Venezia (Day Two)

So, we are currently in Rome. I have my laptop again (so nice to have the American keyboard again) and I need to work on these backlogged blog entries so that they can all be up before we go on the cruise tomorrow. Fortunately for me, I have been taking to writing notes about each day in my Moleskin notebook ever since we ran into Venice and the expensive Internet. Anyway, will be doing blogs for each day, but they may only be updated every once in a while because god knows when I'll be getting Internet.

So we all woke up pretty late our second morning in Venice. Like to throw those sleep in days in every once in a while. We got ready pretty quickly and went out. Since apparently we have a great view of it from down the street, the first stop of our tour of Venice was the Ca' D'oro, which is a very pretty building on the Canal, the purpose of which I do not actually remember.

Next, we went out to the Rialto Bridge area to get a late breakfast/early lunch. Just grabbed some pizza slices and moved on. First big stop of the tour was the Chiesa Santa Maria Gloriosa Dei Frari, which is a Franciscan church and is also where Titian is buried. It was not open by the time we got there, but it wouldn't have really mattered because none of my siblings and/or Andrew wanted to shell out 2.50 euro to go inside.

We explored the canals some more en route to the Accademia Gallery and eventually stumbled upon a church that had this exhibit with inventions of Leonardo da Vinci on display. He didn't actually make the inventions, some guy built them based on da Vinci's sketches. Some of them were interactive, which was pretty cool. And I have to add that this man had some crazy ideas about how to get man to fly.

Anyway, after that stop we started back out towards the Accademia. According to my Rick Steves map of Venice, a big gondola workshop was a little out of the way, but on the way to the Accademia. The area seemed just about right based on the tour from two years ago. Anyway, I went to where Rick Steves said it was and there was nothing there. I just ended up pointing at a random building and said that it was the gondola workshop. When I finally admitted to this later that day, I got made fun of constantly.

We finally did make it to the Accademia Gallery after that. Gianni and Andrew didn't want to go in. I did and Mia kind of did, so we went inside. It was pretty interesting. It's the big art gallery of Venice, but I am a bigger fan of the Uffizi in Florence. There was some really weird painting of like a snake attack or something or other that Mia and I laughed at for a while.

After leaving the Accademia, we backtracked a little to the campo with the da Vinci church thing. There was some gelateria that I thought my book had recommended. Turns out that it had actually recommended a gelateria of the same name in Florence, but this was some pretty top notch gelato all the same. I got it in a cone and almost dropped it on the ground immediately. That was fun.

We went back out towards the Accademia (which Andrew grumbled about), so we could see the church of Santa Maria di Salute, which is the circular church that they made to celebrate the end of the plague (I think). There is also an amazing (and uncrowded) view of the Grand Canal from the steps, so we hung out there for almost two hours after looking inside the church. After a while, we saw that a storm was likely about to hit. We did a lot of backtracking and went off in search of a restaurant the book recommended. We got there and it was closed until 7 (it was 6 when we got there). Some of the group had to use the bathroom and didn't want to pay, so we went back to the hostel. This was a great idea in retrospect, because it started pouring rain very shortly after we returned. I think Mia fell asleep and I ended up playing a lot of Sudoku, so the time was obviously well spent.

Around 6 or 7, Oppa called to tell me that there would be a train strike the next day that would commence at nine that night. Since we were supposed to be in Florence the next afternoon and were, as usual, planning on using trains, this was very much a problem. The next few hours were filled with stress and trying to figure out creative ways to work some sort of thing out to either get to Florence through some other mode of transportation or to stay in Venice for another night. Eventually, Oppa was able to extend our stay at the current place. This meant upgrading the rooms since there was no space in rooms without the bathrooms.

At around 10, we went out to eat. Decided to eat nearby because of the stress and ended up deciding to eat Chinese food at the restaurant across the street. This was a good choice. The food was surprisingly good (definitely better than the Florentine Chinese food) and very cheap.

We got back to the hotel and played Machiavelli until 1:30 and then got ready for bed and went to bed after that.