Day 7, 8 and 9 - Venice

Day7
We arrived in Venice around 1:30pm from the 2hour and a bit train ride from Brescia... We are abit restless wanting to see more of Italy right now! We get to the station and walk outside, to our amazement the so called bus number are not what we thought... These buses are very different indeed, they 're actually boats, and taxi's are smaller boats. We purchased a 1 way ticket (6 euro's each) to Lido, one of venice's islands just out of the main Island. We arrived at our hotel about 30-40 minutes later, checked-in and quickly ran out of there. With our stuff safely stored we now headed back to the "bus system". Here we had time to look at special offers (which we should have done when we got to the train station but didn't - would have save 12 euros [20$]). They have something for people under thirty called Roaming venice, it costs 4 euros and gives u discounts at almost every museum and site, as well as instead of paying 30 euros each for a 72 hour boat pass, we only had to pay 18 euros... So total cost of passes (22 euro's each and half museums!) So we got our passes and landed at Zaccaria stop, this is where Piazza San marco is and most of the life of the city. We decided to skip the museums for the first day and just get lost in the millions of alley ways and side streets in venice (no cars or vehicles are in the streets of Main Venice... everything is by foot or boat). We spent 3 hours+ walking through everywhere checking out all the cool little shops and a few of the churches. The masks that are everywhere in Venice stores are amazing and all differently designed. We stopped at this little restraunt at 8:30 pm to have some dinner, we decided if we are going to have one romantic expensive dinner, it may as well be in Venice. We ordered a bottle of wine (whihc was fantastic) and each had a pizza (ola had the Tuna and Darrin had a Salami) - This was the best pizza we have ever had. We ate pizza in Italy two more times, but nothing compared. After walking for the entire day, we headed back to our island and dropped by the local store to buy bread, drinks and sliced meats/cheese to make sandwich's for the next 2 days. Off to our room to play some cards (crazy eights) and straight to bed.

Day 8
Ola wasn't feeling so hot, so I decided to let her sleep in a bit... I watched CNN news, the only channel in english anywhere in Europe (exept english countries) - I was really up to speed my whole trip on everything worldwide hehe.... at 11pm I pulled Ola out of bed, as we only had 1 more complete day after today to sight see and Venice may be small, but there is still alot to see.
We started off by going into the museum of Ducale. This place brought us into the old Palace (Palazzo) of the Doge - An elected official for life that represent the state.

What is a Doge?
{The Doge once elected was the doge till he died - like the pope (except not religous icon). His duties were to attend all counsel meetings and courts procedures. He had to move himself and his family into this palace and live there everyday. He also could not leave the city without a special permission letter from the counsel, and he had to be escorted where ever he went. He was considered the speaker/symbol of Venice, but actaully did not have any more power than anyone else in an assembly, exept for the fact he was the symbolic figure to the people.}

In the palace, we saw many of the pillars, statues and original structure of the building. We also saw many of the art work on the ceilings and walls that were typical of the time. It brought us through the living quarters, into the armory, the court houses and even into the underground prisons - all accesible from the palace. *this is our top choice of museums to see - if you could only see one. It has a little of everything and is very large (took us 4 hours ++ and abit to walk through this gigantic place, but Ola and I really take our time reading everything, so probably 2-3 hours normally) Because we started so late it was about 5pm and we hadn't eaten. We grabbed our packed sandwich's and ate in the middle of San Marco Square. We then walked around abit, checked out a few more museums, as well as this little exhibition on Music (mostly violins and other string instruments). We got back to our hotel at 9pm so we could get an early start for our last day.

Day 9
Up at 7:45 and eating breakfast by 8:30 (we did it, nice bright and early start :)! )

*important point for later on - I tried and egg and said "this tastes funny" Ola tried it anyways and argues that it doesn't... With me telling her not to eat it, naturally she does anyways!

Okay backto Day 9...
we started off by going to the correr museum. When we arrived we found out that our tickets from Ducale also included here... We left our tickets at our hotel - 30 minutes away... so we could A. Go back and get them which will take 1 hour out of our day or B. pay 7.50 euro (10$) each and just buy new tickets.... After 3-4 minutes of thinking we decided to buy the tickets... The man at the counter who watched us discuss the whole thing gave us two free tickets and let us go in.... This museum included: spacious rooms filled with wall/ceiling art work, many sculptures and libraries in their original states. It was also linked to the National Archeological Museum - which had many painting and large armory section and many pottery/coin and other misc objects found during excavation. After 2-3 hours we were done and headed off to the largest cathedral in Venice - Santa Maria della Salute (three stops from Zaccaria - called Salute) unfortunately it was closed till 3:30pm so we took a bite to eat (sandwich's) on the stairs and then headed a few blocks down to Peggy Guggenheim Collection (museum of arts). It was filled with many famous artists and even had the burial site of Peggy Guggenheim herself along with her 12 dogs that she had during her life {GROSS} but whatever.... 3/4 of the way through the museum ola started feeling sick
***** REMEMBER THE EGG?*****
this little part is my payback hehe
... So we left and headed back to the hotel, where Ola was extremely sick all day and most of the night! Cannot say i didn't even have a little smirk on though, even though i was the one taking care of her! I felt so bad for her I let her win at cards.... (Ola even today believes she won fair and square). -------> CNN news once agains was fun while she slept mostly... and Darrin watched reruns of news every 30 minutes :)!