Sunday 23 March 2003

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Piazza San Marco was deserted this morning at 0630, and the light was good. Three guys sweeping and one guy with a bike and a camera. I could have had a picture of San Marco Basilica with no people - if I'd been willing to unpack a camera. As Catherine said, it almost seemed wrong without people.

One of our favourite Italian words was "Biglietteria," or the place you buy biglietti (tickets). Of course the "g" is almost silent which makes the pronounciation rather less entertaining than it looks. The award for favourite utility goes to "PASS Gas." "P.A.S.S." is an acronym, but they obviously didn't check their english phrase book before naming their business.

Flying over the mountains again. Beautiful.

They fed us breakfast, thank god. Including opaque red "100% Arencia" orange juice that tasted like an unsweet orange-strawberry juice. Nice. I wish we'd thought to buy some at Su Ve early in the week.

Good god what disgusting security. In Munich. "Passport Control" was just as lax, but the security scan was painful in its thoroughness: shoes through the x-ray, no standing metal detector but a personal frisking with a hand-held unit for everyone. And then an extensive document check, and finally a new set of boarding passes, even though we thought we already had them. We were actually paged while we were in line for the security check. It was nerve-wracking.

previous part | Venice trip

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by giles