Yesterday morning we left Rome and headed here, to Venice. We're in fact not staying in Venice itself, but rather across the Grand Canal in the Fusina area. On the way here yesterday, we stopped off in Verona to visit Juliet's house, from Romeo and Juliet. Its not just some random story made up by Shakespeare, its based on a true story and we got to see her house and the famous balcony. Other than that, not much more exciting to write about.

Today is day 11 - just over half way already. Its crazy how time flies. This morning, some of us caught a ferry across to the city of Venice - the others were still recovering from last night's party :) We first went to a glass blowing demonstration and then were meant to goto a lace demonstration - which most of us decided to miss rather.

We headed over to St. Marks square - the piazza famous for its ridiculous amounts of pigeons. We must have spent ages there (and a lot of money on bird feed) playing with these stupid little pigeons. You just have to hold you hands out with some bird feed on them and within no time you have pigeons all over you. Its wicked. Most of the others from the group couldnt bear the idea of pigeons on them and didnt even bother - Alan, Shanan and myself went crazy!

Venice is one confusing city. The streets run everywhere, canals go here and there, roads just stop when you reach a canal, its impossible not to get lost. Which is what we did. We had a map so werent too worried but we set out from St Marks square with the idea of getting lost. We random walked up and down various streets, left here, right there, etc.

What we did however find was a supermarket, and a supermarket that sold cheap booze :) Yip, the price of a bottle of Vodka was the same as a beer back at the hostel. So... we bought some alcohol, and by some I mean 6 bottles of Vodka, some coke and some crisps. Oh yeah - tonights gonna be great. The idea is what we dont drink we'll save for another time.

Anyway, back to the sightseeing. After buying our booze, it was time for our gondola ride. We met up with the rest of the group and heading over to where the gondolas leave from. We had a really nice gondola ride through the canals of Venice, not only the main (grand) canal, but also the smaller ones within the city. There were parking bays for the gondolas, traffic lights within the canals, speed limits to travel at - its quite something to see!

I really enjoyed Venice, it was such a different city, difficult to imagine it. Looking down the canals, there are doors opening up to the canal on the sides, only about 30cm above the water level. The idea is they catch a water taxi which drops them outside their door and they jump into their place. Its awesome. Tomorrow we're off to Austria - nice!