For any Venice romantics out there, here is a 33 sec video of motoring under the Rialto Bridge.

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Abbiamo una incidente ( We had an incident)

A minor disaster struck out little expedition a few days ago. We were packed up, on the road to Croatia, stopped at a supermarket to pick up essential Italian supplies as we headed into the unknown (in particular cheap beer), headed back to our car to find it surrounded by numerous Nigerian lads (probably 8) and 1 security officer. The boys had seen our car being broken into and had halted the robbery. We actually lost nothing but Frank Sonata (our Hyundai) suffered a broken lock and smashed back window.

Frank did very well in fact. He reminds me of that ad in Aus for insurance (it may be NRMA not sure). The one that goes “Can your car protect itself and shows the car door opening and knocking over a thief”. When these thieves picked our lock Frank did not yield. When they smashed the back window they still couldn’t open the door. (Good onya Frank) They were after the suitcase on the back seat which really had nothing in it. This was too big to drag through the smashed window. Probably at this point the thieves were interrupted by the Nigerian boys. The thieves hopped into their Fiat and then couldn’t find their way out of the carpark, however they eventually escaped. Well so the story goes.

We think the Nigerian boys hang around the car parks picking up trolleys to retrieve the 1 Euro deposited in them. It was chaos when we idly strolled into the scene with our bags of shopping. Throughout this episode all I could think was that I needed my camera to take some pictures for the blog. This is how journalists/ reporters must always react. I didn’t get any photos. It was all too quick. I was warned that the blog could take over my life. Blog your days are numbered.

Luckily my Italian has improved a bit as we searched for some way to repair the broken window. Ron assures me that there is no way of replacing the window quickly as Frank is old by European standards. Finding a hardware store was as difficult as anything we have done here. Anyway Ron did a wonderful job and Frank is now patched with perspex sheet and looking not too bad and not leaking. We have lost our central locking though.

Frank with repaired window held in with clothes pegs

So! We lost 2 days for repairs and have decided not to go to Croatia at all and have returned to our really nice campsite near Venice and will head back to England in the next few days. Another day in Venice will not be hard to take.