Lovely, lovely Venice

Ah Venice. That wonderful, melancholy, smelly, beautiful city. It's supposedly not sinking anymore, unless you were taking the Venetian guy on the bus to Beauvais seriously - he was telling the Scots that every morning he had to bail out his kitchen and that he could go fishing from his bedroom.

We arrived there pretty late (past 10pm) and took the good ol' vaporetto to our hotel. Since there were no restaurants open, Lydia and I had gelati for dinner before going home so that I could provide that sugar as a meal to the mosquitos in our room. Days were spent trying to avoid the tourist hoards - ohmigod there were so many tourists they blocked other bridges in their attempt to get a view of the Bridge of Sighs. My favourite (relatively) tourist-free spots were the Giardini where the Biennale was on (but I got a bit sunburnt walking all the way there) and Zattere dei Gesuati.

Giardini

Nasty looking cat down at the Giardini

View of the lagoon from near Giardini looking towards St. Giorgio, St. Marco and Redentore

The view down each end of Zattere from some bridge

Yes, I sure look happy here!

Admittedly Zattere is where the Hilton drops off their tourists, but there's a really good gelati shop down there where you can watch the lagoon and tourists dropping in and leaving.