Venice

We wake up early to go to the train station and when we get there we go to buy tickets. Sold out. Bugger. A choice must be made and fast: pay more and travel first class on the train leaving soon, wait and travel second class on the train in an hour or so, skip Venice altogether. We choose the first option. Thank goodness we do.

Venice is amazing.

Definitely our favourite city so far - favourite place is still held by Cinque Terre. The crowds are intense and an American tourist gets mad at me for bumping into him but it's like: Dude, you are essentially in a moshpit - everyone here is shoulder to shoulder, if you don't like crowds don't come Venice in Summer. Jerk. Fortunately I show some restraint and don't get into that argument.

We make our way through the maze of streets and wind up at the Basilica. It is incredibly, incredibly beautiful, it becomes only the second place during our trip that makes me cry, and bumps the Tower of London off its perch as my favourite place we have visited. I may have also ended up getting suckered into buying a string of blessed rosary beads in the Virgin Mary's colour (purple)... They are beautiful and made from Venetian glass! Leave me alone! Poor Willy.

We continue roaming the streets seeing ancient churches, amazing architecture, luxury products, and a lot of beggars. Venice and Italy in general seem to be oblivious to the extremes existing right next to each other. It's been quite upsetting at times and the sheer number of beggars in Venice was particularly tough - we hadn't seen that many anywhere else.

By mid-late afternoon (the day gets away on me a bit) I am not very well. Typically we avoid being outdoors from around 12/1 to 3/4 where possible and I think that I just overheat. We take a break watching some guys in a boat replace a pole in a canal. Oh my goodness, this becomes Willy's favourite part of the whole trip. He's very excited and talks me through the process. It's very cute.

After a while we make our way back to the station to buy tickets to Rome for the next day (not wanting to get caught out again), then retrace our steps to find some dinner. We get harassed by an older Italian man to eat in his restaurant. I am hesitant as I usually don't eat at places with photo's of their food in their menus - it rarely looks good and I assume it doesn't taste great either. Boy am I pleased he made us go in. We eat one of the best dinners (if not the best) of our trip. Willy has spaghetti in a duck meat sauce, I have gnocchi done in a style that I can't remember the name of but was basically seafood in a creamy slightly tomatoey sauce with parsley on top. It was sooo good. So good. We sit at our table looking up at one of the many large churches and decide that Venice is indeed awe inspiring.