Ve'Nice Try, Officer

Very nice. Verynice. Veynice. Ve'nice.

You've heard of Venice. It's that place with the canals, gondolas, and 1,000 tourists per pigeon. The streets are made of water, the back alleys are crafted from romance, and the people are made out of super mario, mozzarella and, well, money. Or at least that's what I assume when they're charging 8,50€ per ice cream (low-key worth it).

The whole city might be sinking, but it's kept afloat by teary-eyed marriage proposals and a big shiny UNESCO sticker (so I wouldn't worry.)

Arriving into Marco Polo airport at 2:30 am, we were keen to rest our senses, especially given that we'd already pledged ourselves to sleeplessness the following night. And so, after the sleep equivalent of being walloped over the head with a teapot, we set out to explore the peeling pastel walls of the crumbling palazzos.

The splish of the ferry saw us glide over the glistening lagoon to Guglie station. From there, we took a googly-eyed gander past garish memorabilia, where we gawped at the Murano glass and glittery Venetian masks, keeping conscious to steer clear of any Polizia in case they might ask how we 'forgot' to pay the city access fee. Still, we perused: past the Rialto bridge, from piazza to piazza, behind the Bridge of Sighs and into a maze of backstreets.

Thomas, war-weary and suffering under the heat, asked if we might take a minute to sit by the Basilica. Our clammy buttocks had barely grazed the ground when a city warden had smelt our weakness from three canals over. 'You'ra not-a-llowed to sitta,' she demanded. We rolled our eyes at first, pretending not to understand. 'So what?' we thought, it's just sitting. But little did we know that we'd just picked a fight with the most persistent woman north of the Med. 'You'ra not-a-llowed to sitta,' she seethed again, gesturing more violently with each subsequent repetition. Whether out of sense or impending arrest, we took back to our feet before she could reach for the pepper spray and fled back to the airport. Justice damn well served, two tired fugitives foiled by the sit-down police, someone give that woman a medal.

Yes, you really just read a paragraph about me getting up from sitting down btw, not sure if you noticed. A literary pinnacle, I know. Anyway, yadda yadda, guzzled my first ever Aperol spritz, and soon we were back at the airport, lathered in sweat and having eatza'd some pizza. I was even rewarded handsomely for stuffing all my pants into a water bottle to meet the baggage allowance (don't ask) as the plane served actual food! The apple juice was glowing like Chernobyl, but we drank it anyway (it was Ve'nice.)Read more