Country 7: Italy

Driving so far had been relatively calm in the highways until we reached Italy; then it became chaotic. We were driving along when we came along to a toll in which the 2 lane highway spread out into about 12 lanes. There was a fair amount of traffic, and this spread out, I assummed, was to prevent backlog in the highways. But once we passed through the tolls we again had to merge into two lanes. This should seem relatively simple, except I think something happened at neck of this merging system and we were stuck. We sat there for about 1 hour while the traffic bottleneck seemed to build and build until cars could not get to the toll station.

There seemed to be more cars on the road in Italy as well, compared to the previous countries we drove through. This created abit of a challenge and kept us on our toes with the unexpected moves of forgien vehicles.

Venice was lovely. It is said to be the most romantic city in the world. It is also said to have 15M visitors per year. Where is the romance, when you have to share it with any of the given 41096 other people trying to create a romantic mood that day...

Venice is a money trap. We camped across the bay for 32euros per night, quite expensive when comparing it to...say... Budapest where it was 7. The 10min boat trip to the city cost 10E per person. To rent a gondola for 50 minutes cost 68E if before 20:00 and after that 76E. There were serenading gondolas as well, and I am pretty sure the serenade was not included... as Micke says, someone is making money over there...

Venice is a maze. There is no logic to the setup of that city. You cannot follow it on a map- as soon as you have found yourself and then walk for 2 minutes, you are again lost... It is just easier to follow the rest of the tourists instead of trying to make your own path... reminds me of lemmings for some reason ???

I expected more canals than what there were. You know when you create a picture in your head of something- from photos, stories, etc. and when reality meets your creation you tend to be disappointed. Well, this is the case here. The city was not romantic, it was crowded, smelly, lots of pigeons and when ever you walked, you always seem to come back to the same place. Micke and I walked away from San Marco Square three times, only to somehow return to it.