Still lost.

Italy has hands-down the worst breakfasts I have ever had. They call it good after a coffee and a styrofoamesque roll, possibly with jam to hide its lack of taste. The Australian doctor I sat with at the table and I managed to discuss the horridness of the rolls for a good five minutes before he told me about practicing overseas in Ireland. Cool.

I supplemented the "roll" with a yogurt-flavored gelato (close enough, right?) and headed off to Touristville, aka Piazza San Marco. First stop: the Doge's Palace. The Doge is basically Mr. King Aristocrat, though he doesn't have much power by himself, and he was elected for life. Nobody else in Venice is allowed to call their abode a palace, so all the other waterfront mansions are just called Ca' (house). The palace is both the Doge's living quarters and statehouse, so it's truly immense. I didn't grasp the size of it until I had been inside for a couple of hours. You can't really see how big it is from the outside, since it's overlapped by the Basilica di San Marco, and the whole piazza is so vast it downplays all the surrounding buildings. The Doge had it all: incredible art, gilt everything, senators, statesmen, giant halls, and secret passages. Most of the paintings are basically about how great Venice is, how just and fair her government is, how the Doge is the best guy ever, and how both Jesus and all the old Roman gods are definitely big fans of all of the above. I enjoyed the vast Grand Council hall, with space for 2600 people, enough for all the nobility to come in and vote. The frieze (see, I'm sort of learning archtitectual terms) is paintings of seventy or more ex-Doges, placed up there one by one as they died. One of them was traitorous and has been blacked out in punishment, a bad egg. In the same room is the biggest oil painting ever, Paradise, by Tintoretto. It's absolutely massive, and as usual, about Jesus and company (500 saints), with a holy light shining down to the Doge's seat.

The courtrooms, if I may call them that, were also impressive, this time for the mood they instill. Even as a tourist, I immediately felt small and oddly guilty as I stepped inside. The judges are a team of the nobles, plus, naturally, the Doge and his cohort, and you don't even get a chair during your trial. It feels like you don't get a say, either, though the paintings of Justice and Honor imply that all evidence will be examined. Government propaganda? You decide. Or they will, really. Off you go afterward, across the Bridge of Sighs and down into the dungeon. The cells look as cramped as I would have expected, and the Doge's new jail, despite plans for more light and comfort, looks no better.

Just in case you escape a sentence, the court has its initials emblazoned on an awful lot of weaponry, so they will still be hanging over your head. The armory was crammed full of swords, maces, suits, clickity guns, and all sorts of fearsome, pointy bits I couldn't name. There was also, inexplicably, a chastity belt and a few other metallic objects that weren't made for hurting someone. I enjoyed the display with a gun taken to pieces so you could see how it worked.

After the Doge's pad, I toured the Basilica di San Marco itself, in all its intricate, Jesus-y splendor. The Basilica was nearly dripping with gold, as though all I had to do was wander through and I would come out shiny. My favorite part was the floor, an impressive mosaic of beautiful bits of stone. The whole floor is in waves, since it is slowly sinking into the mire below Venice, but I think I like it even better because of its extra dimension.

I also saw the art in the Dicosean Museum, which included a reliquary containing an entire human hand, all mummified and grey. Ew. Cool. There was more gold, more church stuff, and some great paintings. Sadly, I was starting to get a bit over-Jesused, so I took a break for a boat ride.

