Off the Map

The mornings aim was to browse shops for Venetian glass, grab some breakfast on the way and take a ride on a Gondola. All started out well as we knew where a Bakery was on the other side of the Grand Canal and Dad thought we’d just wander from there. We drifted from district to district, slowly noticing the decline in crowds, prices and ambiance. By the time Dad admitted to being totally lost and no idea of direction everyone else was hot, bothered and totally fed up with his “what the heck” attitude. “Where the heck are we?” was a polite way of expressing the concerns at the time.
Ro decided to take control; and asked someone for direction (as it turns out we were not even on our maps)and thus we headed out of the slums and back towards the Grand Canal (the south entrance).Upon reaching the said waterway (just near Academia) we snaffled the first dude wearing the appropriate garb, jumped in his punt and whipped around the local waterways, some narrow, some.. not so narrow. It was all very pleasant if a bit hot in the midday sun. When we disembarked, our punters got so distracted with other customers we could have easily skedaddled out of there without paying. However, as we had identified ourselves as from Melbourne we thought it best to maintain our Aussie reputation and patiently waited a good 15 minutes whilst they sorted themselves out. The look of surprise on our punters face was priceless when he realised that he’d forgotten to collect his fees.
Feeling like we were the bees’ knees of conscientiousness, we headed back through previously unexplored parts of the maze, this time keeping a close eye on the map and where we were going. As a consequence we grabbed lunch and were back in our room quicker than it took Napoleon to realise he had a size issue. Getting into the spirit of the siesta we bunkered down for a mid afternoon kip with the warm breeze wafting through the open shutters, buoyed by the sounds of the thousands of tourists (many different languages) drifting up from the Campo below.
Afterwards Isabel decided to perform some mime and dressed up as Dad the tourist. This was very entertaining and as a consequence Dad has decided that having a siesta is not worth having the Pisa taken out of him.
For dinner, we headed north – for no other reason in that we had not ventured in that direction yet – and found a place which suited all our needs (admittedly we are now a bit over pasta and pizza).. (On the way we saw more gondolas than you could point an oar at....)This worked out really well, as we have found out in this town, 100 meters from the main tourist routes and prices drop dramatically.
Tonight we’ll close the shutters, block out the noise from the drunken hordes below (this time they sound Swedish) and get ready for our journey to the land of frogs legs and perfect derrières.