Venice has always been susceptible to varying degrees of general stinkiness as it`s built on a series of canals that are regularly flooded by the Mediterranean. In summer it can be particularly bad due to the heat and an influx of more than twenty million tourists.

Starting this year, pay virtually and pee virtuously [1] is the method that the authorities are hoping will prevent millions of visitors from using the streets as urinals. This happens as many restaurants and bars won`t allow casual use of their facilities.

Visitors can now go online and buy a “toilet card”. These are either cards for ten visits over five days or two visits in one day. High season costs are $0.90 per piss, low season $0.65. The trouble is that these have to be purchased fifteen days in advance!

How do you work out how many slashes and dumps you need in a day? A day spent walking around exploring the city, maybe taking in a gallery or two, might just warrant the two visits. But going out on the beer in a pub crawl could entail a dozen pees and a couple of sloppy beer shits between bars.

To cap it all, if you forget to buy on-line, a regular toilet card bought at the bathroom costs $1.20 a go in high season and $0.90 a leak in low season, while locals only pay $0.33 to urinate all year round! Have foreigners got bigger bladders and bowels than Venetians? Or is this just yet another way of ripping tourists off?

I can see rebellious and drunken foreigners still using Venice`s streets as urinals for a long time to come.