Italy day 9 - Friday

Friday - Venice!
I forced hubby to get up early so we could be guaranteed a ticket to the Accademia. The hotel breakfast was pretty good. I had some muesli with plain yogurt - hubby did his croisant with nutella - he loves that stuff!

We huffed it over to the Accademia and enjoyed the Tintoretto exhibit. The x-rayed examples were pretty neat. But kind of unfortunate for the poor guy if he made a mistake or decided to paint it differently!

Luckily hubby and i  do museums the same way - quickly!

Then we headed to the Doges Palace to see if we could grab a ticket for the SEcret Itineraries tour. We were in luck! 12:25! We wandered around the area checking things out! We stopped by the gardens near the vaparetto stop - cute! Eventually we popped back into the palace to see what there was to see since our tour would not go there! Some pretty amazing paintings and the one room where they “erased” on of the doges just cracked me up! He was found guilty of treason and crimes against the rebublic so they blacked out his painting in the room with all the portraits. Soo funny! We saw the prisons and the bridge of sighs.

It was time for our tour - which was in English - whew!

It was really a fun tour. We got to see a whole bunch of items that were not available otherwise. We got to see where Cassanova was held, almost escaped from, finally escaped from and how! We also saw the attic where they show you how the suspended ceiling is help up and how the huge room is able to stand up without any columns supporting the big beams. No photos allowed, so no info on that! I’d say that was my favorite thing of the day!

We left the Palace starving and went in search of Sandwhich row! We picked the Bar Verde - Green Bar and had toasted salami. Nummy!
After that it was nap time!

Later we took a jaunt to the Rialto Bridge. Really a neat bridge! We took some photos and traded photo taking with a japanese couple! Gotta love an island full of tourists!

We decided to take a load off and enjoy some cappachino while watching the boats and gondolas cruise around! It was relaxing and kept us dry during the rain storm!

We moved on after a while and explored the shops a block back. Some really amazing glass work. I’m still trying to decide what i want to get. Perhaps a glass pendant?

I talked hubby into doing a cruise of the Grand Canal! I read the book and found things while the boat cruised along! It was fun, but i’m not sure it was worth the multi hour taxi ticket! It is definitely amazing to see the “front doors” on the canal! The book said that building could not be modified, but there were a number that appeared to be being worked on, which is good to see since having them disintegrate into the sediment would be quite a loss! Prior to the cruise we popped into the Self Service Cafe at the Rialto for some American Style pizza slices! I did the everything - nummy! Hubby did the pepperoni! It was tasty, nothing to write home about but filled the hole in our bellies!

We took a round about way back to the hotel - aka we got lost and hubby got pissed. But we did find a laundromat, internet cafe and a couple snack shops! I call that a success!

I popped into a hotel to get my bearings and asked them to find where we were on our map - they looked at our map and said - well no wonder you are lost, and proceeded to give us a new map! I guess that explains why we kept not being able to find out where we are. It is rather disconcerting to not be able to see any landmarks to set you in the right directions. The canals don’t help, the buildings are tall, the streets are tiny...  I still find it fun. We will have to get hubby to relax more!  :)

We ended up at the self service part of the A LA Teatro for late night snacks. I had some of the wine again, and we ate 1/2 sandwiches with the crusts cut off! Very fun!

Tomorrow should be another full day!