Thursday
Why do holidays always start so early in the morning? Despite carefully picking a flight at a sensible time (11.30) we still had to leave at 6.30 for stupid Stanstead. The coach (my first national express experience!) was definitely a better plan than driving though, even if we do have to get up an hour earlier. The biggest downside was having to listen to the Heart Breakfast show including a track by Puff Daddy. The less said about Ryan- air's ridiculous check-in system the better. Ditto for the hour and a quarter sitting around the tiny Stanstead terminal.

Budget flights reach a new level - no boarding gate thingy, just up the stairs to a tiny tiny plane (Boeing 737- 800 for anyone who cares) which is kitted out in luminous yellow plastic and banner ads. The adverts over the PA system are particularly obnoxious.

Treviso airport turns out to be even smaller than Stanstead, actually it's somewhat smaller then Ealing Broadway tube station. Attempt 1, fail 1 at collecting the Venice Card. The coach to Venice was actually very cool as we went through the Italian countryside and it actually looked like Italy *should* look - statues and vines and villas and lots of Fiat Puntos.

You come across to Venice on the causeway and realise just how daft the city is! The water is extremely shallow and the island is very flat giving the impression that if someone dropped something heavy on one side of the lagoon the resulting wave would wash the whole place away. Incidentally the tourist board seem to have decided the island looks like a fish and therefore makes a funky logo, personally I feel it looks more like a kangaroo on its side, but realise that this would have made slightly less sense for the marketing campaign.

We arrived at the Piazalla Roma - the only motorised section of the city - like Victoria Coach station surrounded by canals. There followed a ridiculous traipse between various tourist offices where we tried to collect the Venice Cards eventually succeeding on attempt number 4. Although we failed to get leaflets so don't actually know what they do...

We hopped on a slow Vaporett o (Venice's boatbus system) down the Grand Canal and got to see Venice proper.

It's weird.

It is exactly what all the guides say it is with gondolas and boats and bridges and narrow side canals - but for the most part is works and feels natural very quickly. Unfortunately it's also completely full of tourists - absolutely crammed full. The city seems to have no reason for existence beyond feeding and extorting money from tourists.

We landed in St Mark's Square where we saw these forces in action as vendors sold tourists food to the pigeons would flock to, and eventually, land on them. WHY?! Pay money to be crapped on?! WHY!?!

We decided to just wander and ambled through the weird narrow streets and bridges, not really doing more than occasionally peering in shop windows. After a quick snack we hopped on another vaperetto to Lido where we found our hotel right next to the boat stop. The receptionist was friendly, the bathroom large and clean and the less said about everything else the better.

Back to Venice and we landed at San Elena and wondered around the whole end of the island. It was quite desolate and run down - but also quite beautiful and very Italian feeling with narrow streets, tall buildings and washing hanging from the windows. We wondered for a few hours and then settled in a gelato place which was over-priced but perfectly happy to let us collapse in the corner for over an hour.

We were going to head back to the hotel, but Venice appeared to have woken up after a brief shutdown for dinner. So we wondered around the shops until 9ish when following some flapping we finally found a boat home to collapse.

Friday
Not the best night's sleep I've ever had, although the bed wasn't as uncomfortable as I'd feared it would be when slats had to be re-inserted after I sat on it the first time. I woke up bright and early (7ish) and after nearly two hours I concluded that I'd had enough sitting on an uncomfortable bed listening to my ipod so wandered off to explore the Lido while the other two continued to sleep. I took a half hour tour of the local area hitting the important sights - bakery, delicatessen and greengrocer. M&M were placated with pastries when I woke them up at the horrible hour of 9.30 and we escaped into the beautiful beautiful Italian sunshine.

Pausing momentarily as a tree was cut down and deposited on the road, inflicting damage on an innocent lamp-post on the way, we drifted to the Vaperetto stop. After some agonising over timetables we hopped a large Lagune boat which took a sedate cruise over to Punta Sabbioni on Treporti. We even glimpsed the Mediterranean proper through the islands. It was blue.

There was a brief pause between boats, so we obtained caffeinated beverages, avoided the horribly tacky souvenirs and joined a whole bunch of tourists on a boat to Burano. There was a moment of true happiness standing in the sunshine with a nice breeze, cruising across the Mediterranean lagoon to an Italian Island covered with vibrantly coloured houses.

We landed and legged it - briefly outpacing the rest of the tourists off the boat. Burano isn't really much more than a lot of pretty houses and tourist shops - like a multicoloured Cornish fishing village taken over by the tourists who wanted to experience what is no longer actually there.

