Venice Day 2

Day two in Venice.  We are up early, enjoyed a large and very good breakfast and decide to take the long way to St. Mark's Plaza, only like the largest plaza ever.  We did well getting there, got to share the roadways with mainly local commuters, walking to work.  As we got closer to St. Mark's, the stores became more and more expensive.  Prada, Gucci, Louis V....  We made a few wrong turns but found our way eventually.  The plaza was very, very large and had so many pigeons hanging around.  We walked the perimeter and decided to wait to tour St. Mark's Basilica until some of the tour groups left (we've learned to avoid tour groups!).  We found the road that goes alongside the Adriatic Sea and were soon overwhelmed with tourists.  Plenty of vendors selling things, people dressed in opera outfits charging 5e for a picture and plenty of gondolas (although those rides didn't look very relaxing as they were on open water!).  We did pass the famous Bridge of Sighs that goes between the palace and the jail, named Bridge of Sighs for the sounds the inmates would make as they were taken to prison.

Upper left - lunch next to the Grand Canal, Bridge of Sighs,
 Lower left - view from St. Mark's Campanile (bell tower), St. Mark's Campanile

It's so hot here, they had record breaking heat.  I'm so thankful that I work an Ink N Burn shirt that kept me much more comfortable than a cotton shirt would have.  I had back sweat by 9:30am!!  But this just allowed me to have gelato 3 times this day.....  
We decided not to tour the Basilica as we were just too hot for the line.  We did go up into the bell tower and got some great views of the entire city.  We wandered back to the Rialto Bridge area and ate some lunch on the Canal again.  I had been admiring the glass jewelry that is made at a nearby island and decided to purchase a nice necklace, earrings and ring set.  They are simple and I think I'll wear them a lot. Then it was back to the air conditioned room to rest up.
After showers, we found a little place for dinner.  I don't remember what I got but I do remember that Brett ordered a beer and got the 25cl size, which is basically the size of the juice glass!  My wine glass dwarfed his beer glass, it was pretty funny.

After dinner we took our gondola ride!   I had been told to take one on the smaller canals as it wouldn't be as rough as the Grand Canal.  We had passed a "stop" several times near our B&B and decided to stop this time.  Our gondolier has been a gondolier for 41 years!  He no longer lived in Venice, he said it has gotten too expensive and most locals lived on the mainland now.  He said the plazas used to be filled with kids playing soccer during the evenings but they were all empty now.  He was very good at maneuvering this 30 foot gondola around tight, 90* turns, I was very impressed and told him so.  He did say that the younger kids like the Grand Canal area but he prefers the smaller canals because they are more interesting to sail on.  I enjoyed our ride but probably wouldn't need to do it again, unless we split with a couple as it was 80e.

See my new necklace?!

 We were let off on the other side of the Grand Canal so we just used this time to do some more exploring.  I was happy to recognize some places that we had seen earlier in the day, it almost felt like we knew where we were going.  We did find where we would get on the water bus (much cheaper than the water taxi) the next day and ended up eating another late dinner at a family run restaurant that was delicious.  Brett had the best lasagna I've ever tasted, it had a yummy cream sauce instead of tomato sauce.  So good.  We found our way back to the B&B, petted the alley cats and fell into bed.