If you have hours to spend at an international airport, make sure it’s Changi. I’m at a bar listening to a jazz trio of piano/percussion, bass, tenor play “I shot the sheriff”. Where else?

Getting back to Venice. Venice was marvellously different again. Still very Italian, but the canals and gondolas and lack of traffic make for something new.

I remember our walking tour going past St Mark’s cathedral (another ridiculously ornate cathedral, but in a different style again to the others) and Pam telling us the story of how St Mark came to be buried there (a covert mission by this church’s leaders at the time). For some reason the story personified the concept of apostles and saints for me and made them seem so much more tangible. I’m not sure what this actually means for me, if anything, but it was an interesting experience.

We went to visit a lace making demonstration that I literally fell asleep during (from exhaustion more than boredom… sort of), then to over to watch a man blow a horse. That was clever. This guy grabs a large molten stick of glass from the furnace and using nothing more than tongs and gravity makes a freaking HORSE from it in less than three minutes. Very cool.

Feeling game I ordered a Veal Liver dish from a restaurant on the Grand Canal, just near the Rialto Bridge, and had the single worst value for money meal of the trip. I didn’t enjoy the pasta, nor the side of veges, couldn’t handle the veal or amazingly salty onions, and the “Fresh Fruit” dessert course was a small bowl of chopped strawberries (but at least that course didn’t come from a can).

Still feeling game, Peter and I decided to let the blonde Melbourne girls guide us to the West side of the city where the shuttle bus stopped (there’s no motor traffic in the whole of Venice). This time the risk payed off and we arrived at the right place ahead of time.

The accommodation in Venice was nice – I scored a double bed the first night. We could get together and have fun outside these bungalow thingies cos there was a table and chairs and cheap beers available from the supermarket. I think our group really started to chill and get more comfortable with each other in Venice.

Sitting here is great. I’m loving the reminiscing, the music is fine (just had the trio do Celine Dion, now Fugees, all quite lounge-y), and the aircraft are rolling inand out making me think about how many individual lives there are just in this one little scene, and how little they intersect or overlap, but still make up a part of the view from this stool.
I swear I’m on my first scotch.

Venice gave way to Austria. We stopped before reaching our final destination, to go white water rafting which is a great concept for an exciting sport but wasn’t implemented wonderfully in this instance mostly due to the lucidness of the course compared to how much they talked it up (the rafters, not the Top Deck crew). Still, now I’ve got an idea I’ll do it again in a trice.

We stayed in St Johann in Tyrol which is a top little place with not many tourists in the main part of the town, but also has more than enough to keep an adrenaline junkie occupied.

Sports Bar, Chani Airport
Singapore