Day 6 & 7 in Venice

We arrived in Venice late in the day on Monday and took a water taxi to our hotel.  It was beautiful!  It was so cool riding in a boat everywhere.  As soon as we got settled in our hotel, we went to see San Marco Plaza.  It was so crowded and there were pigeons everywhere!!!  It was crazy!  We did NOT like it at all!  As we came to find out, later in the day a lot of tour boats and cruise ships let off at San Marco Plaza and that was why there were so many people.

The next day we got up early and went this cool outdoor market called Rialto Market.  This is where the locals go to buy their produce and fish and other things.  It was really neat.  We bought some berries that looked interesting and that we had never seen before.  They weren't very good.  Oh well!  They had every kind of fresh fish you could think of.  There were octopus, squid, live crabs, shrimp (with heads), some kind of flat fish, and a bunch of others.  We wanted to go to Murano next so we had to cross the canal.  We got to ride on a gondola.  The guy at the hotel told us that the gondola was the traditional way that Venetians would get around.  My momma read somewhere that you are supposed to stand while riding on the gondola so that is what we did.  It was very very very very ROCKY and we were a little scared.  I thought that the boat was about to tip over.

When we got to Murano we went to a glass factory and saw a glass blower give a demonstration.  Different minerals give the glass its color.  We walked around Murano for a while, had lunch, then went to a cemetery that is on another island.  It was built in the 1700's.  Really old!!  Oh, and Venice has the worst gelato so far.  It tasted like soft-serve. I did have 3 servings it though hoping it would be better each time.  It wasn't.  Off to Florence tomorrow.