Day 2–Venice city tour

We did a walking tour of Venice Saturday morning.  We crossed the canal to San Marco square and were given our blue headsets so we could hear our tour guide.  I’ve never felt like such a tourist, but they actually came in handy.

Our tour took us through the heart of San Marco Square…Doge’s Palace (including the prison which was actually connected to the palace!), St. Mark’s Basilica, and the Murano glass museum.

Doge’s Palace (white building on the right).  And notice how many people there are here???

Inner courtyard (this is the back of the basilica too)

Each of these steps had a different design.  Incredible

We weren’t able to take many pictures inside, but this ceiling up the stairway was amazing.

And the landing between the steps is 3 dimensional…

St. Mark’s Basilica (I didn’t get any good pictures of the entire church, so the first was found online)

More pictures of the square (I got this first one online, but it gives such a great view of the square)

The Bridge of Sighs.  Connected Doge’s palace to the old prison.  It was said prisoners would sigh as they crossed over, and looked out the windows for the last time before being taken to their cells.

Local legend says that lovers will be granted everlasting love and bliss if they kiss on a gondola at sunset under the bridge and be in love and happily married for the rest of your life.

Too bad we didn’t get the chance since it’s under construction.  Hope our marriage survives ;)

We ended our tour by going to the glass museum.  The only really, really cool thing there was the demonstration of the guy blowing glass.  INCREDIBLE.  In about 30 seconds he whipped out this horse

A little later that afternoon we went on our gondola ride. 

Totally over-rated. 

Well, at least how we did it.  I can guess that at sunset, in small, non-crowded canals, just the 2 of you, it could be romantic.  But this is how we experienced it…

Wait…where’s Jared???  Well, when you do a gondola ride the poor man’s way (or for us, free…so really I’m not complaining and still so glad we did it!) you ride with 6 people.  The guy in front of me and gal next to me are our friends, Jason & Colleen.  The couple in the back – total strangers.

Also, this is where we took off from.  Notice ALL the gondolas???  We left one right after the other, and we all took the same “route”.My mom put it best when she said, “so it was like a ride at Disneyland?!”  YES!

I don’t even have a picture of Jared and I together, on a gondola, in Venice. *sigh*

Speaking of Jared, here he is!

Being the complete romantic that he is, he was totally upset about not even sitting by each other.  uh, ya…doesn’t he look upset?  :)

It really was fun though, and a pretty decent length, and we got to see and wander through (by gondola, that is) a lot of canals in Venice.

Colleen & I (and our OLD gondola driver, Antonio)

After our ride we searched for almost an hour for a recommended restaurant, only to find it closed.  By then we were starving, so we ate at the restaurant right next to it.  I got pizza.  YUM. 

My absolute favorite part during lunch was when some old Italian guy comes by and starts playing the accordion.  We didn’t ask him to come, and we didn’t really acknowledge him.  When he finishes his song he comes over and STICKS his little cup in our faces and WOULD NOT LEAVE until both Jared and Jason tipped him.  Oh, and he was playing “New York, New York.” Come on…If you’re going to force us to tip you, at least give us some Italian music!

We spent the rest of Saturday wandering Venice, eating gelato (we may or may not have stopped more than once!), and looking for a painting to bring home.

We returned to our hotel around 7:30, then went to find some dinner with Jason & Colleen.  We found a place with sign that said, “Best pizza in Venice”.  Ok, I’m sold for 2 reasons…

1 - It totally reminded me of the movie Elf where Buddy congratulates the coffee shop for having the “World’s Best cup of Coffee”  :)

2 – By 8:30 we were all pretty hungry.

We all got calzones and they were HUGE and the dough was some of the best I’ve ever had.  Seriously.  Oh, and totally random, but this place had about 14 different license plates from the states hanging on the wall, one of them being Utah.