Travel Tip #1: Always carry your passport.

Our full-day in Venice started out with a Vaparetto ride to St. Mark's Square.  On the way, we passed this gondola racing team. It was pretty amusing, but they were definitely quick!

We were trying to get to St. Mark's before all of the massive crowds, and thankfully, our plan was a success. The wait to get in to the Basilica was only 10 minutes!

On the left is St. Mark's Basilica, on the right is the Doge's Palace...

Unfortunately, like many of the other churches, photographs were not allowed inside. This had to have been the most ornately decorated church I have ever seen.  To give you an idea, this is just the outside entrance...

ALL of that detail work is made up of thousands of small tiles.  Yes, it is all mosaic. And it is beyond amazing on the inside!

We decided to splurge (both time and money) a bit and walk through the museum in the upper rafters of the Basilica. I am so glad we did, because it explained how they did all of the restoration work for the mosaics, gave a history of the Republic of Venice, and had a few of the original artifacts from the beginning of the church's history.  Another bonus: the view of the piazza and the harbor from the outside balcony!

After finishing up at the Basilica, we headed across the piazza to the Correr Museum. I wanted to see a specific artifact, 2 foot tall shoes from ancient Venice, but we ended up having to walk through the ENTIRE museum before we found them.  Tricky museum...advertise a certain artifact and then put it at the end.

By the time we finished up there, we were both famished, but not too hungry that we couldn't take a few pictures...

Contrary to other reports, etc...we didn't have a pigeon problem. There were maybe, MAYBE, a hundred birds in the entire piazza.

Now, based on the title of this post, I'm going to give you Travel Tip #2: Don't eat in St. Mark's Piazza/Always Check the Menu Before You Order. It turned out that each item we ordered (4 in total) cost us 9.80 Euros, a piece.  You can do the math.

Our third stop was the Doge's Palace.  Again, there was no line, so we went straight in.  And again, pictures were not allowed. I found that to be pretty annoying. But the history of the building, the Doge, and the Republic of Venice was very, very interesting. I definitely would have taken a guided tour, just to hear more stories.

We finished up in St. Mark's and headed towards the Venice Opera House, Teatro la Fenice, or The Phoenix. It's named that because of it's ability to rise from the ashes, quite literally. It's burned down a total of 3 times!

 In case you're not aware, Venice is an insanely confusing city with tiny, random streets and a compass is necessary! This is just one example and it was a main street to get to the Vaparetto station...

 We were headed to the Vaparetto so that we could cross the Grand Canal and head towards the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute and the Punto della Dogana, a contemporary art museum. They were both closed. But, they did offer a great view of the canal and the harbor.

 After that, we headed back to our hotel so I could change into something warmer. Best idea I've ever had.

Then it was off to the Rialto bridge for the necessary picture and a gondola ride!

We spent a few minutes after the gondola sitting under the bridge before heading to the Carnaggio area for dinner.  The restaurant we wanted to go to was closed by the time we got there (8:00!), but we found another one still churning out food.  Although we only had candlelight to see by, it was still delicious and memorable.  It was such a relaxing, pleasant, and romantic evening!

And then we got back to our hotel...

Do you see the firemen? How about the water hoses?

Now can you see the black smoke?

And THAT is why you should always carry your passport.  :-)

I think the best part of this whole experience was that Tim and I both stayed calm.  When many of the other guests were flipping out and practically attacking the staff for information, we stood on the outside, talked to a few of the other guests for information and made the best of the situation.  The hotel wasn't visibly on fire, the power was still on in ALL of the surrounding buildings, and we knew how separated our room was from the rest of the hotel. 

Eventually, we were let up one-by-one with a firefighter escort to retrieve our stuff. Thankfully we were both mostly packed and the rest of things were easily scooped into our backpacks.  The only casualty of this entire experience was my eyebrow pencil. Which I reminded Tim of every time we passed a Sephora for the rest of our trip... 

Here's the view of all of the guests waiting to get information and their things before we were allowed up...

 And then, of course, several guests took advantage of the drinks being served at the cafe next door to our hotel...

 By the time we got our stuff down from the hotel, it was...

And we didn't get into our new hotel room for another 45 minutes after that! AND it was in mainland Venice! While it didn't bother us that much, other guests had a fit that evening and the next morning. We took it as a sign to move on and head to Milan.