So we got to Venice after driving through Austria - it took aaaaall day. We did stop in St Johann in Austria for a bit of a look around, and found an awesome postcard with a picture of some goats and eggs. Yeah.

We stayed in a camp ground, and we thought we had booked completely different accommodation to where the Busabout bus was dropping us off, but turned out to be the same place, so that was awesome. And because the people there were stupid, we ended up getting upgraded to a twin cabin with an ensuite for the same price as a shared tent. Yeehaw!

On our first day we went into Venice and looked around, bought things we couldn't afford... and had our first real Italian meal (which we also couldn't afford). Ohhhh yum! I had gnocchi and Jess had lasagne followed by real tiramisu and a huge pile of profiteroles and mousse (I feel compelled to tell you that - this meal was a major highlight). So, so good. Besides the awesomeness of the food, we also had an awesome Italian waiter. He seated us right next to an American couple, and was quite happy to take his time bringing the menus, taking orders, etc. Anyway, the American guy next to us asked for his bill, which the waiter appeared to be going to get. But then he decided to take a stroll across the road and have a bit of a chat to some of the street vendors, maybe catch up with some of his gondola buddies, just take it easy. The American guy got really angry and went and yelled at him, so he ran off inside to... go and shuffle some of the tables around. He was very amusing. We also had a band come and play to us while we were eating - very romantic. Haha. And amused ourselves watching the gondola drivers trying to get customers at the end of the day - a half hearted "gondola gondola?" to every third or fourth person that walked past, whilst texting on their phones. Obviously they'd made enough for the day - not bad earning like 80 euro an hour.

A couple of the days we just bummed around the camp ground, did some washing - washing is really exciting now because we don't get to do it very often.

On our last day we went back into Venice and caught the ferries over to the islands - Murano (glass making) and Burano (lace making). Murano was a little disappointing because we thought we'd find lots and lots of cheap jewellry and things, but everything was cheaper back in Venice. Burano was awesome though. It was really really cute, all of the houses were lined up along the canal and painted different colours (see the photo for this blog), and we bought some nice lace things.

The ferry back to Venice took forever and it started storming just before we got off the boat, and didn't stop for a while. We managed to make it some of the way without getting wet, but then had to get to the bus station by a certain time and had to run (well... walk really fast) through all the little cobbled streets of Venice getting completely drenched, and shoeless in my case since I nearly slipped and fell numerous times in my thongs. We got really dirty looks from a lot of Venitians - obviously it's very uncivilised to run around barefoot and dripping wet in Venice. Well not in Australia, and that's how we roll! We ended up missing our bus anyway, because it's not hard to get lost in Venice, and you regularly see signs that point you in two different directions for the same place. So we still had to wait for an hour in the - not so heavy now - rain. We still had street vendors coming up asking us if we wanted to buy umbrellas though.

So the next morning we were back on the bus and on the way to Rome where we left for Sorrento...