Venezia

Up early for a big day in Venice. We were on the bus by 8am, and began our 2 hour drive to services. This was just a quick toilet stop, then we had another hour until we arrived at our boat onto the island of Venice!
The boat ride was a little rocky and windy, but we arrived at around 1pm.
Tamara showed us where our meeting point would be for the day, and we had about 2 and a half hours until our gondala rides.
I went off with Jorge, Jono, Nicole, Cam, Charli and Terryanne in search of our first authentic Italian meal. We found a lane a couple streets back from the main square and found a table.
We all ordered our pizza and pasta, and received a free belini each (a peach wine mix). My pizza was delicious, as expected, however it's not all that different to what you can get at somewhere like D.O.C. back home, so I'll just have to keep trying it throughout Italy to see if there's better anywhere (I plan to eat ALL of the carbs in our 5 days in Italy!)
We wandered around for a while, found some gelato, and then headed back towards the main square for our gondala rides.
Tamara walked us to the canel where our gondalas were, and we made our groups of 6. I was with Jacinda, Terryanne, Alex, Alli and Colin. Our Gondala driver could have easily been mistaken for a young Peter Andre. It was a really peaceful journey, and how cool to say I've been on a real gondala ride in Venice!
From there I went for a walk with Ebony and Brooke, for a bit of a window shop. We had about 45 minutes until we had to go back to our meeting spot, for our Tastes of Venice tour.
We walked to meet our guides, and split into two groups. Our guide's name was Roberto (because of course it was), and he took us for a walk through Venice, and told us a little about the history. We went to three different restaurants, had red or white wines at each, prosecco at the final place, and also got some small nibblies at each place (beef and tuna croquettes, calamari and octopus, etc). It was cool to see more of Venice than we would have if venturing out on our own.
During the tour, Ebony and I had seen one of those places where you get a fish pedicure, so we went in search of that.
Managed to find it, and it was €10 for 10 minutes. We decided to do 20 minutes each, which seemed fine until we put our feet in and were worried that would be too long! It tickled heaps at first, but then it just became relaxing - plus they had free wifi, winning! The looks we were getting from passersby was hilarious, some looked disgusted, some intrigued, others amused!
The 20 minutes passed super quick, and we had about an hour to find our way back to the meeting point, so we went in search of a takeaway pasta joint Tamara had suggested. Venice is like a maze, so after finding a few dead ends, we eventually found it and ordered.
Delicious, as expected, and we ate on the walk back to the meeting point.
So it seems Venice often floods, and as we got back to St. Mark's Basilica, nearly the entire square was flooded. The 'going on a bear hunt' song went through my head... Can't go over/under it, have to go through it! Pretty gross in my flats, but it seemed too difficult to find another way around, the water was about ankle deep.
Our meeting time was 9pm, and for once everyone was actually on time! A bit of a miracle for our group! However, the boat was not... We had to wait around 40 minutes for the boat to arrive to take us back to the main land, and I think Jo was a bit mad as he assumed it was our fault. We zoomed to our hostel (there's a lot of laws in Europe about how late drivers of coaches can be out, and the rest that they need) and checked into our rooms by about 11pm.
I was sharing with Ebony and Charli. Eb and I got ready for bed, and Charli headed out with some others - that little party animal!
We called our mothers (what good little girls haha) and went to sleep about 11.45.Read more