After breakfast we bought a 12 hour Vaporetto ticket with plans to do some intense sightseeing today.

We took the 82 vaporetto to S. Tom‡ and visited the Santa Maria G. Dei Frari church, Rick Steves' favorite, and listened to his audio tour on our iPods.

Then we toured the Scuola Grande di S. Rocco building featuring the "Tintoretto Sistine Chapel." Quite awesome, even though the colors had faded a bit over the last 500 years. We visited the adjoining church.

Searching around the neighborhood we found a pleasant, very old lunch restaurant that served locals. We shared a tuna salad, which was a tossed green salad with tuna on top. Italian tuna is so flavorful!

Taking the vaporetto back to San Zaccaria, we toured the Doge's palace for almost two hours, blown away and feeling we never saw it before.

A late afternoon nap. Took the 52 vaporetto to the train station to get reservation to Trieste, but discovered the reserve train doesn't leave from the Santa Lucia train station. Got a generic ticket.

Did the Rick Steves' Grand Canal audio tour on the No. 1 vaporetto in the rain. Our umbrella blocked the view of the vaporetto pilot! But no harm was done and they were cool about it.

Went back to our now favorite restaurant in Venice. Sea Bass for me, Calamari & Shrimp for Barbara. Lots of prosecco and a limoncello after dinner drink.

I don't remember all the trendy shops being in Venice in 1976, but then, I am not into shopping. There were even more people there than there had been the day before.

The Doge's Palace... If I had been inside it before, I would have remembered it! It is startling to see the actual cells of the dungeon and to consider that humans are still treating other humans that severely in much of today's world. Nick's great grandfather was imprisoned for at least eight years during the Italian revolutionary war in the 1850s for being a supporter of Garibaldi, and I am absolutely amazed that he survived because I'm sure conditions in the prison he was in were no better than what I saw here. I'm grateful, too, because Nick's great grandpa married Nick's great grandma after his release from prison.

In 1976 we rode in a gondola. I told Nick in advance that another gondola ride was in my plans for this trip. However, the weather did not cooperate, being either too rainy, too cold, or too windy in the evenings. But we had already done that, and we enjoyed several canal trips in the vaporetti, so I wasn't too disappointed.