Venezia 2: I Need Some Salad STAT

Well, I'm in Winston-Salem (aka The Dash) briefly...well, like 2 days and then I'm off to PA, MN and then back to PA. I'm taking my laptop along, and I just saw that my hotel in Minnesota has complimentary wifi, so hopefully I'll be able to finish this, do a quick cruise photo blog and be all caught up.

I'm very excited when we go to breakfast at the Danieli that morning. There's hot food: pancakes, waffles, hash browns, bacon, etc. There's also carrot, bell pepper and celery sticks which I snatch up even though it's breakfast in order to fulfill my craving for veggies. I also see that there is a bottle of "Vertmont" maple syrup. Strange? I didn't think that's how Vermont was spelled. Upon closer inspection, I see that the syrup is made in Canada. Seems like our upstairs neighbors are taking advantage of Europeans who don't know how to spell Vermont.

We have tickets to the Doge's Palace secret itinerary tour. (Doge's Palace pictured at top). It's kinda cool because we get to see the torture chamber, the cells where Casanova was held and the Bridge of Sighs. The part I liked the most was looking at the ledges of the prison cell windows where the prisoners carved these ridiculously intricate pictures with whatever they had in jail. Amazing.

We apparently had pizza for lunch. I honestly don't remember this at all, but my trip notes say "pizza for lunch," so I guess I'll believe it. After lunch, we have an assigned time to go into St. Mark's Basilica. At this point, I'm going to talk about the dress code for all cathedrals (except apparently the Vatican where I saw quite a few people slutting it up.) Cathedrals, and churches in general in Italy, require that your shoulders and knees be covered. If they're not, the church will sell you this stylish lab coat/kimono hybrid that's made out of a material that I can't even describe. Sometimes these are sold in little kimono vending machines. Luckily, I knew this and stocked up on pious clothing before the trip. My dad apparently didn't listen to my mom and wore the same pants like 6 days because he brought a lot of shorts...gross.

In between these tours and shopping, we spent a lot of time watching people. Both my parents had come down with colds and didn't really want to do much walking around. We watched a bunch of gondoliers maneuver their boats in what was basically a gondola parking lot. I think I have the steering down and am ready for my own gondola. It can't be that tough. We also watched little kids chasing pigeons in San Marco. I've decided there's a certain age (around 7 or 8) in which chasing pigeons is no longer cute and just becomes somewhat malicious. I had my daily gelato. Pistachio.
Really green! Kinda tasted almondy. We go back to the hotel and my parents take naps...obviously sickly. For dinner, I feel pathetic admitting this, but we go to the Hard Rock Cafe (the gondola parking lot that I talked about previously is actually pictured on this link if you watch the 360 tour pictures change enough). We needed American food. We get nachos and a chicken Caesar salad...heavenly. We got back to the hotel and watch the Red Sox vs. Tigers game. I'm so excited to have a non-news channel in English that I could care less what game it is.