So after 2 nights in Venice, I can still say that even though the mass of people, it is well worth the visit.  This was my 4th time to Venice and I never get bored walking the canals and seeing how lost I can get.  I really recommend getting up early and seeing the city before all the cruise ships arrive.

Just my personal thoughts on Venice and Italy.  You can’t plan on having reliable internet service.  We had free interent in both hotels but it never worked.  The only sites that seemed to work were Italian websites.  Maybe they were screening what I wanted to do.  It was very frustrating.  Second, don’t count on having any TV to watch at night…you can’t even find the weather.  Lastly, the beds are most likely not comfortable.  The first night my bed and pillow were so hard that I actually dreamed that I was sleeping on a street and the curb was my pillow.  I had a pretty sore neck.  The second night the bed was a tad better but the pillow was flat as paper. 

I will leave you with some photos of Venice.  From the bridges to the canals, there is a new view every step you take.

Since I don’t have any knowledge about yachts I probably shouldn’t say much about the America’s Cup except that I thought it was pretty fascinating to watch.  This was my first yacht race and I actually didn’t know that watching yachts could be so entertaining.  We visited the village and walked around looking at the yachts.  We then headed to the lagoon near San Marco to find a place to watch.  All of the seats along the water were already taken so we had to stand.  Oh did I mention that it was sunny and I didn’t have any sunscreen on.  Since we didn’t know the race was taking place, I really wasn’t prepared to stand next to the water for a couple of hours.  The yachts did a couple of practice turns and then they disappeared for awhile.  We knew the race was about ready to start when all the helicopters started coming around the fans.  I’m amazed at how hard the yacht crews worked on getting the yachts turned and how far one side of the yacht can come out of the water.  As far as I can tell, Italy won this race by far.  I’m pretty sure South Korea and America hit yachts at one point.  I can now cross off watching a yacht race off my bucket list. (The last photo of the slideshow is an example of how many people were watching the race from one bridge.)

As we strolled around the city we came across a square that had the canal on one side and the church on the other.  And in between these two things were children playing soccer.  They would use parts of the church structure as the goals.  I really wanted to jump in and play but I thought I better just watch.  Occasionally one kid would kick the ball too hard and it would roll towards the canal.  Lucky for them, all the people walking by would stop the ball each time.  Not sure how many balls they have lost in their lifetime.

One thing about waking up early is that you get to see all the local people setting up for another busy day.  I saw a fire boat and some firemen who just put a fire out…which made me think, there are no smoke detectors in the hotel rooms here.  I saw plenty of garbage men and delivery boats delivering everything from beer to vegetables to laundry.  Strangely, I was fascinated by the fish market and watching them setup for the day.  I have no clue what some of the things were but I enjoyed watching it all take place.

I wonder how many different types of boats are located in Venice.  Pretty sure they have every boat imaginable here.  From cruise ships to gondolas, I’m pretty positive I have captured all of them.  Let me know if you think there is a boat I missed 😉

Venice is a beautiful city but it also comes with a price…people.  There are so many people in the city during the day that it is almost pointless to try to move around.  So I think the best thing to do is to wake up early and beat the crowds.  Both mornings in Venice I woke up early and got outside before the sun came up.  There were other photographers out and some runners but other than that it was such a lovely city to have to oneself.  There was a guy who had a tripod and little flip video camera.  He would set up the tripd and then start his movie.  You then would see him running and twirling around.  I saw him do this in San Marco square and then again on the Rialto bridge.  Pretty entertaining. 

A little blurb about waking up early.  Not sure I mentioned this but we had to move hotels after the first night in Venice.  It was a pain but the first place overbooked, and we got the boot.  In the first hotel, there was no reception.  We got to go and come as we pleased.  In the second hotel, there was reception and you had to turn your key in every time you left.  The funny part was that I assumed that the desk was covered 24 hours a day.  Our room was literally a door in the breakfast room.  I opened the door this morning at 5:30 and up jumped the lady working at the front desk.  She was sleeping the in breakfast room, and I just scared her to death.  She screamed “we we” a couple of times and then realized what was going on.  She scared me just as much as I wasn’t expecting a women sleeping in her pj’s right outside the door.  She asked what time we were coming back since I think she was mad that she was just woken up. 

(Here is a slideshow of the some of the photos from the wee hours in the morning.  If you need to see larger photos, you can click on the slideshow.)

We landed in Venice and the plan was to take a boat into the city.  Seemed easy but we didn’t know how long it would take.  We had to wait in line for about 45 minutes just to buy the ticket for the boat in the airport.  (It would have been helpful if somebody would say there is a ticket office outside where the boats are.)   Of course Italians are not great at lines.  Lucky for us we had two nice British women in front of us who really knew how to keep people out.  They made sure we stayed behind them. 

(A map of Europe to help you find where Slovenia is located.)

Well I’m home now which means I left Australia on my long journey home to Portland.  By long, I mean a very long flight of sitting on a plane with the seatbelt sign on.  It was on pretty much 10 of the 14 hour flight. 

My last full day in Sydney consisted of walking over the bridge and riding around on the ferries.  It wasn’t the best weather to walk over the bridge but at least I wasn’t on top of the bridge doing the bridge walk for a huge amount of money.  I began to wonder how many photos I could take of the bridge or opera house.  Turns out I still have a lot of photos with both of those items.  There were a lot of sailboats out on Saturday and how could I not photograph the boats with the opera house?  Then on the day we left there was a triathlon in the harbor with the opera house in the background.  Needless to say, I can find a thousand ways to photograph the opera house and bridge.

I’m still amazed at how many bats Sydney has.  They are so loud even in the middle of the day.  I think it is funny that there is a cafe located right below all the bats.  I ate breakfast there the day we left and it was kind of stressful to listen to.  They don’t fly low so they really aren’t bad to be around but they do stress you out.  I guess they call them flying foxes in Australia. 

Australia is a special and beautiful country.  I’m already looking forward to going back someday.  I won’t lie…I already looked up flights back.  Just have to wait for my travel budget to grow again. 

Cheers

Syd Final