August 1-5: Venice

Some observations about Venice:

1. It is extremely expensive.

2. In Piazza San Marco a cappuccino is A$20.

The understated St Mark's.

3. A ride in a gondola (like in the movies) is A$100 for 30 minutes for 2 people sharing in a six-seater. The gondolier sings for free.

4. Almost everyone we saw in gondolas was Asian.

5. The only shops in Venice are souvenir stores and high-end Euro-style fashion boutiques.

Backstreet's back, all right!

Hot Men of the Faith 2008 calendar.

6. There are at least three shops in Venice claiming to be the inventor of the bird-beak mask featured in V For Vendetta.

Limmy and Orko from He-Man.

7. There are a lot of tourists.

8. There are a lot of pigeons.

Obviously this child has not seen The Birds.

9. There are a lot of canals.

10. There are a lot of streets.

11. Houses are not numbered by street, but by suburb. Hence we lived in house number 3153 in the Dorsoduro area.

12. We got lost almost every day.

13. It is a rather romantic and beautiful place.

Literally, fresh off the boat.

Highlights of Venice (mostly inexpensive):

1. Great kebabs.

2. Inadvertently watching an episode of Hey Dad! on cable, subtitled in Arabic (Oman TV). Still relevant after all these years.

3. Finishing Harry Potter 7.

4. The Peggy Guggenheim Museum, featuring such masterpieces of modern art as a tree planted by Yoko Ono, and the burial site of Peggy Guggenheim’s dogs.

With time, she got better at taking care of them.

Modern art can be fun.

And so our time in Italy ended, catching a train through the beautiful north and watching the sun set with a good book and a cappuccino, as we chugged our way into France.