Venice, Italy

To answer Karen's question from yesterday, no, we can't start with these pictures. We have to go in order!

I'm starting the playback of the trip from Venice. We had one day there before getting onboard the cruise ship. This is our hotel. It took forever for us to find it. We had a porter chase us down to ask us (twice) if he could take us and our luggage to our hotel. He wanted 26 Euro for the job. We declined.

The hotel would have been very nice, except that we were given a room right on the busy street (probably one of those windows is our room), and we could hear every footstep, every voice, every suitcase wheel that went by. We didn't sleep well.

We found a little shop that sold pizza for only 3 Euro. It was right next to this fancy restaurant.
Here's a gondola guy waiting for a job to come his way.
Isn't this just how you picture Venice? Well that is how it really is!
Venice is made up of tiny little islands. Each island has its own name. This picture (below) is St. Mark's Square on the main island and is the primary tourist attraction for all of Venice.
You are not supposed to feed the pidgeons because they're only supposed to eat food that is laced with reproductive-suppressing stuff. The pidgeons probably outnumber the people on the island. Bud wasn't too keen on posing for a picture like this. I don't blame him. I wouldn't do it either, so this picture gives you the idea of what the pidgeons do all day.
Seriously, they're out of control.
This is the Grand Canal.
I would tell you the name of this place, but I don't know what it is. So, just know that it's a church. They have a lot of churches over there, but I don't know if any are actually used for churchy stuff.
This is the inside square of the Doge's (say dodge, with a long O) Palace.
This is the stairway you can see in the picture above to the upper right side.
In a previous post, I showed you a picture of what I thought was the bridge of sighs. I was wrong, THIS is the bridge of sighs (with a bunch of construction junk around it). The prisoners would walk across this bridge to their fate of imprisonment or death, after being sentenced for their crime.
This is St. Mark Cathedral. They say Saint Mark's body is buried behind the main alter inside. I can't verify that, because I didn't see much while inside. We only had 5 minutes there before they closed for the day.
Nice sunset with the main clock tower that's hundreds of years old.
We enjoyed Venice a lot. While there, we went to a glass factory, and I'll show you those pictures tomorrow. Take notice of the time of this post...my body is still on European time!