Venice

I remembered stories about Venice flooding, but unfortunately not at 7am
this morning as we got up and showered (at the shower block on the camp
site!) before getting the 8am boat to Venice which departed from just
outside. We remembered our big coats (well, Sophie needed a bit of
persuading to wear hers!).
We got to Venice for 8:20am and managed to get a look at most of the
sites and some of the shops before the floods appeared in St Marks
square and the duck boards came out for people to walk on. It was a bit
like a human version of Lemmings, watching them walk down duck boards
put out by locals to get deliveries only to find they had to come back
because it was a dead end! Most of the designer shops were away from the
floods, however, although we were a bit disappointed that we couldn't
get a Gondola. Well we could, but the rain started and we didn't think
it would be as romantic as it looked on the telly!
It was refreshing after coming through some more 'tourist' cities in
France to find a place which had lots of interesting shops which local
crafts rather then the 'tourist tat' like plastic fridge magnets and
etc. There were some fantastic stationary shops selling hand made
leather bound address books etc. We also picked up an Italian-English
phrase book and dictionary in a shop - something which we forgot to
bring with us!
However, all is not lost, we had a good few hours in Venice and are now
parked at La Sabbiona farm (website here:
http://www.lasabbiona.it/index.asp?l=2 ) where no doubt we will end up
sampling more wine/olives/local produce in the morning before moving on.
I just hope the weather gets a bit better - it's warm, just too bloody wet!