Gondolas

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After a fairly restless night (which I won't go into), Ly and I (and Gajal) finally got ourselves together and headed to breakfast around 8:45am. It was a pretty nice breakfast, we had 3 choices for bread this time (crunchy, croissant, or roll), our own coffee/capuccino machine, juice, and milk/cereal...not too bad. We loaded up for the exciting day ahead and went off to explore some more of Venice.

It was about a 5 minute walk to San Marco square, where we checked out the basilica and doge palace there. I had gondola ride on the brain and kept looking yearningly to the waterfront. After some negotiation, we decided to ditch the line for doge palace and just get on the gondola instead. 20 euros per person is almost $40 for a 30 minute gondola ride!! Oh well it was worth it...our gondolier's name was Andrew. We learned that in order to become a gondolier, your father also has to be one. Then you have to go through a pretty strenuous school where you learn several different languages, history, and swimming. Before you can be certified to be a gondolier on your own, you have to pass a written exam, a swimming test, and navigate some of Venice's toughest turns. Who would have thought that so much went into becoming a gondolier?

Our gondola's name was Sonia, after Andrew's mother. Apparently all gondolas are female and are named after an important female in your life (mom, sister, wife, etc). Sonia was a pretty gondola. The three of us felt like royalty as we were getting rowed all over the city. We kept looking up and seeing people taking pictures and video of us from the bridges above. I should have charged for my picture.

By the time we were finished with the gondola ride, there weren't a whole lot of Venetian sites that we actually wanted to hit up, so that meant only one thing: shopping round 2. Even after buying so much stuff yesterday, I couldn't resist buying even more stuff today. I kept telling myself that if I finished all of my souvenir shopping in Venice, then I wouldn't have to worry about buying anything else for the rest of the trip....RRRIIIIIGGHHHTT, who was I kidding?

When we were finally tired of shopping, we tried to find "Crazy Pizza" but ended up settling for a cute pizza stand with really fresh looking pizza. Yum ham pizza! It was delicious! Afterwards we sat outside for a while until

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