So what do you do do if you want to do something different, well we decided to not just book it but to Thomas Cook it with one of their winter breaks. Not London or Paris, we chose Venice and Rome! The flight to Venice left Cairo at 4:55 on Christmas eve and a good friend took us to the airport at 2am, which wasn't so good, so by 10 am we were leaving bags at the hotel to wander the streets.
The flight was with Alitalia and was via Rome which has a surprisingly large airport, more like a shopping centre with planes leaving down various aisles surrounded by Designer shops than anything else. We managed the change in the end but had to walk briskly through the airport to get there. Then 45 minutes later we arrived at Marco Polo airport, where Maddison's name was bodily displayed at the tourist desk we needed to get our Water Taxi across to Venice from. It did make her smile seeing her name like that. By 10 am bags were deposited at the hotel and we were free to wander. So off we went map in hand. Venice is not just canals there are a whole selection of narrow back streets full of craft shops to wander as well. The closer you get to St. Marks the more expensive the goods become, one Designer clothes shop had a window item costing in excess of 7,000 euros. Lunch was a restaurant amongst the bustling shoppers where Maddison discovered fresh pasta, how I will ever get her to eat the normal dry shop stuff again is a problem. She was so impressed she was even open to the idea of a pasta machine of her own, obviously she has no idea that it takes a little work to make pasta.
By 2pm we had mask, glass Christmas trees, fridge magnets and other goodies ready to deposit so we headed back to the hotel for a well deserved nap.
We wandered off for food around 8pm and found a very friendly restaurant just around the corner, then after dropping Maddison off at the hotel Geoff and I headed for the 10:30 pm service at the Basislica. As we wandered across various church bells were ringing out across the city. We arrived at St. Marks square only to find the service was an hour later this year, so rather than queue we wandered off to try and take night shots without a tripod returning later to join the queue and find our seats. The service was in Italian with incense and a translation in the service book. The Basilica is magnificent, gold leaf everywhere, a real statement to mans achievements. We lasted until 1am and then joined the surprising large number of people who were leaving at various points in the service to return to the hotel. What a time to loose your way, the wrong turning at one bridge and whew ended up in just the wrong place and had to work our way through back streets to reach our side of the island getting back to the hotel for 1:30am!
There are hundreds of photos on my camera but no way to transfer them to the blog until we get back to Cairo so I have taken the iPad out and this was the result. The snow is not real but the result of a Christmas app I found.
