When In Roma: Day 9-Venice/Venezia!!! 2/5/11

Woke up this morning and went down to breakfast at 8am which was provided by hour hotel. Most places do that here and it's really really good. They have multiple kinds of croissants (I love the chocolate ones of course (p.s. certo means of course in Italian) because they taste likes donuts haha and if you know me you know my obsession with donuts or donnies ha ha. Probably because we always had powdered sugar donuts for breakfast at Grandma's or if I ever went somewhere early in the morning with my dad we would stop at the gas station and get donuts and milk :) All this donut talk makes me think about the old home video of Kel and Dad where Dad is teaching Kel how to say donut and poop. Hahaha it's super funny! Anyways besides the croissants they usually have cold cut meat, cheese, yogurt, fresh fruit (their oranges are amazing! Super super juicy) coffee, an assortment of fresh squeezed juice, nutella and jam (I miss pb sooo much!)cereal, and eggs and bacon. I'm surprised because I did not think they had big breakfasts, but everywhere we've gone has a wide variety of food. I also miss milk soo much! They drink like whole milk or something and I crave 1% or skim :( After breakfast we met with our tour guide (who talks super super slow btw) and went to Palazzo Ducale (doges palace) it was really awesome! They had a ton of dark wood with all sorts of carvings in it and paintings on the ceiling which seems to be a very popular thing here plus paintings wall to wall. Some of them take over an entire wall by themselves it's crazy! This place also had super old battle items in it like swords and guns and armor. It was really cool to see. It had dungeons/jails too in the basement which we walked through. They were made out of some kind of stone that would be super cold in the winter and super hot in the summer to make the prisoners suffer. Also there was a hallway where before they got executed they would walk through and it had a small window where they could get one last look at what they would miss when they died. Pretty intense/sad huh? Jodine couldn't get over how low the ceilings and doorways are in Venice because she's pretty tall it was funny. After we toured that place we went to St. Mark's Basilica. It was absolutely stunning! I can't even put it into words. The ceiling was GOLD! There were mosaics everywhere! Like tiny tiny piece mosaics. I have a pic with the ceiling even though we weren't supposed to take pictures inside our tour guide let us :) I could have sat in that church for hours upon hours and just stared at everything! Outside the church there were a lot of lion statues, the god of war, and god of the sea. The lion's were kind of like Venice's mascot. And the two gods were like the protectors of Venice. It was fascinating some of the stuff we learned. My favorite story was actually from the day before at the academia where the tour guide explained a picture that was supposed to be a painting of the last super, but the painter didn't think there were enough people in the painting and that the painting looked empty so he got creative and added jesters, dogs, children, cats, men fighting, soldiers, woman, all sorts of people. When the man who asked for the painting of the last super saw it he got really upset and said the painter needed to change it. Well, the painter didn't want to so instead they agreed to call it something different instead of the last supper. Pretty cool story :) I like learning about the ideas behind the paintings. After St. Mark's Basilica we walked along the board walk for awhile and around Venice in general. We found an Irish Pub/Bar that had the Italy vs. Ireland rugby game on. It wasn't for a couple hours so we decided to keep walking around and come back. I'm surprised we even found it again. Venice is called a place to get lost in not a place for maps :) I watched my first rugby game and it was awesome! I think it's the second biggest sport in Europe next to soccer because there was a ton of people in the bar cheering and shouting at the TV it was awesome! I'm glad Jodine was there because she plays rugby at Mankato State so she was able to explain everything to me. The game was 80 minutes and a super close score. Unfortunately, Italy lost by 1 point to Ireland. The final score was 11-10. After the game we walked towards the hotel. My memory cards were full because they still had high school pics on it that I didn't want to delete so I bought another memory card. Oh, you're probs wondering how I could take pics. It was because Clara had an extra digital camera she let me use :) It was an old canon camera, but it seemed to take pretty good pics. She used her super nice Nikon one. After we got back to the hotel we decided to get ready to go out. On the way home we grabbed some gelato for dinner… hehe because we can do that here ;) I had cookie gelato and it was amazing! We also found a small shop on the way home and got a bottle of Pinot Grigio. After we got ready we went out in search of Madagan's pub because we heard people were going there. We stopped this man who looked like Albert Einstein to ask him for directions. We asked him in Italian and he replied in English. Turns out he used to live in California and he is an Art Professor in Venice now and has lived there seven years! On top of that he's a VIKINGS FAN?! HOW CRAZY!! He helped us out and pointed us in the right direction. I'm not quite sure why we even ask people for directions though because we never really find where we are trying to get to. LOL. We ended up at some bar where we got Bellini's to drink. They are amazing! It's fresh fruit juice, white wine, and champagne. They were amazing! Jodine, Molly, and I all ordered different ones so we could try all of them. I had orange, Jodine had the classic flavor, and Molly strawberry. All of them were delicious! We met some kids studying abroad in Venice that were from England and tagged along with them to the next bar. After that we ended up at club piccolo and danced the night away!

Two second gondola ride across the grand canal, sorry molls you got cut out :(

The inside of St. Mark's Basilica.. I wish you could see it better the ceiling is amazing!

A little better pic of the ceiling, still way not as impressive as looking at it in real life.

Outside St. Mark's Basilica Just blown away by the view :)

Proscuitto Pizza YUM! I'm really bad about eating the first bite and then taking the pic lol

Glass Artist who was super talented!

Hi little elephants! Aren't they cute?

Just takin a pic with the Venice police, being the awkward one out who turned sideways...nbd.

Hello Little Ballerinas!

Apparently, this is how they serve cocktails in Venice, the vodka and ice in one glass and pop in the bottle, you mix it yourself...I'm not going to complain about that!