Chapter Twelve

Venezia! I think this city surprised me the most as I had so much fun here even though I definitely did not expect to. Venice is a very old city built a very long time ago and has no proper working roads, just canals. We had a gorgeous morning to walk around and take pictures. We started at the Rialto Bridge, one of the more famous (and definitely the busiest) bridge in Venice.

We booked a free walking tour at 11 am to get a better idea of the city and some of the hidden gems that normal tourists wouldn't be able to find. Some of the highlights of the tour were finding out about these

odd basins in the middle of a lot of squares. They were used to collect water when it rained so the people of Venice would be able to go back and get drinking water when ever they wanted to. As a floating city Venice was also used to a lot of flooding. Our tour guide pointed out that most stores and houses would have a little metal block that would slide in front of their door to keep the water out when flood levels rose too high.

Our guide also brought us to this amazing little bookshop hidden away in the corner of Venice. It had two really cool features, there was a staircase made of books in the back of the shop that you could actually walk on, and a gondola filled with books in the middle of the store. The gondola was not just for decoration, it was used when the flood waters were getting high. The owners would pile the books in the boat and when the water came in none of the books would get wet because the boat would just begin to float! Then we wandered over to the local market where our tour guide explained the significance of the location (very close to the main canal) and how old the market was.

While we were on the tour we bumped into a girl from London and ended up chatting with her and she joined our group for the rest of the day. We went out for lunch after the tour at one of the to-go pasta places (my diet in Venice was exclusively pasta) and talked about all of the travelling we had been doing. After lunch we really wanted to try the local drink called Spritz. We found an outdoor cafe which served Spritz and sat down to enjoy. The drink is mainly Prossecco, Aperol and a splash of soda water. It's usually garnished with an orange peel. It was actually really good and I would've definitely gone for a second one if we weren't heading out for two of Venice's smaller islands.

First we took the boat to Murano, an island famous for glassblowing. Most of the glassblowing demonstrations were over for the day but we did enjoy walking along a canal and looking in all of the shops at the glass pieces they had on display. The second island we visited was Burano, famous for its beautifully and brightly painted buildings. I was able to grab my last scoop of gelato here and admire the beautiful buildings.

This was sadly then end of our trip as we had to fly out the next morning back to England. I think this trip was one of the best so far, and I would absolutely go back to all of these cities if I got another chance.