Venice

We have been to Venice!
We stayed in the industrial unpretty but non expensive part of Venice, near the train station - which meant it was really easy to catch the train in to pretty Venice and meant we could afford to stay two nights.
On Saturday we arrived in the afternoon and spent time wondering our way through the streets. Venice has lots of masks and I like masks! It is also a bit like South East Asia in terms of the number of people selling things. Particularly in the main streets there are people selling masks like the ones I bought online from China. We made an effort to only buy from shops which had people who were making things or who knew a lot about products. There are so many tourists that I felt like we werent in Italy at all and everyone spoke English. We went for pasta for dinner, and then began walking to the train station when the sky's opened. It was absolutely torrential with very impressive thunder and lightning. We took shelter in a fish market. And this is where one of the highlights happened! A Italian man came up and offered us wine. We decided to go drink with these people and accidently joined a fiesta. All these Italian people sung a whole bunch of songs and smiles and winked at us, all with minimal English. Other tourists came and went and took photos and left. We spent all evening there. At one stage a man turns to me and says spaghetti? I was like uh we had spaghetti for dinner yes and next minute they are inviting us to eat with them. Second spaghetti dinner :) We sung country roads with them at one stage too!
On Sunday we again spent most of the day wandering. Highlight was going into a church and seeing some really old instruments, made by famous Venition instrument makers. In the afternoon we took a gondola ride in the canal. Some Americans asked to join us to keep costs down, and let's just say the gondola man had to put in a wee bit more effort to keep us upright.. There was a rowing race on, and I think he had friends in It, so our gondola ride was a wee bit longer as we stayed in the big grand canal to watch it. In the evening we went to a concert, with the musicians in period costumes. Vivaldi's four seasons - was really good.
Today we have caught a train to La Spezia, to go walking tomorrow but we spent the morning investigating Venice's streets one more time. The part that makes Venice so special has to be the people. It is the most touristy thing in the world, and so I was expecting something like Queenstown where a lot of people haven't always lived there. But there were so many people we met, who were born raised and lived their whole lives in Venice, and had real genuine talent and kindness.