We hit the ground running with a full day tour on Sunday. We met our tour group fairly close to our VRBO. This was Venice in a Day and we had a group of 20 people. We were each issued a headset and our tour guide was Parmela. She was super knowledgeable and really did well managing everyone.

We started out with a walking tour of Venice, the Grand Canal, a few churches, St Mark’s Square and historical information of Venice. We saw the Rialto Bridge before the crowds arrived. Later in the day when we were there it was completely packed with people.

Then it was time for our gondola ride – it had been raining some but had mostly stopped by the time we got in. It was very cool to actually look at each other and say “we are really here!”

We then had a lunch break, bruschetta as an appetizer and pizza for Barry, LJ and I and Brenda was happy to find some French fries. Our server was very nice and chatted with us.

Post lunch we went to the Doge’s Palace. The Doge is an elected position, elected for life and typically later in life. They had to accept the position when elected and it is decorated to impress all those who would visit. It was quite grand with lots of gold leaf and huge rooms.

Connecting the Doge’s Palace to the “new” prison (1500’s) is the Bridge of Sighs. It is said that would be the prisoners last look at the outside and you could hear their heavy sighs.

Then we wrapped up at the Duomo, St Mark’s Basilica.

We had a little gelato break before heading back to the apartment

We made our way back to the apartment (yikes! Did I mention the three flights of stairs?) and took a little siesta before heading back out in hopes the crowds would thin out a little. Fortunately they did!

We went back to St Mark’s Square to go up in the bell tower and be able to see a beautiful overview of the entire city. The square was very lively with orchestras at the restaurants

After our view from the top we started looking for dinner options. The maitre’d of one particular restaurant was aggressively pursuing Barry and he promised us an outdoor table. He was quite ththe character and working very hard to attract customers.

We ended the day with… gelato of course! We are setting a goal of twice a day gelato, and of course yesterday there was none so we will need to make those up as well.

Leaving gelato, we found the most amazing rubber duck display!

And… one final image to end the day – L.J.’s steps for the day: