Carlisleinterrail.wordpress.com Website Review

Seeing Venice was a whirlwind of a 24 hours and a huge change after a more relaxed time in the Balkans.  While Ljubljana was a casual short stop – Mike’s birthday lairyness aside – that was easily accomplishable within the time, Venice was something of a push.  Having said that, by the end we felt we had seen it all!  There was even a later train we decided against because there was nothing else left to see, and as nice as just sitting by the can*ls was, we were all keen to push on to Milan.  The lack of sleep after Mike’s birthday was a bit of a struggle to begin with, even after most of us tried to get some low quality sleep on the train: this is hard to Nonetheless it was worth the 6am start in order to gain more time looking around Venice, and everyone seemed to wake up a bit once we got out in the sun and saw the waterbus stop waiting in front of us.  Usually we would resent paying £20 for 24hrs public transport, but on this occasion it felt like a fair price because of the novelty value.  If you treat it like a river tour instead of a bus, and get leaning out the windows to get a better view, it’s easily worth the money (even if you nearly get soaked like Simon).  Of course, queuing to get on is a little different than in England, you know, because the Italians don’t queue, but once you get used to pushing old ladies out the way it gets a lot easier to get around!  One old woman in particular went pretty mental in a supermarket trying to barge past everyone and then clearly swearing in Italian when we didn’t let her steal our place in the queue.  She wasn’t acting alone though: most the Italians we met in Venice were pretty rude and pushy, though to be fair I think I might be if I lived in such a tourist trap. The waterbus journey turned into something of an adventure when we didn’t get off in time and were told we had to stay on because they weren’t waiting any longer!  When we got off at the next stop to get a boat going back, we found ourselves on the wrong island and had