After a brief wonder we got yet another boat across to Torcello - formally an island of 20,000 people and now deserted except for a narrow strip from the boat stop to the basilica lined with a few restaurants and some cats. We stopped for our first proper meal which included the strange but wonderful combination of parma ham and melon. We continued on to the cathedral where we stared gormlessly as the nice lady on the audio guide told us all about bits of stuff she could be bothered with. It was very very gold and fairly mosaicy and (to be honest) not very tasteful. Impressive - yes, but tasteful - ugh no. I did find an ammonite embedded in one of the marble floor panels though which was pretty cool.

After a bit of negotiation we made it to the Camponile - it was a long climb up, but slopes instead of steps made it easier, as did the constant need to stop in corners to let people past on their way down. It was almost as if they didn't consider a steady stream of tourists when they designed the building. The views were impressive, although unimpressive if that makes sense. Venice being flat means there's not that much to see from up high.

We ambled about a bit - then travelled back to Venice ia a couple of crowded boats and more confusion about the timetables. Arriving at Fundamento Nove at 5.30 we just made it into one church before everything closed up. The Gesuiti (Santa Maria Assunta) is an 18th century Jesuit church covered in amazing paintings by Titian, Tintoretto and other talented people. Everything was covered up to the ceilings and the alter was surrounded by 'opulent' marble columns and inlay. It was pretty breath- taking, also kind of hideous. Funniest was the fact that it's actually just a big red brick building with one foot of complex marble facade shoved on.

The rest of the evening was spent drifting again - shops, bridges, gondola watching and takeaway pizza. It would have been nice if I hadn't been exhausted and achy. Venice has a sad lack of benches and it gets cold (and tonight - rainy) very quickly. We returned to our new upgraded hotel room by 10pm, tired but happy.

Saturday
M&M were eventually persuaded to get up and moving so we headed down the road to acquire breakfast at a cafe, nice to be surrounded by cute sparrows instead of nasty pigeons. Next stop was the supermarket, which was everything you'd expect on a Sat morning with the added bonus of occupying a quarter as much space and being jam packed with Italians. Supplies were obtained and after a brief stop at the hotel we were off

We navigated the vaperetto routes until eventually arriving at Murano - similar to Burano in that it now seems to exist solely to support tourists, this time with glass making. There followed several hours (hours!) of peering at glassware in shop windows, shops, and the glass museum which I found dull beyond measure having oversold the "spectacular glassware" angle a little too hard. Also the fact that the rooms were ordered randomly and you went from 17th century to 20th century to 18th century making it feel like you were spoiling the end of the story.

A nice change of pace was the bassilica - a weirdly modern looking red brick exterior giving way to an ancient hodge-podge community church covered in marble and mosaics. We lunched on bread and ham from the supermarket while watching the international activity of small children chasing pigeons.

After a bit more shopping and a stop at a cafe where we once again failed to work out the accepted method to order and pay, we got a boat over to St Michele, the cemetery island. It was very regimented with lots of aisles with banks of 'units' but also extremely beautiful thanks to brightly coloured artificial flowers. Each marker also had a photo making them feel more personal than a plain name and dates usually do. The regimentation continued into the more regular graveyard with different groups getting their own areas - the young children's section being particularly moving. We didn't hunt famous people though - it's tacky and we hadn't heard of most of them anyway.

We wondered around until the rain drove us out onto another boat back to the mainland with the intention of a leisurely cruise on the number one line down the Grand Canal, but the boat was packed. I collapsed back at the hotel while M&M went out to investigate Lido, I felt a bit lazy, but my aching feet were very grateful.

Sunday
The weather collapsed quite spectacularly today. It started raining on the boat to the mainland and I thought "'ah well we'll be inside the Doge's Palace for a couple of hours anyway - so it'll rain itself out by then." Hell no! It rained the whole day through to about 6pm when a rainbow appeared over San Marco and the sun came out for an hour or so before dusk.

We started the day with the Doge's palace, which was everything I was expecting - overdone beyond belief, occasionally beautifully but mostly just ridiculous. The audio guide was an excellent decision, forcing me to take time over various sections and actually find out what things were and giving me an excuse to sit down (all my holidays turn out to be just about finding places to sit). I didn't linger in either the armoury or the prison cells - both of which felt entirely out to keeping with the opulence of the rest of the place.

It was still bucketing down Venice guttering is awful - seemingly designed to just make more impressive waterfalls) so we didn't linger in the courtyard (which was mostly covered in scaffolding anyway) and legged it to a restaurant for an authentic Italian lunch of pizza and tiramisu. Not too shabby.

Next up was an afternoon of culture - starting at The Peggy Guggenheim collection of modern art, an interesting reflection of some very cool pieces. I didn't get the audioguide which meant I could just decide whether I liked the pieces or not for myself, but suspect I missed a lot of 'important' pieces that meant stuff historically.

More rain and a quick scuttle to Santa Maria della Salute the very impressive church at the end of the Grand Canal. It was built to celebrate that the plague of 16something didn't kill quite everyone - leaving just enough people alive to build a bloody great church. the scale was amazing and the serenity of the place was wonderful, taking my brain to a different place.

