Tuesday – another day to explore this wonderful part of Italy with a walking tour of Saint Marks and the Doge’s Palace. We started off taking the water bus and took a great picture of our hotel. 
Our room is on the 2nd level (3 floor for all you untravelled folks) on the left side of the for “arched” windows in the middle. Nice place. After getting off the water bus, we walked through the Campo Santi Glovanni e Paolo area and did a bit of shopping. 
where Janeen got a couple of unique glass pieces of jewelry. After a nice lunch, 
we went to Saint Marks Square to hook up with our guide for a walking tour. This included great info about Saint Marks, the building of the place (it’s over 1000 years old!) and general information about the Islands of Venice. This Clock Tower – with the Bell Ringers on the top has a digital clock! 
in this picture you can see it is 3 O’Clock! Way cool and VERY old. 
Inside St Marks, it is fantastically beautiful with the entire structure covered with mosaic tiles – with gold leaf so they really shine. 
We saw the four bronze horses 
and talked about the details of the exterior 
truly an amazing feat of construction during a time when everything was done by hand. After our walk through of Saint Marks, we went next door to visit the Doge’s Palace. 
This was the center of Government until the late 1700’s with large spaces meant to impress foreign delegations -such as the ceiling over the stairs going to the various rooms. 
and the ceilings and walls of those rooms 
The last part of this tour was to the various jail cells and across the Bridge of Sighs. 
Not a lovely spot to have to spend any time – cold, damp, little light and really no way to see the sky.
After our walking tour, we were scheduled for the Grand Canal boat tour which took us through the entire length of the Canal pointing out historical sites – all of which are incredibly maintained over the ages.
Including the oldest gondola builders in Venice. 
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Harry’s Bar which was opened in 1931 and has hosted a number of notable customers have included Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Halliburton, Truman Capote, Orson Welles, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Princess Aspasia of Greece, Aristotle Onassis, Barbara Hutton, Woody Allen and now David and Janeen Lee! Admittedly it was a bit pricy but hey, now we are associated with some really famous people. Admittedly the food and service where top notch, but so was the cost of the meal.
After dinner, we caught the water bus and headed home. Another 10,000 step day!
For entertainment, of course with an added fee, was this little musical group playing wonderful traditional Vencian music.
From there, we headed towards the Accademia Museum but first we walked through a number of shops and stalls without buying anything! 
Not a bad spot to relax for sure and the prices are really quite good! Two cocktails for 14 euros. As Janeen was hungry, we got a recommendation from our hotel and walked over to Muro – about 1000 yards from our pace and had wonderful pasta (Janeen) and lamb (David).
After a quick water trip, we arrived at our Hotel and got checked in. This lovely room overlooks the Grand Canal!
Stopped into a cafe for some house wine and cheese – nothing special to report…just a snack. After that we found our way back to our hotel without any problems! (Ok we didn’t get very far that’s for sure).
Here’s the view from the Dock of our hotel. So, at this point we are most likely in for the evening – with big plans for exploring, getting lost, getting a tour on the Grand Canal and basically doing what everyone should do when they come to this enchanting place.