Day Twenty-Three
Venice
30 August 2007 - 21:03

I had a reasonable night’s sleep on the train again — I highly recommend it unless you are scrimping and saving and can sleep in loud environments. Breakfast on this train was a tad better than the previous overnight train’s meat spread, though it was just yoghurt and juice for me.

As we had booked our tickets in Prague the tickets actually terminated the station before you cross over to Venice itself but the stewardess was kind enough to let us stay on until Venice.

The directions I had written to get us to the office to get our apartment’s keys were good, though we had to wait 20 minutes for the owner to show up (9:20am). Since our apartment was in another place, we still had to get there. They say that getting lost is all part of the experience in Venice, and it’s easy to see why you get lost. Numerous dead ends only a long jumper could cross, street names that change, street names that are all the same except for one small prefix and maps that are pathetically inaccurate. On every street people have large maps open. It’s fun wandering unless you want to go somewhere specific. The it’s maddening.

Still, we managed to find San Marco, even though it had closed before our arrival. In the large square there are literally thousands of pigeons being fed by people. They climb all over people, on their heads, arms, hands. We don’t get why people like it, pigeons are like flying rats!

Lunch was a single slice of pizza larger than our heads (seriously); Justine had margherita and I had salami and mushroom. Both were followed with gelati.

Dinner was bought from a supermarket — fresh gnocchi from a deli with a jar of sauce, which was much better than at home.

The best thing about Venice though, is the lack of cars. It’s so quiet here, even with all the tourists and boat motors rumbling.

Earlier in the morning, as we’d left our apartment, a massive thunderstorm quickly started. Lightning was so loud and so close, and sounded so crackly that we both jumped. The rain came down hard and even though we both had umbrellas our feet were both drenched.

It’s warm (and humid) here though, and I was wearing shorts. When the rain stopped, he waterways were so flooded shops closed, streets were flooding, people were in chairs outside restaurants holding their feet up out of the water. The rain was on and off for the rest of the day.

We approached a few guys about getting gondola rides. The most expensive wanted 200€, which is close the the cost of three nights accommodation in Rome!

There are heaps of mostly black people and Indian people selling knockoff bags, belts, sunglasses and more. Gucci, Armani, Fendi; you name it. In some areas there are so many it is actually difficult to walk.

So I’ve decided that my car really, really needs a “major” service (Falcons may be invincible, but they do need some lovin’ every now and then); it feels like crap to drive and is just generally “feh”.

Yesterday, I’d booked the car into my nearest Ultratune (not because they are good — I have no idea whether or not they are — but because they are close) for today and had been quoted $260-280 for the service. A lot of money sure, and it did seem a bit expensive, but it has been over 50000kms since it had an “official” type service (yes, really, 50000 was not a typo) so I thought I’d treat the car do a luxurious day out — or at least having dirty men groping at it.

This morning, on the floor of our kitchen in the “to be chucked in the recycling bin” pile, I noticed a flyer from an almost as close Ultratune which was offering major services for $189. Let’s see now, $280, or $190, both at Ultratune? Tough call that.

Now all I have to do is decide how to spend the $70-90 I just “made”. For those having trouble placing where the title of this post comes from, it’s because I didn’t quote enough of the quote… It’s here though.