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Great Blog Posts Demand Excellent Article Rewriting

Our beloved Boles Blogs author Nicola just finished writing an incredible, and memorable, stretch of connected articles that absolutely deserve our devotion and celebration!

Over the past 20 days, our Nicola wrote 18 articles for publication.  These were not simplistic blog posts.  These were intricate posts packed with photographs and personal insight.  Many Boles Blogs articles average 300-500 words, but Nicola’s works in this stretch averaged over 800 words per post and many doubled that number.  That’s over 15,000 words written in 20 days!

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Mask City: Venice in Retrospect

When it comes to souvenirs the most famous apart from the obligatory Gondola keyring is the Venetian mask. These are sold in their thousands to tourists from stands and hawkers at every opportunity. I can understand the Venetians fascination with the mask because Venice itself is the ultimate mask.

Venice hides in its lagoon, behind its waterways, it hides behind the faded grandeur of the Grand Canal.

Venice hides behind its Baroque facades and Gothic mansions.

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Venice Grand Finale: The Grand Canal

We clambered on board our ferry keeping in mind that this was the one before last we could catch to reach the airport in time. A huge disappointment as this was a closed ferry with only a small window at the front from which to take pictures from and the rest of the windows were covered in watermarks from the spray caused by other boats.

One advantage though — at this stage we were the only people on the ferry at this time.

Due to this restriction, it really was a flash tour of the Grand Canal — impressions only — having said that it is not possible to walk alongside the Grand Canal and, to my knowledge, there are only two places where you can sit at a restaurant and dine overlooking the water.

Some of the grander hotels have a room with a view and small balconies — heaven knows what their room supplements are! So we were stuck with what we got.

I did manage to capture some of the atmosphere — once again there are some beautifully painted buildings and buildings of amazing proportions and stunning architecture. One cannot help but imagine what Venice was like in its heyday and who created and lived in buildings like this.

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Venice on Foot: The Backstreets

Having girded our stomachs with food and drink — well, ice cream and water — we set off in the general direction given to us by our very helpful gesticulating Italian Policeman.

Our route took us out of the heat and the seething masses of St Mark’s Square and into the shade of the maze of narrow backstreets that exist between and behind the main waterways. It takes some time for your eyes to get used to the lack of light.

Venice is similar to another famous canal city — Amsterdam — where the only way you can build is up! The backstreets are narrow — often one person wide — and I am sure some of them never see the light of day.

As you can see, we are walking in half light — at least on this street we could walk side by side.

One can only imagine the marketing strategies that you would have to employ if you had a business here to get people to your doorstep.

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Approaching Venice

We were on a mission — to get the real flavor of Venice in an afternoon. If we liked what we saw, we would come back and spend more time exploring.

Venice has an undeniable reputation for being one of the “must see” cities in Europe — the famous floating city — or the famous sinking city — or should that be stinking? It is a city of water and of gondolas, rich in history and culture and once the trading center of Europe.

Our ferry took us along the north coast of Venice and around to San Marcos, past all the canal outlets and gave us a good view of what Venice was like behind the scenes. Once again we got reasonable seats on the ferry and I was able to take photographs out of the side windows as we motored past. I was surprised to see that there was room for greenery on the main island — this canal looked particularly shady and inviting.

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Murano: Island of Glass

We were up, breakfasted and out of the hotel on schedule. First stop, petrol station to fill up the car before leaving it at the airport. Go to the airport petrol station which is unmanned at that time on a Sunday morning and refusing to take foreign cards of any description — which means cash only. One problem with this — it only takes 20 euro notes — the five euro note slot is blocked — wonder if someone else tried to put their card in it?

We are told of several other petrol stations in the area and make our way to the first, the second, the third — all have the same problem — one petrol groups computers have obviously crashed overnight or are off-line for some reason. There is utter pandemonium as people get more and more frantic trying to fill up their cars — at the end there is a convoy of about 30 cars all trying to do the same thing — all of them with flights to catch.

We fill ours up until it will take no more — pass two and a half Euros credit on the pump to the next guy and make our way to the airport — our valuable time is ticking away. We park the car and run for the ferry terminal. The English woman in a hat is about to take on Venice!

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Road Trip: Venice to Vienna

We were on a mission — not from God like Jake and Elwood in the Blues Brothers — more like hell given the number of twists and turns the week took, but more of that later. Our mission was to see Robbie Williams in concert in Vienna. Tickets for the concert here were about 50% cheaper than in the UK, so we decided we would take a break and incorporate the concert into the itinerary.

Once we had our precious tickets, we then proceeded to work out the most acceptable way for us to travel. Acceptable to us includes the following criteria — cost, opportunity to see new places, have new adventures, explore new and different cultures, make the most of opportunities, tasting new food and wines, hotels with bath and shower, the opportunity to learn, and most importantly for me, a means of travel which allows me to photograph.

We chose to travel using the motorway network — mainly for speed and our lack of geographical knowledge.

Continue reading → Road Trip: Venice to Vienna