Venice Site Seeing Continued

The goal is to get up at 7:30 and be at St. Mark's Basillica at 9:45 for its opening. We get up around 8. Have breakfast around 9. 

Interesting olive oil egg. 

I'm missing rice...

We make it to the Basillica at 10:30 and the line is longer than yesterday. The website says the line averages 45 minutes. We decide to do the skip the line at Doge Palace instead. 

Inside square 

By the time we leave it's almost one. The line for the Basillica is slightly shorter so we decide to do that before lunch. It's only about a ten minute line. I keep forgetting it's off season. The church is impressive inside but you can't take pictures. 

We decide to pay the museum fee so we can go outside upstairs. 

The view of St. Mark's square is pretty good from here.

By now it's after 2:30 and someone isn't happy. We decide to go to Florian the oldest coffee house.

Just as we sit down I get some good luck. 

Quiche and sandwich 

Not only is it overpriced food but there is 6 euro charge per person for the music. However it's one of the touristy things to do. Maybe if the weather is nice we'll do a gondola ride too.

We were also entertained by some fellow tourists. 

We head to a nearby Correr museum. It's part of an old palace on the square. 

Ballroom

After the palace portion there were a lot of artifacts. The local ones were interesting since we have some context now. However when we got to the Roman coins and old books my eyes started to glaze over. I think after the Met and the Louvre seeing Roman artifacts won't be interesting until we got to Rome or other Roman sites. We head back to the hotel as my back is bothering me. We relax and freshen up. 

We decide to go the place that was closed the other day. We get there and it's closed again. Maybe they are on vacation. Oh well. Back to our app. Damn it another place not in the right location. I start flagging them as not the right location. Hopefully others won't have this problem. We finally find the place but it's more than I want to spend. 

Finally we find a place. They say they may have to seat another couple with us since they are seatting us at a four top. 

Aparna gets a salad 

Squid with ink sauce

I go with the longoustine pasta 

Steak with parm and rosemary 

In the middle of our dinner we are joined by a couple from Luxembourg. Midway through the meal we strike up a conversation. They are really friendly. We talk about travel and what we know about Luxembourg (next to nothing). I comment how impressed I'm with travelers who converse in English (their second or third language) with waitstaff etc in English (their second or third language). First he says they have to learn English, French and German second he said they speak English so don't feel bad. He asked what language would I learn. Probably French since I've studied it. He replies well that wouldn't help me here anyway. I still feel like an arrogant US tourist. 

As we meander back, I take a wrong turn and end up going the wrong way. We get corrected and go by a square we saw yesterday as well as the restaurant we ate at last night. Someone complains about my directions so I let her lead on. She won't pull out her phone so we follow signs. We end up walking back to San Marco Square and then to the hotel. Definitely not the shortest route.