Big day in Venice

We got up and were super excited for a full day in Venice….the city of Romance! We first walked back to San Marco’s square, to see the sights in the daylight. It is a huge square filled with beautiful buildings (a church and a palace and a bell tower) and LOTS of people and LOTS of pigeons. The pigeons are actually one of the tourist attractions. For one euro they give you a good size bag of corn to feed them. The second you have the corn in your hand the pigeons flock to you. They sit on your arms, head, shoulders and gather around your feet. They are very eager to get a piece of corn. We have some good pictures of me covered in pigeons. Erin is not so fond of birds so he was the photographer. Interestingly, we found out that they lace the corn with pigeon birth-control to help keep the population down.

We considered going into the church, palace and clock tower, but the line of people waiting was exceedingly long. Multiple tourists come to Venice just for the day (on cruise ships and day tours) and they all head to the main square. We decided to keep walking instead. We went by the famous Bridge of Sighs (it connects the palace and the jail…and the story goes that when a person was sentenced to jail inside the courtroom in the palace they were then lead to the jail…going across the bridge, looking over Venice for one last time and letting out a sad sigh).

From there we walked all along the grand canal, heading to the bi-annual international art show that happened to be open while we were there. We spent a good few hours looking at all of the very interesting art from all over the world. Everything from photographs to sculptures to actual video clips and digital art. It was pretty cool and we were happy to be far away from the masses of tourists.

We kept venturing deeper and deeper into the parts of Venice where only the actual Venetians go. We found a charming street with laundry hanging from all of the windows and multiple sidewalk cafes. We sat down for lunch with the locals. Erin had spaghetti with a fish tank full of seafood and I had prosciutto and cheese with bread. The service was super friendly and the location very quaint.

We did another few hours of walking, taking in all that we could of the winding canals, bridges, and many shops. We bought a bottle of wine and some cheese at a local grocery store and took it back to our hotel to enjoy on the balcony over-looking the grand canal.

We then jumped on a valporetto to the Rialto bridge stop (another famous bridge there) where we hoped on a gondola for a sunset cruise around the canals. Our gondolier was quite nice and pointed out many of the sights on the way. We kept up with tradition and kissed while going under the Rialto bridge.

Hungry again, we stopped for a light dinner at the ‘Snack and Sweet’…some quiche and a Panini sandwich followed by pistachio, berry, and chocolate chip gelato….yummmy!!

Our last stop of the night was back at San Marco’s square. At night there are three outdoor cafes which serve drinks and food and each one has a private orchestra. They call them the dueling orchestras because they are all just close enough that they have to give each other turns playing. We picked our favorite and sat down to enjoy the music and atmosphere. Our orchestra consisted of five lively venetians who sounded tremendous. The moon and stars were out and the square was lit up in a magical way…with the orchestra playing and people dancing to the music, I found it to be one of the highlights of our trip!!