Venice

A city with an opulence unlike any other.

At first we were swamped with tourists. Flocking, bustling moving with an ill grace mimicked by the pigeons that flocked St Mark's square. I left that afternoon feeling distinctly uninspired at the city that was now merely a tourist attraction.

When we arrived back the next day, we entered via the sedate backstreets in the south of the city. With an entire day of the city stretching out before us we set off without a map, without a mission, merely with the intentions of escaping the tourists and getting well and truley lost. Then eventually the magic of the city began to settle over us. We started to only hear Italian voices. Shops offering glass were replaced with washing lines fluttering lazily across canals; gondalla rides morphed into men on working boats stopping to chat, shout and share cigarettes with each other; and the throngs of tourists petered out to reveal small wizened old women in black skirts and loose cotton tabbards hurrying along with their shopping.

We ate lunch in a reastraunt overlooking the river, not fleeced like the others chomping pizza near St Mark's square, we had cheap pasta - squid ink spaghetti with cuttlefish, and then calamari. After lunch we found the sea and cooled off in it's breeze, then walked through the Jewish quatre and read in park surronded by the squeals of children and the chime of church bells.