Day 32 Venice:

I have made up my mind; I will never, ever, ever come back to Venice, ever! This place has been an extreme disappointment. The day started off quite well, we woke up and went out for a wander and a coffee. There are some things we cannot complain about regarding our stay in Venice, the weather has been fantastic, the food has been wonderful and the coffee is the best I’ve had. So we get to the coffee shop and buy a couple of coffees and some lovely Italian cakes and we do the whole stand up thing (because it’s cheaper than sitting down, we’ve sort of mastered that now) and enjoy the passing parade of people and the amazing coffee. The other thing we cannot complain about is the honesty and the friendliness of the tourists. Although there have been a lot of them the ones we have met have been great. After we left the coffee shop we kept walking and it appeared to us that the amount of people in the streets had halved. It automatically made the place a lot more likeable. We think that because we arrived on Friday night and are now leaving on a Monday that maybe we hit the weekend tourist crowd. Not sure, but it was a lot more pleasant. Anyway, we are wandering around enjoying ourselves when I realise I don’t have Kris’s camera on me which I definitely did have before. I check with everyone else and yep, I’ve left it at the coffee shop. We make the mad dash back through the maze of streets to try and find the coffee shop we went to. We finally find it and some honest tourist had handed it over to the coffee shop staff, phew, what a relief. The morning walk and getting our camera back has helped us form a better impression of Venice and we are starting to feel better about the place. It’s nudging 10:30 so we have to head back to the apartment to grab our stuff before catching the waterbus back to the train station. On the way we grab some waterbus tickets because they don’t have a ticket machine on our stop. We get slugged 26 Euro ($36) for the 2km boat ride which is obscene but hey, that’s Venice! We get to the apartment and grab our bags and head down to our bus stop. When we get there an Italian couple from Florida informs us that the waterbus service is on strike today and there will be no waterbus. You think they may have put a sign on the very busy ticket machine at the waterbus stop we bought our ticket from wouldn’t you, but hey....that’s Venice! We agree with this couple (who had also bought tickets and are equally infuriated) that we can share a water taxi at 80 Euro ($110) so we head back to the couples hotel where they order one.  While we are waiting another couple ask for a water taxi so it’s agreed with the hotel staff that they can share with us. That’s great the 80 Euro cost of the water taxi can now be split three ways so the price is coming down. We all get on board and this thing takes about 10 minutes to reach the train station and the thieving, stinking, water taxi guy demands 170 Euro ($240). 170 EURO FOR A 10 MINUTE BOAT RIDE.....you filthy, stinky, dirty thief!!!! It is costing Kris and I and the kids a total of $118 Euro for the 2 hour train ride to Florence and he wants 170 Euro!!!! But hey..........that’s Venice and unfortunately, that will be our memory.