Arrivederci, Venezia.

July 13^th 2012

Once again we were up nice and early for our complimentary all you can eat breakfast. We then checked out and set about enjoying our last few hours in Venice. Now, when you think of Venice, you think of the gondola men, floating down the canal, having a good old sing. For this experience you have to splash out a good £80 and as we were still getting over our pricey dinner, we decided against the gondola. Instead we took a Traghetto – this is basically a gondola which goes from one side of the canal to the other. They’re mainly used by the locals and you can get about 14 people in one gondonla. You can sit or stand and it costs a grand total of 50cents. So Rory and I hopped on, splashed out on the 1euro fee and arrived at the Rialto market without having to walk the long way round. Plus we can legitimately say we were on a gondola in Venice. 

The market was nice, lots of fruit, lots of fish and even a shark. We were passing a market stall when all of a sudden, whack, the fishmonger chucks a shark on the board and begins cutting. We watched while this shark, admittedly quite small, was completely skinned, de-headed, de-tailed, cut up and put on the stall for anyone to buy. There’s a video below, I only recorded a few seconds and the animal lovers out there might not want to watch, but it was quite interesting (if a little strange) to watch

We decided to leave the best pizza in Venice to our last day but when we finally arrived at the remarkably well hidden pizzeria, it was closed. Rory was particularly distraught but we headed to the Jewish Ghetto and got a really nice and completely kosher pizza. I don’t know if it was the best pizza in Venice, it was the only pizza I had but it tasted good and it was nice to eat by the canal. 

In fact, I love the canal so much I decided to stick my toes in. I know this is probably the worst thing you can do, the canals are probably full of crap, literally, and I’ll probably get some disgusting infection... BUT... how often do you go to Venice and who can say they’ve paddled in the Grand Canal!?

This was our last day in Venice, so once again we paid for and took a water bus – you could definitely take these buses without paying for a ticket, we didn’t see anyone being checked but Rory is an honest scaredy cat so we forked out £7 each. Our destination was a port where a ferry would take us on a three hour journey to Pula, Croatia. I’ve fancied going to Croatia for a while now and it seems to be the trendy place to go these days. However, as both my parents and grandparents have made the same trip it’s safe to say McCune’s are trendsetters. 

The journey was fairly uneventful and when we got close to the port we saw some friendly locals waving from the beach. Not only were the locals friendly, they were naked. After that little shock we saw something much more pleasant, Pula’s famous amphitheatre. Not only was this impressive, it was handy as our apartment for the next few nights is right beside the amphitheatre. Literally, it’s the closest building to the amphitheatre. 

We waited a good two hours for the owner to show up and the apartment was nicer than expected but I’ve certainly learnt another travel lesson; Croatian people have no concept of time.