked a bit expensive and I don’t believe in spending good money just to be made to feel queasy. 

You could buy silly hats. Although it wasn’t compulsory.  They also had a lot of masks.

Since I, perhaps rather surprisingly, don’t have much need for a mask I didn’t get one.

At the end of the day we staggered onto the train and rumbled back to our tiny room. I’m not sure if I’ve got much more culture, but I did take loads of photographs.