A very soggy along the south side of the island produced nothing but closed churches and soaked clothes. So we went and hid in another art gallery, the Accademia. Again I skipped the audioguide but the laminated guides were very informative, and long enough to warrant sitting down to read. There were lots of Titians, Tintorettos and various similar silly names, most were interesting although I wouldn't want them on my wall.

The day degenerated into the usual ambling about, failing to agree on food choices, getting lost and finding closed churches.

Monday
Almost a proper day of sightseeing!

We started out with the camponile in San Marcos Square which was pleasantly quiet and provided some impressive views of the city and islands. The canals all disappear between the tall buildings and you can see beyond the pretty facades to the untidy sprawl of the city.

A (now traditional) ramble for a quick breakfast and we returned to the square for the church. It's an impressive but hideous building covered in gold mosaics. It's free to get in, except they cunningly fence pieces off so it costs to get into the museum and the reliquary and the altar area, which feels somehow cheaper than just charging the 8euros to get in. The labels left a lot to be desired, but the riches on display were fantastic and the scale of the building breath-taking.

We hopped a boat over to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore where irritatingly the church was closed for lunch. After a bit of sitting around on the quay and a brief sit in a cafe we got in to a relatively bland, cold and clean church which made a nice change from the overly decorated ostentatious Basillica.

I set off on my own for an afternoon of 'proper' sight seeing, following the map to hit as many sights as possible. In Venice that means churches.

Unfortunately I didn't get started until 3pm and kept being greeted with closed doors. I visited 10 churches, although five were closed and frankly the others blurred a bit. San Zaccaria was absolutely covered in paintings (I think) - incredible but oppressive. Santa Maria Formosa was a cosy church in the middle of renovations, but it felt like a small parish church, that just happened to have works of art that in most cities would be the centrepieces of museums. Santi Giovannie e Paolo was a giant, old church covered in tombs of doge with a beautiful stained glass window (there's surprisingly few considering the fame of Venetian glass). Santa Maria della Fava was a small parish church that looked very nice but turned out to be in the middle of a service when i noisily pushed the door open. San Salvador was a very beautiful church with Titians in.

Also took in the Arsenale, the docks and shipyards that historically made Venice powerful and therefore rich. Except you can't get in 'cos it's a military zone. So all you see is some cool towers and a big scary door guarded by a board looking soldier and some statues of very pathetic looking lions. I also went to a cafe all by myself and watched a bunch of English tourists checking the cricket results on their blackberries.

Tuesday
Another morning of church hopping by myself, this time in the rain. Between a couple of days of heavy rain and 'high tide' the canals were all lapping at their banks in a slightly scary manor.

Started off at Ca-Rezzonica and charged towards my first church... which was closed. Following my guidebook I made a brief pause at the Punte dei Pugni which was apparently a duelling place with footprints to mark where the fighters started. I imagine a lot of them ended in the canal. On to the next church, Santa Maria del Carmini... which was also closed.

There was more success at San Sebastiano which was nice (they really all blur together a lot!). Plodded on through some backstreets to San Nicola dei Mendicoli - another church that looks like nothing on the outside and then opens to reveal a richly painted interior. Back through the rain to San Pantalon (closed) and to the Scuola and church of San Roch which were not - hurrah! The Scuolo was breathtakingly beautiful - literally. As you came up the stairs and an amazing room of wood panelled walls and painted ceilings was revealed every person stopped with an very clearly audible "Oh!". The church was... um... another church which I have no distinct memory of, but I'm sure it was very nice.

Reached Ba silica di Santa Mari Gloriosa which was impressive in an architectural way rather tan an artistic way for a change - giant naves and stone monuments rather than paintings. The information about the restoration work was also interesting and a bit scary when it's talking about giant cracks in the wall above your head.

On to San Polo church which the district was named for which was utterly unremarkable, as were San Giacomo dall'Orio and San Simeone Piccolo. Once you've seen half a dozen churches covered in art by the Italian masters, you've apparently seen them all.

Met M&M for a proper Italian pizza near Ferovia where 'proper' here means 2 feet in diameter. Mine had potatos on it.

The afternoon then turned towards the three of us drifting, peering into shops and getting wet. After wandering the Jewish section and north of San Marco we returned to a gelateria near Academia we'd visited earlier in the week which not only served amazing quality, low price ice cream but offered the entertainment of a flock of sparrows who were determined to steal food from your plate. I retreated back to the hotel to relax with a book for the evening.

Wednesday
Despite our plane not leaving until mid-afternoon we didn't have time to do much beyond a trip to the supermarket to stock up on olive oil and biscuits. After re-packing the bags seventeen times we left our hotel at 10am and just 9 hours later, via boats, coaches, planes and trains we finally arrived home. I just looked it up - that's 700 miles in 9 hours, not so impressive.