might as well go to Venezia

Since everyone wasn't waking up early, I decided to do my own thing this morning and went to the Basilica of San Marco, since I've never been there before.  There is nothing interesting until you get to the Monks quarters upstairs. Where you see all the pieces by Fra Angelico, including his famous Annunciation fresco as soon as you get upstairs.  There is one Fresco in every one of the monks quarters, and some of them have like crypts or stuff on the floor of them.  The main thing is the prison cell of Friar Savanorola, and his like tomb, his cloak, and his desk.  There is no relics of him, since they burned him at the stake as a heretic and threw his ashes into the Arno.  It was pretty cool seeing that, and the famous painting of him burning in the Piazza della Signoria.  There is also like a Medici jail cell which was the biggest room of all the quarters.

They had a little display on all their manuscripts from like the 1400s on.  I went downstairs and they have a nice Last Supper overlooking their gift shop.  After this, it was time to round up the crew and go to the train station.  It was raining, so I didn't really want to go to Cinque Terre and have all the trails be closed, and have no opportunity to go swimming, so we went to Venice instead.  The train to Venice wasn't bad, it does confuse me though how many people get off at the wrong exit, instead of the the main train station of Venice, Stazione St. Lucia.   We got our vaporetto tickets, and cruised the outside of the city to get to San Marco.

We decided to go to Lido for lunch, but it was 3 pm by that time, and everything was closing, so we got some shitty paninis/pizza.  We were going to check out the beach, but by the time we got to that side of the island, the wind had picked up, and everyone was sort of fleeing the wind.  So we went back to San Marco Square, so I could get a better look  at the Basilica.  I wanted to see the treasury, and the crypt, and I struck out on both by 15 minutes.  That was pretty much the only thing to see in Venice, but whatever...I guess I'll have to go back to this city a third time?    I tried to get some better pictures of the Basilica this time, cause I had a better camera.  But the altar of Saint Marks is so far away, it's hard to get a good shot.

I just chilled outside the Campanile while everybody was doing their gift shopping, before we walked in the rain to Rialto bridge.  Venice is pretty dope in the rain, because there is hardly anybody walking around the city.

So we had a nice and pleasant walk from Rialto to the train station.   We didn't get to go to the Casino, but that's ok.  We went to the train station, and got seduced by some touristy restaurant near the station expecting a good dinner before we left.  However the service there was horrible, and we got there at 6, and had a train at 725. We didn't get our first course until 6:45, and we had to ask for the bill and our second course to go, which we got at about 7:15.  I'm done with touristy restaurants, where every patron was a tourist.  We barely made it onto our train, and had to eat our calamari on the train, probably to the annoyance of our fellow passengers.  At night, we started off at some bar called the Old Stove, and got some pretty decent hellerbock beers.  It was playing some like old school techno really loud, so that was a little strange.  I also finally got to see the Il Porcellino statue, that everybody rubs the snout of.  After this we went to the Red Garter again, so they could do karaoke.  Which they did a great job of Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers.  But man, I hate this place so much, yet I always end up back here. To  my surprise, the doner place we liked wasn't open, so we went to another bar, the Lion's Fountain pub.  They had some Arizona Diamondbacks game on tv, so it was great seeing live baseball again.  It's a cool little pub there, but it gets stuffy there quick.