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| "The coffee standing up experience" |
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| "Hello signore, would you like your pizza by the slice?" "I don't think so signora" |
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| "She better not be eating my pizza" |
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| "The family shot" |
The Scroop family are hitting the holiday road, again, for another six week Griswold style European vacation. Starting in London we will train our way to Scotland, back down to Paris in France, on to Brugge in Belgium, Wurzburg in Germany, Salzburg in Austria, Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland and then to the Cinque Terre and Rome in Italy. Along the way we will hit the Scottish Highlands, scale the Eiger, walk the Cinque Terre trails and eat and drink our way to an empty bank account, again!
Monday 3 October 2011
Day 31 Venice:
I don’t know what it is that gets everyone is so excited about Venice because it has certainly been lost on me. There must be something good about this place though given the 28 million tourists walking around these streets. Another day here has not improved my impressions of this place. It is seriously over crowded, the place smells, the locals are rude and I have just about had it with the herds of sheep clogging up the streets every 30 seconds as they follow behind their tour group leader who’s holding up their little “follow me” marker! The rudeness is something that has taken us by surprise though. I saw Kristine get angry with an ice-cream shop lady today because of her rudeness; I haven’t seen her get this worked up at all on the holiday so far. Kristine paid the money for the ice creams and when the lady handed back the change Kristine said to her “you are rude, you’re a very rude person”, it was hilarious. Some of the main attraction areas like Piazza San Marco are just a nightmare due to the huge volumes of people and this has been extremely disappointing for us. We’ve had to put up with crowds everywhere we have been so far but here it seems different and maybe that’s because the place is so small and everyone is confined to small alley ways. Unfortunately I also think my Venice experience has been tainted a bit by the disappointing accommodation. The apartment is very clean and it is in a great location but it’s obvious to us that the people who own the apartment and the people managing the apartment do not care at all about our holiday experience and only about lining their pockets. We’ve contacted the lady who we met when we arrived in Venice first thing yesterday morning about some minor issues that needed attending to and we are still waiting for a response. We got slugged 50 Euro ($70) up front for a final clean. We will effectively be in this place for 2 ½ days and they slug us 50 EURO to clean the joint!!! Normally Kris and I and the kids would do a pretty thorough clean before we leave an apartment but we will not be doing that here. I’m telling you now the skid marks on the toilet bowl are staying put when I walk out this door tomorrow! I’m convinced though that Venice is not the real Italy and that this place has become some sort of contrived Italy based purely on tourism, well that’s my hope at least. We get to find out tomorrow as we leave here and head to Florence.
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