Venice, in water? No way.

You know when you put some thing off for a while, in your mind you have categorised it into the 'bad' stuff group, stuff 'I don't want to do'. Somehow my blog ended up in that group this week.

I visited Venice last weekend with one of my great friends Speck, who I do know reads this blog. So I apologise if it looks like I was a psycho lazy freak who didn't want to talk about our never ending fight against Italy and it's weather. It was simply lumped into the 'I'll do it soon' pile. 

But never the less my subconscious and excitement of the next few weeks has spurred me on to update  this blog.  Forewarning, this will be a long blog, so go grab a cup of tea, or a coke, or a beer, or something. You'll need it to wash down your jealousy with.

Friday, 26th October 2012
I have to say today was probably one of the worst days ever, in relation to things going my way. It was an early morning start, by early morning I mean 2.20am, walking out of my flat, bag packed weighing 7kg.... Yes, you heard me 7kg. One digit weight! Caught the 3.20am bus to Stanstead airport, an hour away, from the galleria; a massive outlet shopping centre, 10 minute walk from my house.

 

That was an uneventful trip. I had previously printed out the boarding pass, and tucked in behind my ipad in it's case. Reaching my hand into my sports bag, shovelling around and coming up empty. I have to say I have never felt so away at 4.30am than I did this morning. No iPad. My stomach dropped. No friging way. I lift my iPad at home. Looking down, I remember thinking, well that's alright, first travelling mistake in 4 months, not  shabby not to shabby at all. Just a pity that it'll cost me £60 for a reprint. 

However before resigning to wasting more money, and getting into to this ridiculously long cue for this time in the morning, I do one more soul searching, arm raping of my bag. And guess what. I FOUND ITTTTTT! It was at the other end of the bag. Opps. Blonde moment. Morning moment. Red head moment. Awesome moment!

So booyah, waltz through security, grab a Frappuccino, and find my plane... A bit bumpy but amazing views whilst flying into Venice!

I met speck at possibly the smallest airport i have ever had the pleasure of being in. We caught the shuttle bus into Venice, all perfect timing and great so far. 

Get into Venice, the main bus station, walk down to the canals, get slightly lost, ask for directions tot he 'people mover'. Slightly nerve racking name right? Back to the bus station, get pointed to the 'people mover' i.e. trams like the ones at changi Singapore airport. Spend a euro  to move 400 metres, yay for ripping tourists off.  We were now at the meeting point for our hostel shuttle. Hour and a half later, no shuttle. We make the wise decision, and call it quits, time to dominate Venice's mad public transport. 

We miss the first bus, and have to wait another twenty minutes. Get off at the right stop thank goodness. In a neighbourhood that doesn't look to shabby, I would possibly classify it as the suburb of Venice's, if that's even possible. 

We get lost, eventually find our hostel. Grab our keys, chill in our cabin, decide to take the 4pm shuttle into Venice. Hop on the bus, get kicked off the bus for no ticket. Walk to the public bus stop and find the best Gelato EVER! The whole day was just recovered! Our reward every time we caught public transport was gelato... Good reward system.

Upon arrival back into Venice, the heavens opened, flooding the streets. We were spectacularly drenched in record time, shoes and socks sodden, jackets no more use than a wet towel, but it was fantastic. Successfully got lost again after dinner, illegally stowed away on the ferry taxis, in an attempt to get back to the bus station.     All in all, the first day was amazing.

Saturday 27th October 2012

I think today i got a experience of what it would feel like to be living on a flood prone area. Today consisted of balancing acts. Walking the plank, as on one side the canal, the other side half meter of flooded path. 

Purchasing new 'Alien boots', these plastic contraption that you strap to your legs, so it looks like you feet won't get work. Lie.

Curly hair, drenched again but oh so worth it! we ventured out to St Marks, which was absolutely beautiful, we caught a ferry taxi out to the glass island. Finishing the night with bucketful sex on the beach cocktails and gelato. 

Golly gee. Good day all in all. 

Sunday, 28th October 2012

End verdict Jayllee and Speck 2:Venice 5

I think today would have been the coldest I have been, wettest I have been, and numbest I have ever been in my life.

Walking out the cabin door, no rain just thunderous winds. That's a good thing, perhaps it wasn't as flooded today as it was yesterday? An optimist in my head, the realist saying, its Venice, the place is on water, when it's been raining, and storming, go die of pneumonia. 

