Venezia, a revisit, as arty as prague i thought. The grandmasters' works are bewildering. How did they do it? To create such beautiful art pieces. The venezian paper masks and the murano glass. But ever since the imitation comes in, really v sceptical with the products, are they made in italy or made in prc? Even with the stamp and wax seal, i am still sceptical. I dun recall i had issues previously yrs back. Prolly not as rampant i dont know. They shld jus bar all the china products. The worst is pple pay for china products which the dishonest shop owners claim to be made in italy. Wary of deceipt. And many shops are manned by indians or bangladeshi, i cant really differentiate the 2 but yea really dislike the whole tainted tourist industry. Sigh.
on the other hand, how did the chinese make them? How are the imitations done and they can sell so much cheaper from mass production. If u really look carefully, there is a very subtle difference. The style is more delicate and the paper material is more obvious than the plastics but then u still can miss the difference. Never ending patterns, u manage to spot one, may miss another. Actually jus buy if u feel like. Jus for that moment of purchasing power and the desire to own it. Tho transporting them safely back is more troublesome, they shld provide boxes. Japanese would have been very thoughtful on packaging. But well, they r italians or others.
Enjoy roaming the network of small alleys the most. The alleys are really dark and narrow, like a maze. There are roads everywhere, rivers and bridges. Everywhere looks the same. I would be more carefree without the grp depending on my topo. Luckily i knew the hardcopy maps are not as detailed so i loaded the google maps with the saved poi to avoid detours for all. google maps are really well maintained. Really walked the entire day with stops in between. even the dead ends are marked! So after using google maps, u will nv use the hardcopies again. with the directional arrows, i dun even need to read the italian road names. Fuss free. Went to the st mark's square again, the square with super large numbers of fat pigeons and the 24-hr clock which i really love. Remembered it from venice and almost bought it from greenwich during the last visit to london. It isnt cheap and i wonder how practical it will be as we are too used to the hands positions. The time can be misread easily. Good to be back there again. Walked down the canal, but in the opposite direction from where i drank the most expensive coke at 6 eur 9 years ago. Wonder if it is the same price now.
Venice is great except being too touristy. Ate 2 pizzas n beer for dinner and it cost us 38 eur, up from the original 23? For dining in. Forgot to chk the cover charge. So we paid 15eur extra for using their tables and chairs. Dotz. We know that we will take away or chk resturants with cover charge included into the food price next time. those included ones are still more worth it then separate charges, which we dun even know how it was calculated, by tables or by pax. Me and cousin came out again for gelato in the temp at 2deg cel. Brrr. Really shivered...
The second day in venice, recommended them to take the water buses to enjoy the view along the canal, but to the murano island, nothing much there except for many shops selling murano glass and the glass demo factory. Decided to give that a miss since ive experienced it. My bro chose not to go as well so we roam the streets again, without the rest, no nid to navigate. We just walked on, would be alright even if we get lost, tho we didnt. We tried back-tracing the streets from another direction to look for the charity shop we saw yesterday without google map and the camera shots. We managed to retrieve our memories. an achievement to recognise the various parts of the maze.
We then watched the locals, students marching out of school, fed the pigeons with pretzels and strolled along the canal. Italians here walk at a rather fast pace. Surprising. Soaking in the local culture is what i deem as real travel in the city, instead of chking in at the POIs. the luxury of doing nothing but wandering about, exploring and observing. At the end of the day, we were really tired from the walking, reenergised on the train to rome.
