Woke up with a sore throat and swollen glands...this is no good. I almost never get sick. I am placing bets that it was from the lack of air on my face when on the plane. Stupid cheap airline...but saving $800 on flights and getting sick still might be worth it! I guess I just better not die from it!
Our hotel provided a nice little breakfast brought right to our room. It consisted of a powdered crossant, a roll, yogurt, capuccino, cookies, and toast. Along with an assortment of butter, jams, cheese, honey, and nutella. The hotel Ca' Bonvicini was decorated to reflect a regal design seen in many of the palaces. The furniture had a French feel, being white with gold painted trim and the walls were fabric covered Damask. It was located directly on one of the canals, but we had a room overlooking the road.
One thing that I really appreciate about Venice is the lack of all cars. Even with people walking around slighty drunk all night, it is still quite quiet and peaceful at night. Clearly cars would not fit down the roads and alleys in Venice, but I am sure in other places people would have modified the bridges so they could use mopeds. Instead, everyone walks and even delivery of goods is done using true man power and carts that are specially designed to go over the bridges, which are full of steps. It must be a really exhausting job!
Today we started our day on the other side of the island at the Accademia art museum. This museum is filled with Venice renaissance art. We found it interesting that in some of the paintings you could see the people using the ancient Roman ruin, such as one where there were Renaissance people bathing in an ancient Roman bath house that was partially collapsed.
I thought this painting was funny. There is just something about the guy on the left with his hand positioning and his face that makes me come up with funny stories in my mind about what he is saying.
We then walked back to San Marco Square and went to the Correr Museum. This museum was filled with armour and weapons, paintings, lots of statues, old coins, coin presses, Egyptian mummys, and Doge memorabilia, plus the building was itself a work of art.
At this point, we had a low point in the day when Dylan started complaining about his feet hurting from his sandals. We started back towards the hotel to get different shoes for him. Since this was a very long walk, grumpiness ensued and food indecisiveness took over as we were both tired and very hungry. We finally found a quick cheap pizza place and got two large slices to go. We decided to eat in the empty fish market on the canal and watch the Gondolas float past. This restored our senses and we were again happy.
We spent some time in the hotel to relax and get ready to go out for dinner and an opera at Musica a Palazzo.
For dinner we decided on a restaurant close to our hotel. It turns out that this restaurant had a crazy (perhaps drunk) Turkish waiter. He put on quite an entertaining performance with his skill at getting customers to eat there. Dylan and I split a huge plate of pasta e fruitta del mare and another 0.5L of red house wine. This food was not as good as yesterday's dinner, but it was still pretty decent.
From there it was on to the opera. Even though Dylan went pee before we left the restaurant, he had to go again within a few minutes of leaving the restaurant due to a bladder full of wine and we had a 20 minute walk to the opera. We nearly ran there for him, but when we arrived the opera was not letting people in yet. So at this point he just runs off like a crazy person to pee in a dark alley.* It is known that Dylan must defile every place we go. I suppose it could be worse, it might have been poop and the colleseum. Though, I suppose we still have plenty of time for that to occur! *Dylan would like me to point out that out of repect for Venice, he did not empty his entire bladder. (This, he later found out was a mistake as we still could not get into the opera right away and he had to hold it again for a bit!)
The opera was a unique experience, the show is limited to 75 guests and it has three acts. Each act is held in a different room, with wine or presecco being served between the first two acts. We saw the opera La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi. By the clothing, it appeared to be set in the early 1920's. I didn't really know what was going on as it was in Italian, but it was beautiful singing and music.
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