Day 8 - The rain in Venice definitely makes it to the ground

Today we we set to explore the museums of Saint Mark's square, starting with the Doge's Palace. Finding the palace proved to be a bit of an adventure. First we were ambushed by the pigeon guy, that guy that grabs your hands and forces pigeon feed into them, then sprinkles little pieces on your head to the pigeons will perch there, then once it is all gone, tries to get you to give him money. Chen gave in, Mia did not.

Then we went into a fancy building that turned out to be a basilica and going through it felt like a cattle run tunneling into the butcher's shop. We came out better than the cattle at least. Finally, we found the actual destination (the palace) and happily explored the fancy rooms with the amazing painting on every wall.

The Doge was the ruler of Venice (sometimes called the Duke of Venice) for like 1000 years. The palace was the seat of governance, though I think he lived there too. The palace was also connected to the prison by the Bridge of Sighs. The prison was much nicer than I was expecting, but still not on my list of places to spend the night.

After a couple of hours of exploration, we finally set out for our second activity of the day, a kayak tour. On the way we tried to stop for lunch, first at a place that seated us, brought us drinks, then told us we had to order 4 pizzas when we wanted only two. So we left (we did ask about sharing before being seated). So at the second place, we made it very clear we were sharing pizzas. Since they were advertising free drinks, we were pretty sure we were going to get scammed somewhere, and sure enough when the bill came it had a 2 euro per person service charge. We were pretty pissed off, but not a lot could be done.

Then when we barely made it in time for the tour, we discovered it was canceled due to the storm warning. Yay...

So to console ourselves on the rainy way back, we split a large slice of nugget (torrone morbido). It was very yummy.

Then in order to punish ourselves further, we went to yet another museum (because it was included in our ticket). It was kind of pretty and interesting, but the Doge's palace was more interesting and we had just seen it in the morning.

Then we made yet another stop at the grocery store, went back to the apartment and made dinner, then retired for the night.