Venice, Italy

It’s Jo here... I have always wanted to go to Venice every since I was a little girl. All of my family that visited Venice would bring me home a mask. We arrived to Venice at lunchtime an it was so sweltering hot but we were all determined to see as much as we could. Amy and I walked into sooooo many of the mask shops and were in absolute awe. They were amazing! I would have been happy to walk around all the little alley’s of Venice and look at all of their mask stores but unfortunately we didn’t have the time and the boys didn’t have the patience (but fair enough). So we combined looking at the mask stores and sight seeing. Walking through the streets of Venice is incredible. It is so easy to get lost as it is highly unlikely that you will walk through the same alley twice (unless they are near the Rialto or San Marco)! We first headed in the direction of the Rialto bridge and from there San Marco square. Along the way we saw all the gondolas’ in the canals. We had decided that we wouldn’t go for a ride as there were way too many tourists on too many gondolas’ and there was a traffic jam in the canals. Not a great way to spend €80.00.
Once we got into San Marco square I thought there were going to be a lot more pigeons then there were. I now understand why they are always there though. People feed them and let the pigeons walk all over them! It was disgusting! One kid lied down on the floor and had his dad put bread crumbs on his stomach and as you can imagine all the pigeons flocked on him! We were all disgraced as we think they are flying rats! Moving on from that we took in the beauty of the basilica of San Marco. It was quite impressive but we didn’t go in as the line was long and there was no shade so we quickly gave up on that idea.
We continued to stroll through the streets and shops until the early evening when we decided that it was too hot and we would go back to our campsite and come back early tomorrow to see a little more.