Day Seven- Tuesday 27th July- Second Full Day in Venice

We all awoke feeling refreshed, having had the best night’s sleep of the trip so far (most likely down to exhaustion!)

Once again, we headed to St. Mark’s Square, in order to see the rest of the main sites. We joined the massively long queue for the Basillica, and waited for what seemed like forever to get in, whilst we were constantly bombarded by low flying pigeons- much to Lexi and Kat’s horror!

Once we reached the front of the queue, however, we were told that bags were not allowed inside. Directed down a side street, we abandoned the now enormous queue, and left our bags in a little cloakroom, and joined the front of the queue again.

It was whilst queuing for the Basilica that we became aware of the fact that St. Mark’s Square had flooded quite impressively overnight due to the extensive rain of the few days before. In order to prevent visitors to the Basilica from getting wet feet, the staff had placed wooden boards over the puddles, to ensure dry entry into the cathedral. Thinking that I was being clever and avoiding the queue by going around the wooden boards, I had not noticed the water below and without a second thought, plunged straight into rank, ankle-deep canal water! I personally did not find this in the slight bit amusing, seeing as I was in fact wearing sandals at the time, but Kat, Hannah and Lexi thought that it was hilarious and continued to torment my wet feet for the rest of the day!

Having finally entered the Basilica, our progress was once again hindered, this time by Lexi apparently being ‘indecently exposed’ in her skirt, and was provided with a large crimson tablecloth like article to wrap around her legs!

We then proceeded to wander around the interior of the Basilica, Lexi shuffling like a penguin wrapped in her tablecloth, and me squelching my feet along the flagstone floor. Inside, however, was utterly beautiful, with gold leafed ceilings and hundreds of painted walls. The only downside was that the free entry literally only allowed us access to the main body of the building, with the treasury, altar, and other areas from 2 euros up to 5 in order to see everywhere else.

The remainder of our day was spent just wandering the square, taking in the flooded sights of Venice. Over the course of the afternoon, the call of nature got too much to bear, and so I had to shell out 1 euro 50 for the necessity of using a toilet!

Following this, we meandered the narrow and beautifully quaint Venetian streets towards the Rialta Bridge, which was literally bursting with tourists like ourselves. There was just enough time to snap a couple of pictures before we got on a water bus to take us back to the main station.

We had a really relaxed evening, giving Hannah and Lexi enough time to check out the pool onsite, whilst Kat and I supervised from the sidelines.

We had dinner and then went to reception and checked out, seeing as we were gravely dreading our 5am start the following morning! We were also lucky enough to get the extra night that we had hurriedly booked for the same price as the others, which helped the rapidly decreasing funds situation!