Wally World and the Alfredo Nazi

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Venice is beautiful but full of tourists. Yesterday we spent close to 5 hours at the Laundromat. Everyone inside was American and had heard it was the only Laundromat in Venice. Alistair wants to open a Laundromat here. They make a killing off tourists. The dryer was horrible and took many cycles to dry... this was after waiting in line with your wet laundry. If our clothing didn't smell to high heaven we would have left. After spending most of the afternoon there
we decided to ask our hotel clerk for the best Pizza in Venice and he sent us to the far edge of the island. We felt pretty confident with the large map of Venice we had with us. The city is like a giant Labyrinth. We kept walking into dead ends and kept circling past the same shops. "I swear we've passed this murano glass/ venetian mask shop/ gelato stand before". It took a good 45 minutes to find the restaurant only to discover that it was closed on Tuesday (like most of Venice). The next quest was to find an open and affordable place to eat dinner. We walked all the way to a Jazz bar in the middle of the island, then all the way back to our hotel by Piazza San Marco before we found a good place to eat.
This morning we went to Doge's Palace. By far the best "museum" on our trip. The end of the museum walk took you through the prison cells. I had heard of the secret itinerary tour which included Cassanova's cell, but they said they were booked until Sunday (we asked on Tuesday). After the Palace we went back to our room to change. They told us we were being moved to a suite at no extra charge because someone needed our room. The room is incredible. You have to walk up a flight of stairs once inside the door. There is a living room, dining table, master bedroom, bathroom and another flight of stairs leading to the rooftop balcony. Pretty nice. After our showers we headed over to Murano island. As our luck would have it, the shops were closing in an hour. I shopped so quickly that Ryan and Alistair gave up on following me. I was on a mission. When we got back to Piazza San Marco, Ryan bought a 1 euro bag of piegon food and gave some food to Alistair and I. I'm sure most of you reading this know I hate Pigeons so I just kept throwing my food at the boys and took pictures of them being attacked while screaming anytime a bird flew past me. It was a lot like Pigeon Park in San Juan. We finished our shopping and picked a restaurant based on me wanting pasta with Alfredo sauce. The man outside luring in tourists was very nice so we decided to go in. We were walked to a beautiful patio in the back and our waiter handed out the menus. I saw my alfredo dish but it had peas and ham mixed with it. I hate ham. I hate peas. I asked the waiter nicely if I could get pasta with Alfredo. He pointed to the dish with ham and peas. I asked if it was possible to get no ham or peas. In a rude manner he said "NO!". He was then added to the long list we have kept of rude people we've met on our trip. My journal (which is close to 80 pages at this point) has our drawings of these people. We wish we could have taken pictures of them but I think that any of these people would have ripped our heads off and tossed them into the nearest body of water. Our "cast list" was full of characters in Prague and we thought Italy might be cast free until our rude waiter tonight. Oh well, everyone else in Venice has been lovely, especially the man who gave me a free shot of Limeoncello and spoke to me in Italian while I smiled back at him not understanding a word he said.
Tomorrow we head out for the final destination on our trip. Munich. We have to leave here at 4:30am to catch the morning vaparetto to the airport (1 1/2 hour boat ride) in order to make our 8am flight to Munich. We're a little nervous about making our early appointment so we have a bottle of cheap wine and are on our way upstairs to drink on our balcony and soak in our last moments in Venice.

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