Jamie Keay — Venice

Venice was an amazing end to Italy, when we first arrived we were set out with our groups to explore the shops on our way to the main bridge in Venice the Rialto, on our way through we were able to look through a spectacular variety of shops and see heaps of cool souvenirs, I ended up buying some cool masquerade masks and found it hard not to leave without some of the unique glassware they sold. The Rialto is a huge bridge 28m wide with its own group of shops on the bridge itself as well as the main street that runs through it, after stoping here to regroup we moved on to the San Marco Plaza and visited the San Marco church with its walls covered in gold mosaics, the amount of gold used in the mosaics was awe inspiring. After the church we had some free time in the plaza for lunch and were challenged with who could fine the most expensive item for sale, after enjoying a nice chicken Panini i set off with a few people to find the most expensive item in the plaza, visiting all the glass stores and seeing the magnificent glass sculptures was fun, in the end the most expensive item we could find was a glass chandelier costing 38,000 euros, we then headed back to the rest of the group convinced we had one, until we found out another group had found a watch costing 54,000 euros, we were content with second.

After our day trip to Venice I was excited for the overnight train, i was expecting a cabin between 4 with a reasonable amount of space and some comfy beds, i was sorely mistaken we had 6 cramped into each cabin with triple layered bunks and almost personnel space, when it came time to fold out the middle bunk I realised how small my bed actually was the middle bunk folded out over the bottom and it left all of half a metre space for me which was then further invaded by the headrest which stuck down from above me. I didn’t get much sleep that night but it was still an alright experience, something that was fine to do once but i would not want to repeat anytime soon!

After this train ride our last train from Dijon to Avignon was a peace of cake, after collecting the vans, we drove to Beaucaire which has definitely been the nicest place we’ve stayed so far, with its amazing three course meals every night to the pool in the back which is the greatest way to spend the afternoon when overcome by the heat. We had great rooms with double beds and descent showers for the first time on the trip!