Salute! It is currently 1pm and we are on the bus travelling to Milan. Yesterday was a massive day.

The day started with a decent wake up at 8am with us catching the boat into Venice. The thing about Venice is that it is being destroyed by mass tourism. It is a big port for cruise ships which is killing it. The cruise ships show up and buy shitty merch and buy a $2 sandwich, flood the streets, litter and just get in the way. I know that it is ironic that I’m bagging out mass tourism here while adding to the problem but it is quite sad to see. They only add slightly to the economy whilst destroying the beauty of it.

In the morning we had a ME Time optional which was a gondola ride around the canals of Venice. There were 6 people per gondola which wasn’t crowded, but also wasn’t intimate. It was over not long after it started. It was a beautiful, quiet and peaceful ride through the canals which was quite lovely.

After this we all went to a glass blowing demonstration which sounds a bit lame but was actually super awesome. The guy whipped up a sick jug and then a unicorn so quickly. I love how hot and malleable the glass was, really cool to see. They then tried to sell us super expensive glass shit. €250 for two wine glasses? Oh fuck no.

There was an Optional dinner tonight that included a cruise to Burano. We opted out of this one. We are in a bit of a pattern of spending one night with the group and then the next night on our own which strikes a really good balance. The problem was that we now had 9 hours to spend in Venice without being to go back to the hotel.

We ended up just walking in a random direction and getting absolutely lost. Walking up the narrow streets, crossing bridges and exploring the canals is really beautiful. We ended up walking about 9 kms before we got hungry and needed to find a restaurant. We trekked about 5 kms to a little seafood restaurant on one of the canals. We ordered battered calamari, seafood pasta and some antipasti eggplant and zucchini with a couple of spritz’s. It was all pretty average honestly. Definitely one of the worst meals we have had here. Jimmy told us that Venice was difficult to get good food due to all the restaurants being set up to cater for mass tourism.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around looking at stunning sites like St Marc’s square, the Doge’s palace, the Rialto bridge and the bridge of sighs (cool story about that bridge, look it up!), getting drinks at random bars and eating gelato. The gelato was a bit fucked cause Aimee ordered a massive gelato and couldn’t eat it and was getting it fuckin everywhere. It ended up all over my shirt when I tried to help so I ended up having to ditch my shirt in a bin and buying another one which is okay because it’s a cool Toy Story shirt from the Disney store (the only men’s shirt from the nearest store).

We then had dinner at a little restaurant that we found tucked away in a narrow street. We both had lasagne primo and bruschetta for antipasti. The lasagne was pretty tasty, so was the bruschetta. We got a bottle of red as well which was also nice. We were pretty full after this and went to our pick up and ended up back in the hotel. On our way back to our boat pick up at St Marc’s square there was a protest taking place where the locals are protesting the cruise ships. There was also about 100 cops in riot gear. It looked like it was about to go down, so we got the fuck out of there.

It was a really good, but really long and exhausting day. It was really hot and we walked a lot so we crashed as soon as we got back to the hotel which was nice.

Itemised spending:

• Gondola ride – €46
• Seafood lunch – €55
• Drinks (coke) – €6.60
• Gelato – €6.60
• Shirt – €22
• Spritz – €10
• Dinner – €65
• Magnet – €2
• ATM Fee – €3

Total: €216.20

About right on budget. Not bad.

Heading to Milan tomorrow via Sirmione and Lake Garda.

Ronnie and Aimee