Venice

This four day break has been more traumatic than staying at home. We had the Ash cloud which mean’t we didn’t know whether we were flying until the actual day consequently we had no accomodation booked in Venice as we didn’t want to lose the money if the flights were cancelled. We flew from Bristol and arrived in Treviso Airport at 10.30pm with a backpack and no idea where we were, spotted some people buying tickets from a machine in the wall for a bus to Mestre which looked promising at its only 15mins from Venice island. An hour later we arrived in Mestre. Booked into the first 3star hotel we found at £75 a night which was a bit of a shock being used to my Thailand £3 a night rooms. Next day we caught a local bus to Venice. People told me Venice was dear but £115 a night (low season prices as well) for a 3star hotel I thought was a bit extreme, managed to find a 1star room which resembled a shed on a roof, 4 flights of stairs and no lift for £60 B&B a night, but it was great I would definitely recommend Hotel Rossi, no room to swing a cat but comfy bed and hot shower, 2 small rolls, tea and jam for beakfast, what more do u need. Exchange rate was dire 91pence to the Euro but somehow we fell lucky and found a place giving £1.05 to the Euro in St Marks Square. As there is no Traffic on venice there are no taxi’s either except the water bus so we walked miles probably more miles than necessary as most streets and canals look pretty much the same. Decided to give the Gondolas a miss at £80 for 40minutes of being steered around fairly smelly canals. Took a boat trip instead.  Took some pics of buildings that looked like you should take their pics but had no idea what they were. Spent the last night on a camp sight, not sure where but it took an hour on a local bus to get there, as we didnt know where to get off we enlisted the help of the other Italian passengers who all shouted at us at the appropriate time. The camp site was right next door to Marco Polo airport, which mean’t large aeroplanes taking off every five minutes but that’s ok I love watching aeroplanes take off. Had a lovely little Porta Cabin for £39. Caught a bus to Treviso on Friday went into the town and took some pics of some more nice looking buildings then got flight back to Bristol from Treviso Airport. Was not impressed that they do not have Duty Free as it a small airport only handling european flights. Ryan air decided to have a crack down on hand luggage, standing in the queue waiting to go through to departures was so funny watching people panic 0ver their hand luggage everyone had to fit it into those oblong shaped things they have and if it didn’t fit or weighed more than 10kilos you had to pay extra. People were trying to squash their bags down lots of people couln’t get them in, one man got the bag in but couldn’t get it out and people were pulling and tugging. Customs officials  look so serious and and important, its obviously in the job description that smiling and sense of humour is not required. For some reason I seemed to be intent on setting off the alarms First me that was fine, although in the event of wanting to hide something as long as its on the front or back of your body you’ll be fine as they only ever feel down your arms down your legs and your sides. Then my hand luggage set off the alarm so I had to stand in a queue to have my bag checked in front of me was a woman arguing with the customs official who was trying to confiscate what looked like a fruit slicer with a serrated edge made of metal and the size of a dinner plate. This argument was going on Italian and she kept looking for me as if for support and I was thinking ‘Are you serious that you really thought you would get that through customs in your hand luggage’ after about 10 minutes the custom woman won and the metal grater/slicer went in the bin. My bag was next perhaps the customs lady was feeling a littled jaded by then because she merely glanced in the top and then said thats fine thank you, I wasn’t gonna argue. Whilst queueing up at the gate customs officials who were obviously very bored that night decided to do some more sides of the body security checks and were pulling approx every 5th person out of the queue to search I remarked to Steve it was bound to be me The man in front of me remarked it would be him but they had his wife so Steve and I scuttled off to the plane sharpish

Posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 12:34 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.