Italy Vacation – Day 5: Venice – 9.13.13

Day 5 in Venice was another beautiful day! We had a few quick visits to the museums in San Marco, and spent the majority of the day walking all over again. The highlight of the day was the gondola ride though!

We woke up early, had breakfast in our hotel since the breakfast seemed decent enough and then headed out towards San Marco. It was nice walking around before 9am because no one was around. Once 9am hits, everybody is out and moving around. We got a St Mark’s museum pass to Doge’s Palace and Museo Correr. We walked around Doge’s Palace first, which was okay. Reminded me of Palace of Versailles a little bit. We waited on line at the Basilica for 15 mins or so since it’s a fast moving line and it’s not part of the museum pass. I had to go across the street and drop off my bag and then head back over. We saw so many churches on this trip I don’t really remember too much from that. The same goes with the Museo Correr. I was just museum-ed out already.

We walked up to the “ghetto” part of the Venice, in Cannaregio and then headed back down when we reached the train station. We sat by our spot again by the Rialto Bridge and watched more of the boats going by. It was fun seeing some of the gondolas have singers on them. We wondered if they were a package deal or did the singers just decided to get on and try to make some extra money.

We ended up doing our own gondola ride around 5pm. I was trying to do it a little bit later when the sun wasn’t so harsh in our faces but with going through a lot of the canals, it didn’t really matter. The price for a gondola is a flat rate of 80 euros (about $105). It’s expensive and you can’t really negotiate, at least you can try but we weren’t so lucky. You can try sharing the ride with a few other people but what fun is sharing a gondola with a bunch of strangers? It’s more romantic and fun if you’re doing the ride with your significant other. The gondola ride was really pleasant, relaxing and really glad we did it. The gondolier reminded me of the actor who played Roose Bolton on Game of Thrones. Just glad he wasn’t Roose Bolton haha. I would have loved to went kayaking throughout Venice, which I saw some people doing. The gondola ride was about 40-45 minutes and we went through the Grand Canal a little bit and then through Cannaregio and San Marco. The gondolier was telling us certain historic spots like Marco Polo’s house or something along those lines. Overall, the gondola ride was a great experience.

That was pretty much it for that day, just another lovely day in Venice.

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Tags: Doge's Palace, gondola, Italy, Italy Vacation, Nikon D800, San Marco, travel photography, Venezia, venice