We’re still on the farm campsite Al Bateo near Punta Sabbioni.<\/p>\n
Weather: warm and sunny – perfect sightseeing weather.<\/p>\n
This morning Jay went for a shower and the earth moved for me – literally. I thought he was outside wobbling Dave for a laugh, but sadly it was another earthquake here in Northern Italy. We’re quite a bit away from it so everything around here is fine, Jay didn’t even notice in the shower block. But Dave having super soft suspension rocked for a good 10 seconds or so – Charlie as usual slept through it.<\/p>\n
We set off at 10am for the ferry over to Venice, we only had to walk 300m to it, but we walk slowly and the ferry was bang on time so we missed it by a few seconds. We bought our 12hr unlimited travel passes for \u20ac18 each (Charlie was free) and assumed position at the front of the ‘queue’ for the next ferry in 30 mins, the ‘queue’ being a Ryanair elbows out affair – luckily I’m au fait with such procedures and secured us some prime seats outside at the back. We sailed past the building site that is the monster sized MOSE project to hold back the sea and stop Venice flooding, and soon the buildings underneath the towers we could see from Punta Sabbioni came into sight.<\/p>\n
We’d both seen it in numerous films, but nothing can prepare you for when you actually see the city of bridges\/canals – depending on who you talk to – yourself. I could spend all day sitting on the ferry or by the water watching what was happening on the water. Huge cruise ships\u00a0escorted\u00a0by tugs at either end shares the same space as gondolas, delivery boats, water taxi’s and the vaporetti (plural for vaporetto aparently). They danced around each other in seeming chaos, but as none of them made contact (just) there must have been some organisation to it. Once we docked we set off on foot straight into the back streets, here we had little \u00a0alleyways to ourselves. We stood on a bridge and watched a gondola go under us, to our left was the bridge on the main drag packed full, to our right two other bridges both empty. We knew we’d have to face the crowds to see a couple of the sights, but our day would be mainly spent enjoying our own Venice far from the crowds.<\/p>\n