Europe Day 18: More Canals in Venice

May 1 dawned clear and beautiful in Venice.  Ok, I don't actually know how it dawned because I was still asleep at that point, but it was gorgeous when we got up.  After our no-hot-water getting ready session, we headed off with rather vague directions to a laundromat.  We actually found it without much trouble, and had some fun times wandering streets and canals while our clothes got cleaned. 

No, they don't have Target in Venice.  That's our bag of laundry soap : )

Bryan sees nice canal...

  

...Bryan decides to hang over nice canal.

Kristi sees nice bridge...

...and goes to find it.  Which proved rather difficult, but was finally accomplished.

After delivering clean laundry ($20 later - ahh!) to our room and having lunch, we headed back to Piazza San Marco to visit Doge's Palace.  Some of the rooms were just as impressive as the ones at Versailles, with intricate carved ceilings and wall-size paintings.

We weren't sure if we were supposed to take pictures inside...so we just took a few.

View from window 1 in Doge's Palace

View from window 2

And view from window 3.  Not bad views.

Courtyard of Doge's Palace

Back out in Piazza San Marco

Next up we visited two other churches - Frari and San Rocco - and enjoyed a little reflection time.  Then we fell back on the great Venice activity - meandering around.  Or as I said, "let's get lost and then find our way back."  This basically ended up entailing walking all over Venice!  We took one route toward the train station, had dinner at a sunny cafe, then wandered back to the hotel through the neighborhoods we hadn't seen yet.  A very nice, relaxing (yet full of exercise) sort of day.  

Love my laundry shots!

Some of the abundance of Murano glass we saw.

After discovering there were shutters on our window to keep the light out, we hit the hay for dreams of a happy Venice.