But I'm if the half glass full variety, therefore Speck and I donned our thermal tops, singlets, jerseys, jacket, scarves, mittens, beanies, umbrellas, pants (basically every piece of clothing we brought with us), and thongs (flip flops). Yes thongs, our shoes had not yet dried, we debated that if our feet were going to be wet all day, we mine as well be able to dry them at some stages if they were not covered. Let me tell you. WRONG IDEA. Hello 6-degree weather, winds and rain. Smile.

So first journey of the day, get into Venice. This was made nearly impossible for other less worldly independent travellers, but our worldly experience made speck and I a force to be reckoned with. This is where we got our first point against Venice.

The Venice marathon was on today, meaning many roads were cut off because of flooding and closed off for the marathon. Resultantly almost all bus routes has been changed, however, never fear, running across 4 lanes of traffic, risking our necks because remember we're in our thongs. Joined by our new found friends one Australian and one American both students on exchange in Dublin who did indeed end up missing their train. Awkward. But 30 minutes later we arrived saturated but victorious in Venice. Oh yeah. The day was just beginning.

We then proceeded to view the Biennale Architecture 2012. This is where nations from around the world put together a room, competieng. It was fantastic to se e la different sorts of creativity and designs from the worlds best architects!

After a day exploring these venues, we headed home, tot he sanctuary of our warm cabin!

All in all a great trip, with great company! However, I think if I were ever to go to Venice again, I would only go in the Summer months!

Ciao Bella, bro my name is Jayllee... TIA

Phew, what a whirlwind of a week, hundreds of kilometers covered, over 20 UNESCO world heritage sites visited, amazing new friends, funny stories, a new tan, and fun times!

Ill begin with Florence. It was astronomically amazing, the historic buildings,the DOME, the statues, monuments, bridges, sites, weather, all ten out of ten. Many people have meet have not really liked Florence, I can see why, it is quite small, but small is refreshing. It is not overwhelming, seeing all the sites is actually achievable! I'm not a huge fan of the Italian culture, but their buildings and environment I absolutely adore. It is with out a doubt one the top five most beautiful countries I have every had the pleasure to visit.

 Florence, saw a an elderly fellow attempt to pickpocket me. Idiot. What girl carries anything in her pockets these days, it is all in the handbags mate, did he not see the size of my handbag! I'm also quite certain the tongue thrashing I gave him we he groped my short pockets motivated him to quickly disappear from my sight. This occurred on one of the oldest bridges in the world, also one of the only bridges in the world to still have functioning shops on. I am of course talking about the Ponte Vecchio bridge.I  made the killer trek up a hill, which really should be classified as a small mountain but the view was worth every tortuous step!

A day trip to Pisa was called for, it was quite easy to catch the train from the main station in Florence to Pisa, on and hour train ride. Pisa was surprisingly small, it is basically a university town. The Leaning tower of Pisa, not Pizza, was great. The white stone used and the incredible tilt was a site to behold, however what was even greater was the amount of tourists there posing with the typical pushing the tower picture. My gosh. I couldn't bring myself to do it, it also did not help that I was taking the picture myself. So a selfie whilst attempting to get the correct angle was not going to be an easy task. However I only recommend a half day trip, because to be honest that's about the only thing there. After catching the train back, I chilled in the air con at the hostel

Sunday morning had me catching a train to Roma, or Rome. My first impressions of this historic city and its 3 million population was not complementary. The people were aggressive, rude and pushy, not my kindred spirits. A lady on the short bus trip from the train station to the hostel had her laptop and purse stolen from her backpack. Welcome to Italy peeps.

 I checked in no problemo, had a lovely couple of girls in my bungalow, ended up hitting the hostels pub with them, and making a tonne of new friends! Travelers are always such a friendly bunch, always a good thing when you are traveling by yourself.

Monday morning up bright and early to begin my Italian adventure, with Busabout the Italian Tour Itinerary was super busy, but amazing. However one down point I feel that people should be aware of would be the multiple extra costs. I easily spent around 50 euro a day, far more than I had expected.

I don't want to drag on about what we did, but Ill mention a few of the highlights. I would definitely recommend anyone traveling to Italy.

• Pompeii – destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD
• Local boat trip to visit the glamorous Capri and chair lifts!
• The infamous Blue Grotto Cave this was surreal!
• Swim in the Mediterranean Sea on the Amalfi  coast line!
• Drive the Amalfi Coast road, one of the best scenic views in Europe 

Now to some observations...

