Italy – Venice, Day 2

For Venice Day 2 we had time scheduled to go up on a rooftop to view Venice. When we were in Verona the host of our Airbnb told Ryan about this terrace we could go up to, to see the city. It is free – the only catch is you have to have a reservation. Ryan made one before we even went to Venice.

Jayse in the morning with his goggles on still in bed.

As we walked to the Terrace we crossed the Rialto Bridge. We had to take many pictures. Especially with this cutie because she was so excited to see it.

This bridge is actually really big, it has 2 sides to it with shops in the middle of them.

Not sure what this was about but these nice bears were on the bridge.

After crossing the bridge and taking pictures we made our way up onto the terrace for an amazing view of Venice and the Grand Canal. You went up into the Terrace a group at a time and each group got 15 minutes up there. It wasn’t huge but it was really beautiful up there.

While we were up on the Terrace we were looking for a tower that is also in the Spiderman movie. We located it and found the name of it on this map they had up there. We searched it up and found how to get there.

This was a nice shopping mall, this is the building we were on the roof of.

A stop for gelato.

After the roof terrace we went to St. Mark’s Basilica. This time we were going to tour the inside. Wow, it was opulent on the inside. The whole thing was pretty much in gold mosaics. The gold is actual gold, it’s gold leaf sandwiched between 2 glass pieces. You can read more interesting facts about this church here.

I tried to get a video of the bells chiming, the statues moved and hit the bell to make it chime but right as I started the video they stopped.

After touring the Basilica and walking around St. Mark’s Square some more we went to lunch. Ryan found this pub he wanted to go to and it was great! The atmosphere was awesome – the owner was friendly and fun. We sat next to a French woman and spoke with her a bit. She had lived in Italy for 30 years because she loved the Italians and their zest for life. She told us that our group was very quiet, she said if a family of Italians had sat next to her she wouldn’t be able to hear anything.

We had some of the most delicious fries.

After lunch we made our way to the bell tower Jaelee wanted to find from the Spiderman Movie.

There it is, we made it!

Jaelee at the location

Here is an image from the movie – Jaelee in the same spot.

After seeing the bell tower we went on a gondola ride. We split into 2 gondolas. Our gondolier was great! He was funny spoke great English and gave us a lot of history about Venice. He told us that his family was in the glass blowing business and had been for 10 generations!

We went out into the Grand Canal and got to see the Rialto bridge again.

After the gondola ride went back to the area by the Rialto bridge. We did some shopping and stopped for a snack and beverage.

Jaelee got an ice cream sunday in a gondola dish.

We made our way back to our Airbnb. When we decided where to go for dinner the kids did not want to go. They were tired and just wanted to hang out at the apartment. We had enough food for them so we let them stay and the adults went out for dinner. I gotta say this place seemed nice – it was along the grand canal and had great ratings but it was probably one of my least favorites of the whole trip.

Ryan had an interesting meal – black pizza dough. The dough is made black from squid ink. He was the only one brave enough to get it for dinner.

When we got back to the apartment a few of us played Phase 10. It seemed to be lasting forever and we were getting tired so we only made it to phase 8.