Day 4- Venice

This morning we started off with the hotel complimentary breakfast, which consisted mostly of toast and cereal with coffee and OJ. After breakfast we headed to St. Mark’s Square (Piazza Santo Marco) via the Rialto Bridge. The Rialto Bridge is one of only two bridges over the Grand Canal and has shops along both sides. It was fairly crowded but not as bad as the sights in Rome were.
After crossing the bridge we headed down to St Mark’s Square, which is essentially on the farthest corner of the city from our hotel. The square is enormous and is, like you will see in movies and travel books, filled with pigeons. We were earlier than most of the tourist so we were able to get tickets up into the bell tower beside the duomo (the duomo is the largest church in the city). The top level of the bell tower is the highest point in Venice at about 7-8 stories tall and gives a very impressive view of Venice, Mestre to the north (the city across the water on the mainland), the Adriatic Sea to the south and east and the Alps in the far north.
The duomo, St Marks Basilica, is a massive church with five domes. The interior ceiling and the front facade is decorated with gold mosaics depicting the lives of different saints and apostles. I will not even try to describe the church in detail because it is just something that you will have to see. It is just massive.
After visiting the church, we walked along the water and did some shopping, then made our way back to the Rialto bridge via an inland route. Since it was lunch time we started looking for a nice pizzaria to eat in. We found one on a back street away from all the tourist traps. The staff was all Chinese, which looked bad, but almost all of the patrons were Venetians, which looked very good. The pizza was very good and the service was not bad, which is really surprising for here. Sarah and I had capriccosa pizza which had olives, mushrooms, artichokes, and prosciutto on it. A lot of Americans ask me what the pizza is like over here. The crust is usually thinner, there is less cheese and the tomato sauce is thinner, but it tastes better somehow. My theory is that everything is fresh and hand made. A pizza like that in America would cost about $20 because of the time and quality of materials involved; here it was 5 euros apiece.
After lunch, we checked out of the hotel and left Venice to return to the Di Bagnos. This time we took the Auto Strada, Italy’s interstate system, back through Bologna, Ferrara, and Florence. We were not able to stop in any of those cities due to time constraints, but we did see the duomo in Florence from a distance.