Back home in Perth - catchup #1: Venice

Phew! We're all back home in Perth, with Belgian chocs in hand (thanks to the nice blokes at customs). Since that last update in Nice, things have been pretty hectic. And no, they don't sell Nice biscuits in Nice.

We caught the night train from Nice to Venice, which was an interesting experience to say the least. Me, Dino and Duy were all stuck together in this tiny room, about the size of a parking bay (if not smaller). There was absolutely no room to do anything, and our beds consisted of three bunks, each piled on top of each other. As you can imagine, the sleep we got that night wasn't the greatest, especially as we arrived in Venice at about 7am.

The girls had it just as bad, if not worse - since there were only two of them, they had to bunk with this random French woman (we think her name was Luigi or something, not sure). Anyway - it was an experience, all right - but not something I want to do again soon.

Venice is cool. The map of the islands that make up the city kind of looks like two heads trying to eat each other. There is one main canal, called the Grand Canal, and is more like a river than a road, being about 100m wide at some points.

As many of you know, there are no cars in Venice. The transport system is a joke though - with the equivalent of a bus, called the Vapporetto taking an absolute eternity to get anywhere. If you don't have luggage, it's probably better to walk.

It's a real tourist town, Venice is. Almost every store there sells glassware. But this is no ordinary glassware - this is Murano glassware, a Venetian specialty. The name comes from the small island off the coast of Venice which is supposed to be the best place on earth for the stuff, but more on that later. There are probably a thousand of these shops in Venice, each with varying quality of work - you need to look pretty carefully to get the good stuff. Unfortunately with time, your judgement decreases, as every piece starts looking like the rest. And you end up not buying anything because you're sick of it. Anyway, you realise it's quite nice stuff when you get back to Perth and haven't seen it for a few weeks.

Gondola is a dirty word. Gondola equates to being ripped off. Understand this!

As we were doing our glassware shopping we were accosted by this gondola dude, who tried his best to con us into getting into his boat. 70 euro, he offered. We considered - there were five of us, so the cost wasn't too great. And Venice is famous for it's gondolas, so we felt we had to go on it. The pilots or whatever they're called all work for this one company which charges a flat rate. They wear the most ridiculous hats, which led to the christening of our gondola man: 'Little Bo Peep'.

We asked Bo Peep how long it would take - he replied, "Depends on my arm - there are no motors on this you know." The fact that we couldn't get a straight answer from him should have been a warning sign for us, but no matter.

The trip itself wasn't too bad. The water is disgusting, but gliding silently past all the old, sinking buildings was pretty cool. Only thing is, the trip lasted about 15 minutes. What a gyp. That's an enormous per minute rate.

Anyway, if you want to go to Venice, you must buy some glass, and also be ripped off by Little Bo Peep and his gondola homies.