THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT VENICE

1. Everything looks like a postcard.
2. Everything that looks like a postcard will cost you.
3. Everything that doesn't look like a postcard will cost you.
4. Pay for toilets. Pay cover charge at restaurant. Pay through nose for water transport (nose now hurts).
5. Beggars are really tourists trying to get back the money they've spent in Venice.
6. Everything looks YUM! ESPECIALLY THE FOOD! PASTRIES!!! PIZZA! They taste pretty good, too.
7. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection (entry 5EUR/10EUR) is great, because you get to use the toilets (space agey) for FREE, and you can sit in the garden for FREE, and laugh at the fact that Peggy is buried there with a million of her silly pet dogs for FREE, and the lockers are FREE, and there is a tree by Yoko Ono, and it is all quiet, and there is a room of Jackson Pollock, and a Surrealist room, and there are DI CHIRICO PAINTINGS!!! and the restaurant is expensive-ish, but the people are NICE, and the tiramisu is NICE (not as alcoholic as Julia's, though), and the bread is FREE and there are complimentary biscuits and you get TWO TEABAGS with your tea... WE LIKE!
8. There are NO CARS IN VENICE! consequently, in the heat we've been having, everything off the tourist path is quiet like a lazy saturday afternoon... aided by the slow moving boats, the old italian ladies hanging out of windows, the old italian dogs hanging out the windows... it is nice where the tourists are not.
9. San Marco... DON'T BOTHER UNLESS YOU ARE THERE IN THE HEIGHT OF OFF-SEASON. I don't even think there were that many tourists in Rome!!!
10. BOTHER with the islands. Torcello is beautiful and sleepy and small, and was deserted back in the day because of malaria... the Basilica is really old (900s) and has a huge gold mosaic of mary in a byzantine looking style... very nice for the 3EUR. but get postcards for 30cents cheaper outside the church! Burano has cute, cute colourful houses. Wander around.
11. It will all be OK. Just budget for 20EUR a day more than you usually would. Then double it!

Please keep in mind that this is all written under a blanket of 30° heat... lovely so long as you don't have to come home to a cabin which is HUMID and probably 40°!!! We've had a great day, and hoping that dinner in camp restaurant is as good as last night! Hope you are all well, and will post pics soon - perhaps tomorrow!