Day 9 Venice

A late start today which was good, managed to do some chores before we set off for the island of Venice..Venice consists of two seperate entities the mainland and the islands...the buildings on the islands of Venice sit on foundations of wood which have become petrified....today we arrived in St Marks Square to be there when they had a high tide of .9 of a metre yesterday it was 1.10m, so some were sloshing through it others trying to avoid it, the smell well you can only imagine! We met up with our local guide and did the usual walk around finishing with a tour through Dogi's Palace, what a place, huge with all the usual paintings etc, it was mainly used as a prison with special interregation room, court room, the cells well they must have been so damp, dark, cold, dismal places, quite dreadful really....following this we then went to the glass blowing demo, more like a sales pitch than anything else, before we broke up for lunch and free time...some opted for a gondola ride,and we opted to try out the local bar, after a couple of spritz's and a drink made of peaches and liqueur, we meandered our way back to get the water taxi, then bussed back to the hotel for a much needed coffee...oh to use the toilets the price has jumped from €0.50 to €1.70....so don't drink!!!!!!! It's cheaper to drink beer than to have coca cola, and a bottle of water can cost anything from €1 to €3 or €4 and sometimes more ..we have just had a good storm the lightening quite fantastic..