Venice - St. Mark's and Doge's Palace

The next morning we hit the main sights (the picture here is from the boat we took everyday) – St. Basilica and Doge’s Palace. The Basilica was cool, a really old cathedral, but the Doge’s Palace was much cooler (pictured here).

It took about two hours included lots of history of Venice. One of the neatest parts of the museums we visited was not about the people that have lived there but about Venice itself – how it used to be a superpower because of its trading, and how it slowly lost that power over time.
The rest of the day we shopped around for a while. I bought a small day bag/gym backpack, Em bought a scarf, and Mike and Tiffany got some Venetian glass souvenirs. We finished the evening with at a restaurant that was really disappointing – small portions, tasted like rice-a-roni, etc. But we made up for it by going to the ‘best gelato in Venice’ (according to Rick Steves) and he was right. It gave by far the biggest portions and tasted great. As we were trying to find the gelato place we met up with another backpacker (we had asked him for directions and he was lost too) named Roan from England who, it turns out, is sleeping next to Mike and I. He was a little different but really nice and spent the evening with us. We found a spot by the water and sat down and he played some songs for us on his guitar.

It was fun and he was good although his songs became a little interesting… We had asked him if he wrote songs and Tiffany said ‘Do you have any songs about a girl?’ and he said ‘No, buy I do about a man’ and then started playing it. Needless to say, the lyrics were disturbing and he sang parts of it extremely loud – awkward, but funny.
As we got ready for bed we all agreed that Venice was great and very memorable but it definitely could have been done in a day. We were ready and excited to move on to Florence in the morning.