• It is normal for men of all ages, shapes, and sizes to wear speedos, the same goes for women in bikinis. 
• If you are not tanned, you will soon be. 
• Buses will always win on one way streets. 
• Italians loved their pirate watch towers. 
• Italians can wear the most inappropriate clothing to go hiking in. 
• There is no such thing a traffic rules, however over here,  it is polite to toot your horn, as you are signifying- to other drivers wear you are and what you are doing. 

I have explored Rome, what a historic city. However this is also the place in all my travels that I have seen the most obscene amounts of tourists. Honest to goodness I have never seen lines for attractions as long as these, almost a k long. Ridiculous. I found that very off putting, so I did not go into any of the historic buildings, because lets face it i am so not patient enough to wait that long.

I have to pack up my stuff today, getting ready to fly back to London on Saturday. I cannot wait to have my own bedroom, to stop living out of a suit case!

Scared, that's not in my vocabulary.

Yesterday was a whirlwind, I'll compare it to watching the new Batman movie, every moment something exciting was happening, it just never stopped, and you didn't want it to. So lets get into the nitty gritty details, frankly because I'm sure you'll love to hear how Jess punched a London fella (he was asking for it) in the face.

We visited Madame Tussauds in the morning. It was a surreal experience, seeing wax figures, that so closely resembled their real life counter parts. My favourites would have to be the Royal Family shot! It was spectacular. Madame Tussauds has been specifically planned out to give the visitor the most information possible.


You go though a journey, posing with celebrities, then world leaders, sporting stars, the Royal family and historic moments. We then reached the "Horrible Histories" section, a more accurate name would be "A black room, with screaming sounds, mirrors, dead animals, pitch black, with REAL LIFE people jumping and screaming out at you, Hope you enjoy your stay". Each turn brought a new terror to your sight, and if there wasn't a person there ready to take years of your life, the anticipation did instead.

Needless to say Jess and I were glued together as we took the first step, I think Caitlin having experienced similar scary shows at the Royal show, was slightly more prepared than us. In our minds we were like, pft we did the London Dungeons, as if this could be worse. We were wrong.

Five metres in, on the tenth bend, Caitlin was gone for my sight, and made a run for it. Jess was squeakily edging forward as, hands stuck together we kept look out left right, in front, left right, in "ARGGGGHHHHHH".

Some idiot jumped right into Jess's face, and well, up came Jess's fist with her water bottle to boot, poor fella. But honestly what did he expect? Quite a hazardous job really.

Lucky he only had a sore nose, not a broken one. He simply said in a scary voice that had Jess and I quaking, "Hands down girrrrlll". Oh, she put her hands down, as we started almost running with our eyes shut to get out of this hell place.

Caitlin came out looking like the terminator, whilst Jess and I came out shaking, and sweating, decidedly scarred for life.

From there on we went to the cartoon was section which was great. Watched a 4D film, with the water that sprays on you, and kidney punchers in your seats. Was very entertaining indeed.

With a sigh of relief and sadness, mostly relief, this brought the experience of Madame Tuassauds to an end.

Using the Tube we then found ourselves across town, outside Victoria Station having a little picnic in the park before our theatre going debut. We went to watch the production at Wicked. All I can say is phenomenal, it was amazing. The storyline itself was brilliant, showing a whole new perspective to the Wicked Witch of the West, in the Wizard of Oz. And to what a sook Dorothy was. I would most definitely recommend anyone to buy the book, or if they are lucky enough to watch the production.

The actors were brilliant, with beautiful voices! Not to mention the lead male, who I'm sure much to his delight gets to make out twice with both of the two leading ladies during each show, and they perform the show twice a day, you can do the maths. The costumes and scene settings were amazing.

From Wicked we ventured of to Leicester square to our Karaoke debut, it was most definitely a day for firsts. I've never particularly been one for sing star, let alone Karaoke. I have the tendency to sound like a dying animal of sorts. But our little booth just out of the heart of Chinatown was some of the  best fun I have had in a long time.

Little did we know, the security camera in the booth, witnessing our downfalls in singing and dancing, was coming up of the security screens in the bar for all to see.

