Venice is an interesting, and completely different, city.
Venice’s highlights include….water everywhere, narrow walking streets where you get lost easily, loads of tourist shops selling anything and everything touristy – including Morano glass (and inferior Chinese made glass), not a single car, and the mandatory gondolas.
There are gondolas everywhere! Didn’t see (or hear) any singing Gondoliers though. They travel through the narrow waterways as well as the main, wider waterways along with the water taxis and water ferries that took us to our hotel on the island called The Lido. 
We initially went to our hotel on The Lido, which took about an hour to get to, was rather warm too. After freshening up and checking in to the Hotel, we ventured across to Venice to have a good walk around. There is a famous square in Venice called St Marks, which features a massive bell tower, the brilliant square surrounded by restaurants and bands (at night) and the Moorish styled church. When we first clapped eyes on the St Marks Square we were amazed by the amount of people there….absolutely jam-packed. Sod that we thought, so we walked around the outskirts of the square and headed on to the famous marble Rialto Bridge that crosses the main waterway, the Grand Canal. (see above)
Venice is an easy place to walk as it is very flat and despite the amount of people, it was good fun to walk around, browsing the shops occasionally, but just getting a feel for the place and looking at the gondolas cruising up the extremely narrow waterways. We also heard a few westie Aussie accents around the place so we avoided these people, although they did give us a good laugh.
As we had bought a 48 hour water boat pass, we went across to a surrounding island called Murano, where they produce brilliantly coloured and designed glass. This was interesting, although, if we were rich, we could have spent up big. Not to worry.
One of the major highlights was spending some time in St Marks Square. (above)
We did wait however, till it was getting towards dusk and we simply sat in the squre, watched the people feed the disgusting pigeons as they flocked and landed all over them (why would you want to do that?).
The day trippers had gone back to wherever they are staying, off the island, and it was largely deserted, especially compared to earlier in the day. The square actually changes colour quite dramatically through dusk and it was very impressive when all the lights switched on and the ambience was great as the big bands played various songs throughout the evening.
Most enjoyable indeed.
As mentioned, Venice is certainly an interesting place, perhaps a frag overrated but definitely glad we visited there and we’d consider going back at some stage, perhaps for a day trip only.
