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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Adam's Trip to Italy - Mission 1: Venice 

My recent spur-of-the-moment-Italian adventure was fantastic. 

It all began with a smooth start getting lost at Changi Airport, well getting lost wasn't technically what happened; the airport staff directed me to the wrong terminal where I had to wait in line for 45 mins for a security check to be told I had to catch two trains to back to the first terminal I was in to wait for another security check.  

My other destinations went perfectly according to plan...except for being yelled at by a German for standing "on the yellow line" not "behind the yellow line" as the warning had suggested. 

My trip started off in Venice when I asked for a taxi to my hotel which ended with me paying $95 euro. I had to haggle with the driver to stop his meter at that price because apparently it costs him $5 euro for every piece of luggage I have. [Adam's rule for traveling in Italy Number 1: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD never use a taxi - ever]. 

Venice reminded me of a cross between an Australian slum (full of in-land flooding stormwater channels and foul stenches) and an upmarket Australian canal estate (full of artifial coastal channels and foul stenches). There were your expensive designer clothes stores in amongst what was little more than storm water come sewerage type channels which wreaked at the best of times and flooded at the worst. 

It was not really the romantic place shown on the post cards but was more like a trash-and-treasure fair where every corner you turned around you'd find something totally new and exiting. I would just go out and about every night getting completely lost exploring the streets. 

It was flooding twice a day and they tried to tell me it was normal: "it's tidal - happens twice a day!" but for some reason as soon as I left it made international headlines that it was "flooding" [Adam's rule for travelling in Italy Number 2: Never believe an Italian]. 

Due to it being off-peak tourist season most of the people in Venice seemed to be locals and were not very forthcoming with help for tourists. I can understand this somewhat; half of the year your town is inundated with tourists asking the same stupid questions of you - sooner or later you'd tire of answering them - even if it is these stupid tourists who create the job you have that lets you put food on the table. 

They were very proud of their "ingenious" ploy to build Venice offshore to beat the "hoards of savages from up north". The Venetians had boats and the "savages" only had horses so couldn't cross the water. An Aside: The rest of Italy took the easier route and just built a damn town wall. 

I look at it in an entirely different light: the "savages" clearly won the battle. They managed to take control of the mainland, loot, pillage, plunder and successfully banished the Venetians from land. 

Looking through the artefact's from the past Venetian wars it was starting how small and inept their weaponry was: a fight between a bunch of ten year olds with blunt swords [Venetians] and what seemed like normal sized adult men with mighty sharp swords [Savages from the North]. To be honest, based on the disparity in the weapon class and size of the people - I have no idea how Venice wasn't completely wiped off the map. 

I didn't manage to get a decent photo from Venice due to the constant rain, lack of sun, and humidity. All of my photos seem to have this eerie speckled look from the rain making them look more like drawings than actual photos. The photo shown was the street of my hotel. 


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Posted by: Adam / 4:24 pm
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