Along The Birthday Canal

Day: 223 & 224

Towns / Cities Visited: 142

Countries Visited: 27

Steps Taken Today: 27,807

Steps Taken Around the World: 3,695,096

We awoke at our leisure on our two hundred and twenty third day, with only vague plans to do anything productive. We had two days to enjoy Venice, and with our list of attractions to visit not being all that long, we decided to take the morning off and spend some time catching up amongst this house full of adventurers. As with all good catch ups, ours was held over a meal, and what better way to lift the spirits of weary travellers than with a big breakfast, cooked by myself and my almost equally food-loving older brother.

It wasn’t until the early afternoon that my mother, partner, and I trotted off to the bus stop to head into the famed canal-riddled city of Venice to see a little of what it had to offered. Despite our lighthearted merriment and food-fuelled optimism, we were to face an obstacle we had not run into in quite some time, a public transport strike. After being unable to find anywhere open to buy a bus ticket despite it being in the middle of the day on a Friday, we headed over to the bus station and soon discovered that, according to a small section of a notice actually translated into English, the bus companies were only running limited services for the day, I’ll assume due to abysmal pay. Still, we remained hopeful and decided to wait at the bus stop to see if any services would actually roll up and trundle us away on our day’s excursion. After half an hour though, we were about ready to pull the pin when a friendly man pointed out that it was possible to get to Venice by train; thus, following his directions, we made our way to the nearby train station. Now, to say that the place was chaotic would be an understatement, as locals and visitors alike scrambled to try and find any form of transportation to the famed city, and yet it would seem that the train companies had also joined the boycott and services were few and far between. Despondent, we huddled together and made the joint decision that it was all too hard. There was little assurance we’d be able to find transportation back, that wasn’t an overpriced taxi, even if we did manage to make it there, and, as such, we dragged our feet back to our Airbnb to try and enjoy my final day of being twenty-seven.

Making the most of the remainder of the afternoon, we set about writing some blogs, and doing…