The vaporetti aren't fast or romantic, but these water buses are a great way to get around. I got a 24-hour pass and watched the canal-front buildings slowly sink as we powered up the Grand Canal. I got off at the museum of modern art and enjoyed some marvelous sculptures and paintings (Klee, Klimt, Chagall, Kandinsky, etc.), mostly secular. I also popped into the Oriental Museum while I was there. They kicked me out at closing, so I wandered the Jewish district for a while. This was the first ghetto, I heard, so named because of the copper foundry (geto, in Italian) in the neighborhood they gave the Jews. Venetians sent them all to one island neighborhood in the 1500s, closing the bridges at night except for Jewish doctors. After more gelato, I hopped back on a vaporetto and scouted famous buildings: the Byzantine-inspired oldest building in Venezia, the Casino ("little house"! I get it!) in which Richard Wagner died, the fancy Ca' d'Oro, the Rialto and Accademia Bridges, all the stripey docking poles, and La Salute. This last church's dome is currently surrounded by scaffolding, but it's still gorgeous inside. The plaque says Venetians built it to thank Mary for not letting them die during the plague of 1630. I think. My Italian is terrible. I went all the way out to Lido beach before coming back and wandering town some more. Despite signs everywhere for idiot tourists, I kept getting distracted by alleys and shops and it took me an hour and multiple wrong turns to get back to the Rialto. In truth, I think I am finally getting the hang of navigating Venice. I can make it to the Campo S. Maria Formosa, right by my hostel, from anywhere. It took more than two day to accomplish this, though, and now I'm leaving again.

A few other notes:

• I successfully haggled for the first time in my life, over a few bananas.
  
• I am getting freckles. I don't think I used to get them. Perhaps the sunscreen does it? I am wearing more if it than usual.
  
• The police-, mail-, and fire-boats are a kick. There's an honest to goodness traffic light outside the fire station, unlike the rest of the canal system, and the post office has one of the biggest docks anywhere.
  
• I tried Venetian cuttlefish for dinner. Alarmingly black, but delicious.
  
• A lot of these houses look empty on the ground floor, then cheerily inhabited above. The water damage must be terrible. I kept thinking about The Italian Job when the speedboats buzzed past.

Water everywhere.

I caught an early train to Venezia this morning, then dropped my bag off at what I think used to be a convent and promptly got lost. Astoundingly, dead-endingly, completely lost. Four hours with quite probably no repeats in path lost. It was great. Along the way, I saw pastas in an entire rainbow of colors, with flavors to match: curry, mushroom, cocoa, pizza, cuttlefish, smoked salmon, pesto, beet, artichoke, blueberry, pepper, and chili/garlic. I wonder what kind of sauce you would put on some of those. My pizza-and-espresso lunch was super, and I of course hit another gelato stand right afterward. The specialty here is Crema de Dogi flavor, which is a vanilla-lemon base with chocolate-hazelnut paste swirls. It's better than it sounds. There are masks everywhere, due to Venezia's reputedly excellent Mardi Gras, plus glass in every shape and size, due to the island of Murano's famous glassmakers, and even a few stores with lace, the other regional specialty. One store displayed a windowfull of lace baby bibs. Really? What disturbed parent would put a scratchy bit of expensive, handmade art on an infant about to smear itself and its immediate surroundings with anything it can get its hands on? The glass was neat, though. I saw some great beetles, but that sort of thing is impractical to carry around Europe in a backpack.

The tourists in Veneza were even more endless than those in Firenze, but I managed to ditch them for a while and explore some side streets. You can't escape the gondoliers, though: they lurk in every cranny, ready to take you past the labyrinthine network of streets in the most romantic fashion. A few of us at the convent-cum-hostel tried to get a group together, but our travel schedules conflicted and we never managed a full, cheaper boat of six passengers.

Back in the touristy portions, I marveled at the gouging. Two scoops of gelato goes for anywhere between 1.70 and 3.5 Euros. A single espresso is from 0.90 to 2.50 Euros, depending on the location and clientele. I stuck to the cafes frequented by locals, obviously. There's also more interesting information there. Instead of umbrella salesmen, you can find out about the upcoming regatta between Amalfi, Genova, Pisa, and Venezia. Sadly, I will miss it by a day.

I spent the afternoon in the Correr Museum, staring at Venetian art and learning about its history. They had a lot of Bellini paintings, plus a great armory, tons of old coins, and all sorts of nautical gear. The museum is on Piazza San Marco, the main square, so it also had good views of all the action down below. I hung out along the waterfront (I know, everywhere is the waterfront, but I mean where the Grand Canal comes out) and in Piazza San Marco till the sun set, then swapped travel tips and itineraries with brothers from Nashville and a few Canadians.