Tour of Venice

Venice

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 After the plane comes the water taxi

For someone who does not "do" water i managed the 45 minute trip quite well, clinging to my seat - what an experience!

Luckily there were more pleasant things once we arrived.

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We didn't take a gondola ride (they were too expensive at €80 for 40 minutes in my opinion) but lovely to see all the same, although in parts it was a little funny to see several gondolas all navigating the same path and trying to avoid collision!

Some very pretty less crowded places

The building below is the hospital, i bet there are not many places that can boast that their hospital is housed in such a beautiful building.  I wonder if they have a five hour waiting in A&E, lol

I was not prepared for how busy it would be, just to give you an idea, cruise ships drop off their passengers at St Marks Square, and some days we were told that three ships will drop off  and there could be around five thousand people in and around the square - mad!
We saw one cruise ship pass at St Marks Square, how strange does this look? it filled the view to the square, quite a sight, if you can click on the photo you will see all the people standing looking to the square....crazy!

The Rialto Bridge - see the crowds?



This was just one side, the other side was just as bad, all the time.

To tell the truth, i was a little disappointed with the Rialto Bridge, apart from the very large banner announcing the popes visit (surely they could have sited this somewhere else?)

See the boards to the rear of the shops on the photo below? they all have graffiti on. Now call me picky if you like, but this is the most famous bridge in Venice, and is in effect where it all started, the centre,  so you would think that there would be a little more pride at keeping it clean and tidy - Just my opinion.

You can see how busy the Grant Canal is, this is the best photo i could get of the bridge.



This is looking under the Rialto

I have another little gripe.

The Bridge of Sighs.  Everyone who visits Venice wants to see the Bridge of Sighs, this is what greets you

They have covered the sides of the Doge's Palace (on the left) and the prison (on the right)  with this horrendous cloud/sky boarding.  There is restoration work going on and i know that these building have to be maintained, but come on, surely the advertisers who are paying for the restoration could have come up with something better than this??  And who agreed to such an eyesore? Most disappointing.

See the small bridge in the middle of the photo, the one groaning under the weight of all those people? That is facing the Bridge of Sighs, when prisoners were lead across into the prison their families would stand on that bridge and be able to wave farewell to their loved ones.

OK, you are probably thinking by now that i didn't enjoy Venice, i did enjoy it and there were some lovely things to see.

St Marks Church being one of them

Some pretty views

And to end with the obligatory night photo, this was a bridge quite close to our hotel

I have put a couple of photos here and i will add more there over the next few days if anyone wants to take a look.

Normal service of stitchy updates will follow soon :-)

Little Square Houses

I hope you are all enjoying this glorious weather we are having, isn't it great to be able to have the doors and windows open and hang the washing on the line, lol

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Just a quick update from me tonight to share the progress on my Sampler Game board, the SAL Judy and I are stitching together.

We are stitching on Fridays or over the weekend when we can and are on week 3.

And the other way up so that you can see the upside down squares

And this is the whole thing so far

Judy started at the bottom whereas i have started at the top left so you will be able to follow our progress from both ends :-)

Although this looks like a huge project, i think it's going to stitch up fairly quickly as those little house grow pretty fast :-)

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No stitching for me this weekend though, me and DD#1 are going on one of our city breaks, we will be jetting off to Venice on Friday morning, back on Monday evening.  I have holiday from work until May 3rd so i plan on going down to Weymouth to visit Mark for a few days before his job finishes.  If the weather holds out it should be really nice.

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I'll be back with updates and tales of Venice as soon as i can.  

 Until then, have fun and enjoy our extended Bank Holidays :-)

Happy Days!

Phew, some sunshine at last!  after the winter we had it's lovely to see the big round yellow ball in the sky!

Those in the UK will know that we have to make the most of it because it changes so fast, lol.

I want to thank all you lovely people who stopped by and left get well messages for me and my foot, and my mother too!   Mum is OK, on medication, for life now to thin her blood, but is being monitored at the hospital, she has to have a 24 hour ECG monitor on the 20th and go about her normal daily activities so they can get a more accurate reading.  I think she was really frightened on that Sunday though.
Oh, someone asked the question, how we managed to get locked in mums house, well there is a deadlock on the door and my sister turned the key all the way round and apparently that puts the deadlock on and when we shut the door it wouldn't open again.   I know mad, and how mum has managed to never do it i don't know, something we will really have to get changed.

My cast came off and they decided that the break wasn't as bad as first thought, it was near my big toe, so no need for a cast, just keep my foot elevated as much as possible.  The swelling went down after a few days and i was able to get a shoe back on again.  I went back to work on Tuesday (I'm only sitting at a desk anyway)  I did learn a few things whilst in plaster with my foot up -

1. getting around on crutches or with the aid of a stick is much more difficult than it looks!! 

2.  Some people i work with who i considered as friends are only work colleagues, (with the exception of one), not one of them phoned me to see how i was or what I'd done.

3. My off spring are capable of doing household chores and cooking, and if left to get on with it make a very good job of it:-)

4. DH on the other hand is completely hopeless at either of the things in #3,  he is however good at supplying endless cups of tea :-)

5. When the cast is off and everyone can see that you are mobile again no one puts their hands up for chores!

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Last Friday was the start of my Sampler Game Board SAL with Judy and seeing i had plenty of time to sit on my butt and stitch i made good progress

Don't panic Judy, i don't always stitch this fast, I'm sure you will overtake me before long :-)

I put quite a lot of stitches into Little House Neighbourhood too, but you will have to take my word for it because i didn't take a photo.

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I was going to end with a couple of photos of my feline babies enjoying the sun, but now I've uploaded one photo, blogger won't let me do any more (why?? , do i now have to upload all the photos I want to share in one go???)

There are a couple on my photo blog (of Molly) if you want to look...go on, no one has been to visit me there in a while :-(

(There is a link in the side bar)

Until next time, have a good weekend x