Venice - Day 5

Our last day in Venice :( We ate our traditional breakfast at the hotel and then ventured out to catch the remaining sites and do a little souvenir shopping. First, we went to Saint Mark's Basilica (Basilica di San Marco), which amazingly only charged money to go upstairs to see the view from the top as well as the four bronze horses they stole from Constantinople (the ones visible outside are replicas).

The churches and most museums do not allow photography, but these rules are blatantly ignored and few even bother to turn off the flash on their camera. We saw some folks taking some pictures, with flash, and saw the security guard approach, but all he did was shake his radio at them and then move on, at which point they resumed the photo-shoot.

After visiting the basilica, we crossed the square to the Campanile, the large tower where Galileo demonstrated to the Doge. These days it has an elevator to the top (the tower itself was rebuilt after the collapse in 1902). The views from the top were spectacular, and you can see pretty much everything in Venice and beyond. Oddly, the line to get down was longer than the line to get up. We wanted to get down before the bells ring at the top of the hour, deafening everyone up there.

On the way to our next destination, we found refuge from the sweltering heat in a relic from our homeland, Mckee Dees. There, we acheived the glorious feat of getting ice water (well, ice in a cup, and we added our own water). We also got some salty fries (very tasty).

Next, we headed to the church, St. Mary of the Friars (Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari), which was closed for a wedding the first time we stopped by. It was quite, peaceful, and ornate, but not so extravagant and decadent as St. Mark's Basilica. For example, the entire ceiling wasn't a solid gold mosaic.

Right next to the church was the super-thin crust pizza place we ate at on our first full day in Venice. We filled up on water (twice, before and after). On the way back, we stopped in at mask and glass stores and picked up a few choice items here and there.

We made our way back to the hotel to grab our bags (we had already checked out), and waited a few minutes before heading to the Alilaguna water bus stop. We braved the heat and humidity once more aboard the extremely slow water bus to the airport (it's either this, or a 95 euro minimum water taxi).