Three blogs in one day must be some kind of record! This one won’t be very long – thank goodness, you say?

We would have slep in this morning, but were woken at 7.10 am by a long drawn out siren, followed by a single mournful tone advising all us Venetians of an impending Acqua Alta. Only one tone, signifying a minor event, with flooding only in the lower areas of the City, rather than the four tones we heard last time we were here with the Dodds 4 years ago which signified that everywhere would be knee deep in water. Pete grabbed his video cam to record the event, and then went off to see how deep the water really was. Sensibly, I stayed in bed and read my book.

Once the water receded and after a rather large lunch we decided to go for a walk, to try and locate Brunetti’s Questura (Allan and Pat, we found it!). For those of you who don’t know what I’m on about, read any of the very readable books authored by Donna Leon, who writes about an inspector of Police in Venice called Guido Brunetti. We then wandered around the calles aimlessly and eventually found ourselves in St Marks Square. Lots of reminiscing about our previous visit, and of course lots more photos, some of which are shared in this blog. It’s wonderful just roaming around without thought or direction. At every turn we found ourselves in another wonderful place. And you simply can’t take a bad photo in Venice!

Before I sign off, here are a few of my thoughts and comments about the Venice night race. It was a starry clear night, with a full moon. Not a breath of wind, but very cold. There were no course numbers, just age group classifications. The Venice night race was the only one to provide a separate clue sheet for competitors, and had a 6 minute start procedure. For all the other races, the clues were printed only on the map, meaning loss of contact with the map while unfolding to suss out what you were looking for. Some of the elite Swedes had a bell tied into their shoelaces for the night race, a great idea as you could hear them approaching – ding, ding, ding, and get the heck out of their way as they charged past!

There was a food van at the event yesterday, serving burgers, wraps, patata frits, (chips) and BEER by the glass, for lunch!

We saw orienteers smoking at yesterday’s event. Couldn’t believe my eyes, and they were mostly young people too. Not something you see in Australia where everyone is so very aware of the health hazards. We are getting an overload of passive smoking here, as most adults smoke. Thankfully it is not allowed in restaurants, shops, or public transport. Cigarette butts litter the streets. Has no-one told them about the health hazard, or don’t they care??

We Aussies can pat ourselves on the back. Our event organising skills are fantastic, and information flow is excellent compared to what we experienced here. The language barrier was  problem here, an issue which I believe we deal with better in Australia. Well done, us!!

It’s dinner time. Ciao. Ilze.