Basilicas and Vaporettos

We decided to spend our last full day in Venice visiting some of the more touristy attractions that we had missed over the weekend because it was so busy. Monday's in Venice are extremely quiet, it was mostly just locals, and a few tourists here and there.

On the advice of Alessandro (the B&B owner) we decided to skip the Campanile in Piazza san Marco and catch a Vaparetto (water bus) to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, where you could get a view of Venice in its entirety from the Campanile at the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, without the ridiculous wait time!

We were up early and headed straight for the Vaparetto stop at the Rialto Bridge to take us to Piazza San Marco. This was the first time we took a Vaporetto ride through the Grand Canal, and we saw some amazing sights. The best way to see Venice really is from the water.

A brighter side of Venice

We slept in a bit on our second day in Venice, since we were so tired from the day before. We woke up to a lovely breakfast of Parma ham, yoghurt, cheese and pastries, with home-made cappuccino's. It was so delicious, I definitely love Italian breakfasts.

Alessandro (the owner of our B&B) advised us to leave Venice for the day, and go out to explore some of the smaller islands surrounding Venice. Apparently Sunday is one of the busiest days of the week in Venice, full of tourists. As soon as we left the B&B, we were just surrounded by people. There was some sort of orienteering competition going on, so as well as the masses of tourists, there were huge groups of people sprinting through the streets with maps and compasses.

We decided to visit Burano and Torcello, both of which are approximately 40 minutes from Venice by boat. It's so funny travelling by waterbus in Venice, there are marked lanes, so it's just like on a road. The trip out to the islands is so interesting, there are so many tiny islands with just one or two old derelict houses or churches.

We arrived at Burano first, and hopped straight onto a smaller boat which took us out to Torcello, which is only about 3 minutes away.

Lost in Venice

We spent three lovely nights in Venice over the weekend. Italy is fast becoming our most visited country, though being in Venice is vastly different to anywhere else in Italy. I'd more likely to compare it to Bruges, with it being so small and with canals everywhere.

We picked a great time to visit, the weather was beautiful and sunny all three days we were there, though colder than London. It wasn't as busy as it apparently is normally, as November is the off season. It is also one of the most common months to experience Acqua Alta, when the tides rise too high and flood the city. So we were lucky to have no rain or any flooding at all, though seeing Piazza San Marco flooded would have been amazing.

Sneaky Venice Peek...

Churros Con Chocolate

We had these delicious Churros Con Chocolate at a Spanish cafe called Churros Garcia on Portobello Road. Churros Con Chocolate are yummy hot Churros with amazing thick hot chocolate to dip them in, and then drink down afterwards. SO perfect for warming up when it's cold outside. As it was this weekend.

Christmas Lights on the Kings Road

We spent this weekend doing some rather uneventful things. We're off to Venice next weekend so we thought we'd just relax and catch up on a few things this weekend.

We had lunch at the yummy Japanese restaurant across the road from us, we both got the 'Special' sushi set, which means we had no idea what we were going to get. Everything was delicious... except the Octopus which still had its suckers on and looked unappetising! Needless to say I didn't try it, but Bradley (who is much braver then me) reported back that it was too chewy and tasteless. SO glad I gave that a miss!

We had a wander around Chelsea on Saturday afternoon, because I wanted to get some new winter boots I'd been looking at for ages, and discovered the King's Road has put up all their Christmas Lights. Peter Jones has decorated their entire store with lights, it's pretty dazzling to look at.

Devastation in Cinque Terre

I've just been reading about the horrendous flooding that hit the Cinque Terre last week. It has devastated the small towns of Monterosso al Mare and Vernazza, they are both completely cut off as their train lines have been destroyed.

I find it really hard looking at the photos and watching the footage, since we were only there a few months ago, and the people and towns are so lovely. It's just awful seeing these beautiful towns almost destroyed. Hopefully they are able to clear away the debris and re-build, so tourists are able to visit and bring in much needed revenue again. I'm so glad we got to visit before this happened.

I've attached some photos from various news sites below to show the extent of the damage and I've also attached some photos we took of Monterosso, which is the town we stayed in, and Vernazza.

Remember Remember the Fifth of November...

So we spent our actual Guy Fawkes day at home, spying on our neighbours awesome fireworks. The good thing about living in Chiswick is that the neighbours are rich and can afford good quality fireworks! Plus, they don't seem to have banned any of the ones that have been banned in New Zealand, so that's a plus too! Most of the ones around our neighbourhood seem to be those huge booming ones that always scare Piper under our bed at home, and are enough to make me jump every-time we hear them too.

We did however go and see a huge fireworks display on the Thursday before Guy Fawkes. There was a free display at the Chiswick Business Park down the road so we decided to go along. Apparently it gets better and better every year, and it's one of the best displays in West London.

It had been torrential raining all day, but it cleared up about half an hour before the fireworks began. The fireworks were amazing, probably some of the best we've ever seen, including the ones at Disneyland! A bit hard to capture on my camera, but I promise you they were spectacular.

Hope everyone had a fun Guy Fawkes weekend :)

Bed-bound on Halloween

I spent most of last weekend in bed sick with a cold, so we didn't get up to much except catching up on TV shows like Nikita and The Vampire Diaries and eating gingerbread and Halloween chocolates!

On Thursday I spent the day at home because I was too sick to go in to work. Unfortunately it was my turn to provide morning tea at work on Friday, so I had to pull myself out of bed long enough to go to the supermarket and buy ingredients to make scones... I didn't really HAVE to do this, I could have brought something and taken that in. But I had promised to make something homemade and I possibly do not make great decisions when I'm sick.

So I ended up making three batches of scones. The first was with the recipe from The Edmond's Cookbook, which did not turn out well at all.. the second and third batches were with my Uncle Len's recipe, which uses almost 400ml of cream in the mixture!

These turned out way better, and were much appreciated by everyone at work. Though I did get told off by Bradley when he got home, and sent to bed while he made the third batch.

The second batch