Venice

We motored on to Venice and checked into our campsite just outside the city. It really is an amazing place!! Apart from the canals brimming with gondolas and delivery boats, it is a maze of thin streets, busy squares and amazing eateries. We lazilly worked our way to Piazza San Marco, to visit the Bascilla of San Marco, where (guess who) San Marco is buried. As I entered the Bascilla it took my breath away - the place is HUGE and every inch is decorated with mosaics, jewels, gold and amazing artifacts beautifully crafted and hundreds of years old. You really have to see it to belive it.

After that it was back out to Piazza San Marco. The Piazza (square) is gigantic, maybe the size of ten full size football pitches, is surrounded by beautiful old buildings and was packed with thousands of people from all over the world! In the afternoon we visited the Musei Civici Veneziani. The building used to be the place where the city was gouverened from and had everything from stately rooms, to dungeons, to grand meeting chambers. One of the meeting rooms was over 50m by about 30m, apparently one of the biggest rooms in Europe, and used to hold meetings which every man in Venice could attend!!! All of the rooms had gigantic paintings on the walls, one of them 22m by 7m (one of the biggest paintings in the world) but the most amazing thing was the artwork on the ceilings. The ceilings were probably more decorated than the walls in these grand halls and most have taken years and years to complete.

The next day we took a quick tour of the grand house of the Mocenigo family, one of the richest familys in Venice. There were lots more grand room and ridiculously old paintings/clothes/furniture which was all very nice. After, we managed to get a short taxi gondola ride accross the canal for only 50 cents. Even though it only lasted 5 minutes, it was nice to get the experience as to get a proper gondola ride costs about £50 an hour!! The rest of the day was spent (intentionly) getting lost in the city's winding streets and drinking coffe in the bars before heading back to the campsite.




A couple of gondolas



The view from the first bridge we crossed into the city



The thin maze of streets is hard to navigate



Another side canal



The main canal, think the M40 but in water



Piazza San Marco, the whole thing wouldnt fit into one picture!



The Bascilla of San Marco



Paintings on the outside of the bascilla



The museum



A beautifully crafted arch



More nice architecture



Ceilings inside the museum



They were made from gold, no expense spared!



There was also some pretty mean weaponry on display



One of the many HUGE paintings, this was about 15m x 6m



The ceiling of the great meeting room, yes that's the ceiling with all the gold and paintings on it!!!



The doorway out of the great meeting room







Not quite rich enough to rent one of these!



Another classic Venice picture




Possibly the coolest letterbox ever constructed!!