We got up at 7 and tried to eat our hotel breakfast, but it was terrible. So we went out to try to catch the bus and it left us in the dust. It worked out pretty well though because I had forgotten our lens cleaner that we got to clean off the camera lens. We then waited for 30 minutes for the next bus to Venice. We were really running late at this point and we were definitely not making it to our tour at 9am. When we got to the tourist office and they said we could go on the tour tomorrow.
Then we got in line to St. Mark's Basilica. We went through the museum exhibit that was upstairs and got an up close look of the gold mosaic ceiling. We could also see the interior of the church. The mosaic depicts Bible stories that when read from East to West are in chronological order.
After St. Mark's we were hungry. We ran around in circles trying to find the place we had eaten at yesterday, but when we finally found it they weren't open yet as it wasn't even noon. We went to a place around the corner instead that Frommer's would have had us run from. That had pictures on the menu. I wasn't in a good mood that we weren't waiting for the place we liked, so I only ordered an iced tea. I'm glad I thought better of ordering food because Jason's carbonara looked like Chef Boyardee gone wrong. So, after that crummy meal we went to where we wanted to be in the first place. For our first course Jason had salad and I had vegetable soup. Jason had grilled pork chops and I had grilled chicken for our second course. It was delicious.
After our lunch we went to a Leonardo da Vinci museum that was full of replicas of his inventions. It was really neat to see them brought to life, and a few of them were not for our eyes only, so we got to have a little better understanding of some that we saw in action.
When we got through with the museum we walked through the square to find some gelato. A violinist was playing Ave Maria as we passed. While we ate our gelato (chocolate and coffee flavored) we talked to another gondolier. He had the same prices as before, so it seemed like that was the best we would get, and I know Jason really wanted to go on a gondola ride, but my hair looked terrible, so we decided to wait until tomorrow.
The last stop of the day was the Doge's Palace. It is the most visited paid attraction in Venice. We toured all through the place, saw lots of murals and intricate details in the architecture. We also went in the dungeons. There is a passageway that leads from the newer dungeons across the canal into the basement of the palace, this is actually where the name "bridge of sighs" came from. It was said that as the prisoners were being led to trial they would "sigh" as they glimpsed their last look at freedom.
We ate dinner at a tourist trap because I was tired and needed a break from walking. The food was decent but spendy. Then we took off for our bus stop to head back to our hotel for the night.
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