After a pretty awesome 10 hour trip through the mountains of Austria and north Italy I made it to the campground outside of Venice where I'll be spending the next three nights. This campground is the complete opposite to the apartment hostel in Vienna. With room for 400+ bungalows, two pools, two spas, a restaurant and a convenient store. I'm in a three bed bungalow, in the bed above a desk. This bed shouldn't really there, it seems like this bungalow was originally two beds and this one has been added as an afterthought, as its situated roughly 50 cm from the ceiling. Getting into the bed is difficult enough, the fun begins when you try and get out. Escaping the confines of this bed requires movements into positions that are almost impossible for all but those gymnasts you see at the Olympics, mere mortals are required to do a sort of a controlled fall out of this bed, onto the bed below. Luckily the two girls that were in this room have moved on and I have quickly claimed one of their beds as my own.
Vienna itself is a strange place, the campground has a charted bus that runs to and from the campground to Vienna and we're dropped off on what's seems to be one of the parking lot islands to take take monorail to Vienna proper. Maps here are almost useless here, because unless you're at a large land mark, like one of the many churches or large squares you have no idea where you are most of the time. What is required is a GPS and and offline map (available on most smart phones), a compass and/or an extremely good sense of direction, because this place is a fucking maze of streets and alleyways. After a month of travel my sense of direction and map reading skills are godly but I still needed to use a GPS to get back to the bus from the other side of the city. The streets are so narrow you can't just look up and spot a land mark like you can in Prague or Krakow, should you end up in an empty alleyway with no idea where you are the best thing to do is to hit the GPS and keep walking in a direction until you see one of the main highways for foot traffic. Don't bother trying to find a local on the street to help with directions, because there arn't any, even the Italians I saw here were tourists.
As I type this I'm eating a calzone, it's quite good.
All of Venice could probably be done in two full days, 9 till 5, including the outer islands if one really wanted to. Walking that long is difficult though, I decided to do two half days, sure, I didn't see everything but after a while all the alley ways, churches, canals, and bridges all look the same anyways. I also wanted to spend some time by the pool, working on my tan and checking out the scenery. ;)
Off to Rome in the morning for five nights which should be good. I've been going for a month now and so far have been to 8 cities, taken 1160 photos, lost 4 socks and a pair of headphones, probably a couple of kilos too. I'd post some photos but the wireless here is shitty.
