Venice

In describing our trip to Italy, I'm not making these posts in chronological order. Instead I'm working my way through in order of least through to most favoured. So far I've completely dismissed Pompeii as a tourist trap and Naples as an ongoing crime scene.

Now we find ourselves at Venice, which is kind of okay as far as it goes. It would be a really inconvenient place to live, but I can begin to see the charm of the place. I totally identify with the locals who hate George Clooney for shutting down parts of the city during his nuptials there.  We arrived at Venice first, the journey we took was Air New Zealand and then Lufthansa which I've nicknamed Luftbastards. The route was Christchurch - Auckland - Singapore - Frankfurt - Venice. Singapore is a model of efficiency of course, but very humid, I don't know how people live there either. They've got flying insects the size of small birds. Anyhoo, flying Luftbastards was an eye opener, I'd never flown them before and found their in-flight entertainment dire. I imagine it was developed by some techie German working for Luftbastards. He should be sacked as the system barely functions it's that bad. Want to fast forward a movie? When you do that it is just as likely to fast reverse, and that's if the system works at all. Quite often you have to exit, go back to the start and try again. I'm not kidding, this system is the worst I've yet found. On one flight I had to have my seat rebooted twice. It's a joke.

Air New Zealand I try to avoid, but this time I found they've upped their game. Their staff weren't so arrogant and rude, and the meals were acceptable. The in-flight entertainment worked but had a very limited selection. Nothing like United from the USA, I swear they've got the Library of Congress loaded into their system. None of these even come close to the hospitality and efficiency of Thai Airways which remains to date, the best airline I've flown with.

Venice. We arrived via Frankfurt. For some odd reason only obvious to Eurocrats, we needed a stamp in our passports in Frankfurt even though we were only transiting, and then when we moved on to Venice we weren't checked at all upon arrival there. It was like a domestic flight. We didn't fill in an arrivals card anywhere.

At Frankfurt we bought a spot of breakfast after the long flight from Singapore. This is what it looked like, bought from a hotdog stand outside where our flight to Venice was leaving from:

Not so long after eating, we found ourselves on our flight over the Swiss Alps, and arriving in Venice. Once in Venice we found out what Italy's problem was, they've been invaded by Daleks, here they are:

Message to Italy, Daleks will only cause misery, you have to drop this as an option and go back to sensible government.

At our bed and breakfast we found Italians like sweet things, here is what our breakfast looked like on our first morning waking up there:

While this is basic, we found this not too dissimilar to what Italians eat every morning. Too sweet for me (more about this in later posts). But having said that, Italy doesn't appear to have an obesity epidemic. I hardly saw a fat person the whole time.

We were staying in Mestre, and took the bus and train into Venice proper, depending on how we felt that day. The bus has the advantage of going straight from the bus stop to Venice, whereas obviously you need to walk to the station to get there by train. Both methods of transfer are fast and cheap, no worries there.

I prefer the trains, and discovered that Minions are fighting back against the Daleks, here they are lined up for combat at the Venice Train Station:

The Daleks are not taking this lying down and have fifth columnists at work, trying to derail the Minions efforts. They're called Aids trains:

Venice looks like this on a good day in winter:

Like this on an average day:

And on a bad day like this:

The Bridge of Sighs er actually Bridge of Lies

You've got to hand it to the Italians, they're good at spinning a yarn full of romantic claptrap. I managed to get a picture of the Bridge of Sighs, without being jostled by the hundreds of tourists crowding to get a shot of this total lie. Here's the pic:

The bridge was for transferring prisoners from the courts on the left, to the prison on the right. Looking through those windows on the bridge is the last the prisoners will see of Venice. That's the story, and if you and your loved one take a gondola ride at exorbitant cost and kiss under the bridge as the bells of the Duomo strike 5pm (something like that), your love will last forever. Brilliant marketing guys. Actually, those prisoners were all released within a few months as they were almost always petty criminals convicted of minor crimes. The time when the prison held political prisoners being tortured and such was a hundred or more years earlier and long before the bridge was built. But, you know, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

More about Venice tomorrow. But for now I'll leave with a pic of the post boxes we were told never to place a letter in, they'll end up with the Daleks otherwise. Instead we were told to post letters in funny little yellow boxes hiding in souvenir shops. What happened to Italy's postal service?

Told to never post a letter in one of these. Something tells me this is good advice.