Backpacking

We arrived in Venice at 7.30am after a another long train ride, stored our luggage and eagerly stepped out of the station to get our first glimpse of Italy. The city was just starting to wake up as we saw shop keepers opening their stores and unloading their daily produce from trolley boys who were running deliveries around. In true Italian style Jez and I found a local cafe and had our first coffees ordered in Italian. After the waitress corrected our grammar we had perfected a phrase we would use for the following twenty four days," Vorrei due cappuccini."

We then hurried along to the Doge's Palace in San Marco's piazza as we had be warned by Rick Steves (an american guide book Jeremy had "found abandoned") that the lines to most tourist attractions would double by midday, if we weren't organised we'd see nothing.

We arrived in San Marco's plaza and noticed something unexpected, it was almost empty! We hurriedly got a couple of photos and then made our way to the Doge's palace. As we arrived we witnessed the arrival of the first wave of tourists appearing over the little bridge to the north of the gondola docks and they seemed to just keep coming, (all with numbered stickers on their chests, a favourite form of crowd management by the cruise ship operators). As we queued, this mob joined the line next to us, the special group entry line. This line extended around the corner of the palace and as they were waved through we wondered whether we would ever get in

We weren't the only one an elderly american couple were verbalising the same thoughts and their disgust at being refused a senior citizens discount because they weren't citizens of the EU.
An interesting quirk of the new "United Europe" is that EU citizens get free entry to museums and gallery's while the rest of us support this great policy by paying full price.

Finally,we (and the american couple) made it in and spent the rest of the morning viewing art and learning about life and politics in Renaissance Venice before heading to the Basilica San Marco.

Inside the Palace we saw the numerous rooms that held the various levels of government and legal proceedings that kept Venice running. It was interesting, particularly the huge hall that housed meetings of the largest group of local politicians (the lowest level, which consisted of the big wig families of Venice. Of course the whole place was lacking any furniture and the paintings on the wall all seem to have been added after the Doge's had left (as we found this is common in Italian sights), at least the architecture was the same. The Basilica was more impressive though packed to the gills with fellow tourists. Perhaps this explains the floor, which resembled a wave pool rather than church floor. Years of floods and sinking earth had left its mark.

By midday we were stuffed (mainly from lack of sleep) so we headed to the local pizzeria for oversize pizza slices to refuel. Our train left at 5.30pm to Florence so we still had a full afternoon of sightseeing ahead of us. We wandered the canals and streets, visited a couple of churches with famous art works (and the tombs of famous artists).

We also dropped in on the city museum as it was included in the entry fee for the palace, and we could see why they did this. We had our photo taken at the Piazza and watched in amazement as people fed and handled the local pigeon population, had they not been warned about the germs carried by flying rats??? By now we had made it across the city about 4 times! Before we knew it it was 5.30pm and we had boarded our train for Florence and farewelled the Venetian winged Lion (what a formidable creature), tired but happy that we had made the effort to spend sometime in Venice. It being Italy our train was late and we arrived in Florence at around 10:30pm.

Empty Venice

Here they come...

Not sure if the bird knows whats coming...

We left Krakow in a hurry as we had an 8.00am train to catch and half way to the station I realized I had left my ultraceticals cleanser at the hostel. I started cursing Prague – I had bought a brand new bottle for the trip and had convinced myself that it would last till Christmas when my mum could bring over further supplies. (Jeremy has failed to understand the gravity of this event).

Having been forced to buy a substandard cleanser called Bebe (its only saving grace is that it's manufactured by Johnson and Johnson) I jumped onto the train and started the journey from hell!

For those who haven't travelled on trains in Europe, let me explain the set up so you can truly feel our pain – you're put in a compartment with six seats and you're literally sitting on each other with little leg room and limited space for luggage. There is also a door to the compartment which Europeans seem to like closed so you literally feel like you're squeezed in like a can of sardines when the compartment is full.

We boarded the train and went in search of our seats and came upon a darkened compartment bearing our seat numbers and leeching the stench of stale alcohol and cigarettes. We found inside our compartment two drunken Poles who we hoped were at the end of a long night and would sleep through the rest of the journey. Unfortunately after we left the station and tried desperately to open a jammed window to release some excess alcohol vapour, for fear that a mobile call may spark an explosion, one of our companions un expectantly leant over and reached between Jez's legs to reclaim a can of beer, that was hidden under Jez' seat. His mate then cracked his own stubby and so the 7 hour binge began. These two drank non-stop for seven hours and by the end of the journey could barely stand upright - in fact one of them nearly fell on top of me as he was trying to grab his bag and instead hit his head on the window rest! They spoke only Polish and so luckily left us alone but they happily pestered the other passengers in our compartments with rambling stories that involved their mobile phones and its various ring tones or involved stroking people's faces. When they finally departed, the compartment took a communal sigh of relief (and enjoyed a fresh breathe of air).

Thankfully, things looked up once we exited the train station and we eventually found our hostel - Let's Go (get another guide book) gave us the wrong directions to our hostel sending us to the wrong side of the river! However, once we found our hostel I fell in love with the place, it was run by a pair of motherly czech ladies who made the most delicious dinners - czech goulash with potato dumplings yum!

Unfortunately, we weren't too keen on Prague itself, it has become too much of a tourist hot spot which made it really difficult to get around to see sights as you always ended up getting stuck in lines behind bus tours We think it's a small taste of the mayhem to come in Italy. That said Prague is a very beautiful city and we could see how it was a favourite of so many people. The old town with its cobbled streets and skyline of church steeples and palaces really made your realise you where in Europe. Once you get past the fact that it has been discovered by the mainstream and may have lost a little of its original cache it's a great city...

Emily and I also took a short trip out to a town called Kutna Hora. This town had a phillip morris cigarette factory (which was actually joined onto a massive church!?) but we were not there for smokes this town had a chapel decorated with bones (unrelated to phillip morris, but the result something with similar death counts). These bones were from the local victims of the plague. There were so many casualties and no room in the local cemetery that a "creative" monk decided the best thing to do with them would be to turn them into decorations. Personally I would have just built a new cemetery (in fact there was plenty of room over the back wall of the church. It wasn't so much fascinating as gruesome to see thousands of sculls stacked into pyramids and chandeliers made out of every bone in the body. It's hard to imagine what type of Christian mass would be held there. None the less it was interesting!

This poor bloke was just hanging there and no one would help him