Much Like

We started our day with an early trip to Piazza San Marco and beat the crowds. The first thing Whitney said was that it made her want to sing The Light in the Piazza but she only knew four words (while it kept her quiet today, it did not stop her from singing Les Mis in France... just saying).

Starting the day right!

We'd been told to wait to go to Basilica San Marco, which is probably the most well-known landmark in Venice, until later in the day when the sun would really shine into the building, so we went to Doge's Palace. In case you're still wondering, we are not mature travelers and should not have been let loose on Europe because we made a lot of jokes about the doge meme while we were there.

Much like.

We had no idea what a doge was, but apparently they were important and needed a lot of stuff. We later learned that they were highly-elected officials. I think our favorite part was the prison and "the Bridge of Sighs" that led up to it. Casanova was actually held in the prison there after being accused of being a magician but we couldn't find his old cell and were very disappointed... You would think that they would have it labeled if they were going to make a big deal about it, but no.

After that, we took about four steps across the square and rode up to the top of the Campanile, which is a lighthouse/watch tower thing, for some sweet views of Venice.

We were grateful to avoid stairs for this view.

We then took another four steps across the square and visited the Museo Correr, which had all sorts of things but was once apparently the residence of Princess Sissi. We do not know who she was (we will be investigating later today) but the word "princess" caught Whitney's attention and our ticket to Doge's Palace also allowed us to go there as well.

We scurried off for lunch after that, choosing to leave San Marco, hoping that we would be able to get away from the touristy places and their expensive menus. We found a little place a few roads away and got our introduction to pasta in Italy. Did we pick the best restaurant in the world? No. Were we disappointed? Also no. I got carbonara (it is like the one thing I can cook and I'm convinced that Italy is going to put my dish to shame so much that I'll never make it again, although that did not happen after this lunch) and Whitney got something that had lots of cheese (her favorite).

We wandered some more after that, stopping and somehow managing to take exactly the same photo that is on the cover of our tour guide.

Their picture

My picture

We walked backed to Basilica San Marco and waited our turn. We knew that we had to dress modestly and were hoping that we'd achieved this, but apparently God hates looking down at shoulders so we had to buy ourselves some before we could go in for a euro a piece. The Basilica is perfect. Whitney and I are still in shock from it all. The Byzantines had their stuff together because the gold mosaics were insane.

We did our good deed for the day after we left -- while they have a place for you to throw out your shawls, we decided to walk out with ours and then scoured the line for women who had exposed shoulders or shorts and who weren't carrying any type of shawl or jacket of their own. At first we thought that we might have been the only two tourists who were stupid enough to not bring any extra clothing with them, but we eventually found two nice ladies right at the end of the line!

We wondered to the Rialto Bridge and Market. The Bridge here is the really famous one and is probably the one you've seen in any photograph of Venice ever. We caught the tail end (pun intended) of their fish and vegetable markets that were closing up for the day. You could buy a whole octopus there like it wasn't a big deal. Why yes, I'll take eight tentacles, my wife and I are having guests over later tonight.

After that, we succeeded in getting lost, then found again on our way back to the hostel for a mid-afternoon rest bit and some good, old-fashioned blogging.