How worried are the Venetians...

...about global warming then? I expect they´re bloody nervous, I would be if I were them.

Still, their city is pretty amazing. All the splendour of your standard old European city but with the added trick of streets made of water.

Neither of us had been to Venice before and even for the jaded euro-travellers we´ve become, Venice was pretty special. It didn´t hurt that we were staying in a very cool part of old venice at a B&B recommended by a friend (hat tip to Nige). The place only had two rooms, both overlooking a canal (luckily water craft seem to be prohibited from using little canals after dark otherwise it´d be noisy). We chose the one that had the slight 18th century royal feel about it. Our first evening there we just wandered around without a map, and eventually found ourseleves crossing the rialto bridge (who would´ve guessed that the Venetians would name a bridge after a cinema in Auckland?) and then stumbled across St Marks square, with hardly a tourist or pigeon in sight. Fair to say we were both a bit gobsmacked.

The next day was the feast of someone or other (unfortunately our host at the B&B didn´t speak a word of English and our Italian still doesn´t extend beyond a few (surprisingly useful) musical terms- we knew she was trying to tell us something important, but we didn´t know what (all the museums and churches were free - though we didn´t find this out till the next day - and here we'd thought we were saving money by not stepping inside any museums or churches). We did get caught up in the festival too (literally swept along some streets toward an enormous church with no chance of turning around). After passing through the church we found ourselves on a street with lots of food stalls selling sweets (including these lovely fresh deep fried donut type objects) and helium balloons. Call me a cynic but I think we weren´t the only people that had come for the donuts.

We were only in Venice for a couple of nights before flying to Spain; Girona (an hour north of Barcelona) to be exact. We chose to go to Girona only because the budget airline (Ryan Air) lands there and pretends its Barcelona. We decided to stay a couple of nights there because the Lonely Planet (guidebook) says its lovely - and they´re right.

Its a decent sized town (90,000 people) , and mostly fairly modern and sprawling, but it has an old medieval centre bit. They´ve also restored about half the old city wall, and you can walk along it and enjoy fabulous views and lots of little secret gardens with the requisite number of park benches for those with tired feet.

From the year dot until the year 1500 or so Girona also had a thriving Jewish community (as did several Catalonian towns). The old Jewish district (called the Call), which had started out as just the area where most of them lived, and eventually became the area within which they were rigidly confined, was right in the heart of town. By 1497 (?), in the shadow of the inquisition, the reigning monarchs and Christian clergy had decided to expel them (this happenned all over Western Europe apparently). Following various historical and archelogical investigations they´ve pieced together the story of the Jews in Girona and established a Museum of Jewish History right where their old synagogue used to be. I spent a fascinating couple of hours there before racing back to our hostel to meet Lisa and catch our train to Barcelona. If you ever get a chance to go to Girona, take it! (They also have the friendliest and most helpful people ever at their tourist information office at the airport and at the hostel/hotel we stayed at).