In the morning, when one wanders over to the shower block, you really need to be awake and have all your marbles about you, or there can be tricky consequences……. I’ve found that it helps to have my bag, with everything I need, packed ready by the door the night before. Rodney prefers the grab-it-on-the-way-out system. He started Thursday badly. After he had showered he realised he had forgotten his towel; his brain is obviously still fuzzy with a head cold. So when he walked back in to the campervan he looked like a drowned rat, with his now very wet t-shirt and shorts clinging to him. It was a rather funny sight and started my day with a good laugh.
The 9:30am, very crowded, bus took us back in to Venice and then we boarded the No.1 vaporetto (water bus) down the Canal Grande to the Piazza San Marco where we boarded the No. 4.2 vaporetto across to the Island of Murano. This is a lovely island and not as crowded as Venice, at that time of day. We watched a bit of glassmaking, for which the island is famous, and we walked down numerous streets gazing into shop windows at the beautiful glassware on display. We ate pasta lunches in the garden courtyard of the Antica Trattoria Muranese and listened to all the accents and languages floating around us.
After more glass window browsing and some purchases too, Rodney finally glazed over and we wandered down to the ferry terminal to catch another boat over to Burano. The houses on this island are all painted in incredibly bright colours, making it look a bit Disneyesque, but rather lovely to roam around. The island is famous for lace making and lace is still made here, but the few lace makers still working here can’t keep up with demand, so there is a lot of imported lace too. We continued wandering, with gelato in hand, for about an hour until Rodney got a bit tied up in knots with all the lace shops and we headed to the ferry terminal.
It was about a 45-minute ride back to the Fondamente Nove terminal in Venice from where we struck out in a vaguely south-westerly direction. We stopped for cold drinks in the Piazza San Maria Nova and sat watching the gondolas passing in both directions on a canal so narrow that it looked like it should have been just one-way.
At St Mark’s Square the queue for entry to the Campanile had dissipated, so we paid our €8 and boarded the lift that took us 60 metres up to the platform with a view. And what a view; it was lovely up there and we stayed for a quite a while. Back down at ground level we passed a canal junction where we stood a while to watch the most amusing traffic jam of gondolas. Despite the muddle on the water, the guitar player and singer continued to serenade their passengers and somehow, we never saw a gondola collide or even touch another; quite impressive.
After sharing a pizza and salad outside a nice pizzeria in Campo San Stefano, we walked through to the ferry terminal at Accademia and caught our last vaporetto of the day for a sunset cruise back up the Canal Grande to the bus station. It was a long day, but a lovely day and we’re both glad our colds seem to be clearing up a bit at last.
I was the one to have a wet start to Friday morning with a Venetian style flood in the laundry room. As I was removing our washing from the machine a Japanese father and young son opened the machine next to me to remove theirs. As he opened the door a wave of water and some of his washing poured out all over the floor and the water kept on coming. Dad got completely soaked all down his front and we were all standing in deep water, but the little boy just giggled and did a splashy dance in the middle of the room, which had us all laughing. Dad managed to push the door to almost shut so that I could get to my machine and remove the rest of our washing and then when I moved away he opened his washing machine door again. Another huge wave of water came pouring out; obviously the water entering the machine was not stopping. It became an international incident when a German man came in half way through the drama and joined in paddling with us and we all stood around scratching our heads. Feeling I would probably be of no use in solving anything, I wished them happy cruising and left the room to hang our nicely spun clothes on our washing line and dry my legs and feet.
After a cycle ride to the supermarket, Rodney settled in to one of his favourite occupations of watching the comings and goings of our fellow campers. He loves trying to guess the nationalities and watching how well, or how badly, some of them manoeuvre their vans in and out of position. I’ve christened him with a new nickname of ‘meerkat’, because his head bobs up and down and swivels about as soon as he hears any movement.
After another recovery and catch up day, we headed back in to Venice and managed, after more meanderings, to get to the Basilica San Marco before it closed for tea at 5pm. The ceiling decorations are really quite beautiful, but the herding of the crowds through only a smallish section with officials calling for “no photos”, had us leaving after only about ten minutes. We dawdled back to the Rialto Bridge and sat in a small café on the east side of the Grand Canal for a drink and then we split for an hour, so that Rodney could enjoy his beer and I could enjoy some girly shopping. We managed to find each other back at the bridge at the allotted time, which really did surprise me!
Finally we wandered over to the other side of the Canal Grande for dinner before trying to find another different route back through the Venetian maze. Venice definitely feels like the sort of city that would be nice to stay right in the centre of, for at least 3 months, and really ‘live’ there. I can understand why artists and writers did so in the past and there’s not many cities that have made me feel like it’s something I would like to do. Maybe one day. We said “arrivederci” to Venice one last time at the Piazza Roma and caught the bus back to Mestre to research a campsite for Saturday night at the beach.
