Venice day 1

Sarah and I woke up pretty early and set out on seeing Venice. We walked along many of the small streets going over bridges and turning corners for around an hour. Venice is not easy to navigate and nothing is straight and everything is basically little walking paths. There are no cars at all so the roads don't have to be big enough for cars. We got some breakfast at a bakery along the way and did some window shopping. Venice has a lot of great souvenir shopping. So many of the stores have Venetian glass which is gorgeous. We first wanted to go to the main Piazza, Piazza San Marco since there are so many things to see there. On our way we also went over the famous Rialto bridge. Once we got to San Marco we decided to go into Saint Mark's Basilica. It was a very pretty church with lots of gold on the ceilings. We happened to be there at the best time to see the ceilings or so said the tour book. We also snapped some pictures before being yelled at so you can see what it looks like ! So we walked around and paid to go into this one area, i don't know what its called, but it had this big thing of jewels that was amazing (no picture here, sorry). Then we went up to the top part of the church and got to see some of the ceilings upclose and they had a little museum thing and we got to see the 4 original horses which are inside the church. There are now 4 replacement horses outside which we have pictures with. The other cool part about the upper floor of the basilica is we got too have a cool view looking out at San Marco's square and the Dodge's palace and the water.

After that Sarah and I tried to figure out what the rest of the day's plans would be and then we went looking for a pizza place on the water. Which we found and it was super nice but I didn't get pizza haha because they had pumpkin ravioli that I really wanted to try because it seemed like such a nice fall day. So I got that and it was amazing ! After that we walked to the arsenal which is the place where Venice built their ships and they were super fast at is obviously. Then we stopped at this other church that had something famous or something haha and then we went to go to the Doge's palace.

So the Doge's were like Venice Kings but they couldn't really do much at all. They had no power over the government and they weren't really allowed to leave their palace so it kinda sucked to be a Doge. So first we saw the Doge's private rooms. Each Doge took their personal furniture though so there was basically no furniture in these rooms so each time they noted the impressive fireplace haha. Also the rooms switched function depending on the Doge in power so the information was very hypothetical. Also the rooms were really small comparatively.

Then we saw more of the governmental function of the palace which actually was the main building for the government. This way the Doge could visit without leaving his house. I think they had something like a senate and prime minister because there were lots of rooms for everyone to meet but i've already forgotten. The rooms were really impressive though.

It gets dark in Venice super early and so it was already dark as we were walking around the museum and we hadn't gone to the prison yet which is what I was looking forward to the most haha. The bridge that connect the palace to the prison is famous because it was the prisoner's last view at freedom. Roger and Jessica know what i'm talking about haha. So sarah and I were walking around the prison but it was almost closing time and we wanted to make sure we saw the bridge but we hadn't seen the entirety of the prison yet but Sarah made the executive decision to do the full prison tour haha so we started sprint walking through the prison to see more of the same empty cells we had seen before. Sarah added the nice little line that the cells were actually quite nice hahaha. It was cool to be walking around there the night before Halloween in the dark in a prison.

After that Sarah and I had a lot of eating to get done before we went to bed. First we went to Harry's bar which is the bar that created the bellini so we had to get one especially because it is a special drink for the Fiori family. Then we found one of the "best" gelato places in Venice so we had to go their before it closed because I hadn't had any good gelato yet. This place was not the greatest either but o well. Then we had to go to dinner hahaha but it did take a while to walk their and we got ridiculously lost. We were walking forever. We had picked out a specific place to go for dinner that the book had recommended and that we thought was close to our hotel. When we got there though it didn't look that great so we ditched it and went back to this other place we had passed that looked really cute. Got a great pizza called buffalo bill that had mozzarella, and buffalo mozzarella and it was so good. Then after that we went back to our hotel. However our hotel is on a street (aka a dark ally) that is called Calle de Forno but as we discovered there are multiple Calle de Forno's in the area of Venice we were staying and they do not connect. So it took us a long time to get home. We then took pictures of how hard it is to find our hotel at night.

Venice Day 1