So we finally landed in Venice and got picked up from the Airport by Alessandro, whom through previous phone-calls barely spoke English, but during the car-ride home, we realized that we never ought to judge someone by their first impression. The more we spoke, the better we began to view him - he seemed warm, friendly, caring and makes a well appreciated effort to try and communicate with us in English. The room was stayed in was exactly as the pictures stated. Large room with 4 individual beds, that could host a total of 5 people. It had two bathrooms, both fairly clean - however the shower was a bit of a tight squeeze for us, since me and my friend stood 6foot tall. He stocked the fridge with lots of water, yogurts, local peaches and even gave us our first bottle of "true Italian wine"

After a quick toast, welcoming us to his country - he provided us with his only set of keys** and left, not coming around to intrude on us until the final day, where he was nice enough to drop us to the airport. We felt more than happy to provide him with 20 EURO's as he made our trip memorable, and gave us the privacy that we'd expect from living in an apartment, treating it as our own home.

The only real draw-back, and this is me being terribly nit-picky, was that we stayed on the mainland in a neighborhood where not a lot people spoke English, but besides the reality check for us that we were in Venice Italy, the neighborhood was pleasant. There was a bus stop that was literally 10 steps away from our front-door; coming around even 15 minutes, little up the road they had a lovely small bakery beside it, a kebab shop, and even a small sports bar! The bus only took 10-15 minutes to reach Venice, and was always packed with friendly, chatty tourists and locals - everyone eager to meet someone new!

Alessandro, you've been awesome mate! Thanks for having us, and if we ever come back, we know we'll be coming home =]