 However prior warning should be given, that I can no longer listen to Payphone without shivers running down my back, we destroyed that song. However blasting out long forgotten songs with a  small group of friends was bliss.

From there we hit up Chinatown to get some dinner. It was a cute little Chinese restaurant, our waiter never smiled. Ever. I can announce I ate Duck for the first time.  I'm not some huge animal lover, but I just always remember feeding them bread at the pond, giving them something yummy to eat.  Not fattening them up so the local Chinese shop owner and grab 'em, pluck 'em, behead 'em, roast 'em, and serve 'em.

But I got past that and ate 'em. I think I would compare it to eating chicken stuffing. Not my cup of tea.

Then being extremely tired, I headed home with Karen and Mad's, leaving Jess and Caitlin to party up in Chinatown.

What a day.



I'll add some more pics up of this day on another blog, just can't find the dang cord for Mad's camera to get pictures off :)

It must be love.

The hectic life, is my life and I absolutely love it! I love being tired from running around a new city and experiencing new things.

The last few days have been extremely educational and interesting, as well as fully jam packed of touristy things and tea breaks!

 This is what I've been up to...


My best friend Jess arrived from the big scary world of Oz on Sunday afternoon, which was absolutely wonderful! So lovely to see great friends, especially when we're about to embark on such a wonderful adventure together! Then later that evening her cousin Caitlyn arrived, which is great! The more the merrier!

Monday saw us hit up the hop on hop off bus tours, getting a real feel for what we do and don't want to see. For instance we just had to re-visit Westminster Abbey, and need never see again the the district behind waterloo station, old industrial area thats now been revamped since it was blown to pieces during the great blitz, truly they did us a  favour by bombing it, no need to repair it....

We then hit up Knightsbridge for some shopping at Harrods and of course a shopping expedition in London would not be complete without introducing this two London shopping virgins to Topshop and Zara. The girls have been absolutely blown away by the fantastic clothes that are on sale!

Then after crawling home on the trains we got up at 7.30am this morning. Aka Jess, the coolest girl out, came and hopped into bed with me, "Time to wake up", my response "yehhhhhhhh, later bro".

However I did have my hair curled and make up done by 8, and downstair for brekky , whilst they were all still in their jammies, eating brekky, and gossiping away.

We then jumped on the train to be scarred from the London Dungeons, however huge delays on the rail network, resulted in us changing lines, and adjusting our plans, but never feared we still arrived in time to be scarred.... a lottttt....





Our group for the tour was quite stimulating in itself. first off we walked in the initial scary introductory room, where there were 'dead' rats hanging down from the roof that we would walk into, absolutely scaring the little girl who was say around 12 years old, enough that she did not start screaming, and then of course much to my delight a scary lady all dressed up, with a white ghoulish face of make make up and loud croaky voice started jumping at the young girl, which resulted in the girls screams breaking the sound barrier.

The next blog-worthy mention was when after hearing about how surgeons use to high grave robbers to steal dead bodies so they could explore the human body. Here's some prior knowledge you need to understand this. A Nana had brought along her two assumed grandsons, the younger of the two was already freaking out, so Nana being as good of a nana is that brings their grand kids to a scar show, says just don't look, come here as he huddles into her chest.

A yound man (qute a looker actually) 'voluntered' to sit in the torture chair, he was starpped in- simply his hands- and the utentials surgeons used to extricated bodily organs, such as slicing of hands was demonstrated on this guy, lets call him Ted. So when the scary surgeon went to chop Ted's hands off, the lights went dark, and all of  a sudden a light spray of water was squirted from the walls onto us- it was meant to be the blood, you know.


The next thing, lights are on, and we hear, "I think he fainted, yep, he fainted".

Absolutely made my day! The little squirt had flat out fainted on his Nana. Poor Nana, she looked terrible, as if she'd just committed treason.

Above: The hang mans noose ride. It was pitch black and we'd just watched people get hanged. Not a nice feeling.

But otherwise it was on the up from there, learnt a tonne of interesting history, hit up the London eye and saw some terrific views, and then attended the Westminster Abbey tour.

Now let me just tell you Westminster is and absolutely MUST see for visotrs. Honest to goodness there is simply so much history to remember. Breath taking.

Then of course we then went to The Ritz for afternoon tea, which was absolutely scrumptous. i had orange and passionfruit tea, delicious!!


Now here I am tired and sore but so excited for tomorrow. You'll hear about that another time! x