Last Morning in Venice

Debby & I left the girl's sleeping with instructions to rise at 8am for breakfast and we headed out for a walk in the nearby public park & gardens on the eastern tip of the island(s).  A gorgeous public space just blocks from our hotel Corte Contarina... wish we had stumbled on it earlier.  The neighborhood adjacent to the park were very laid back and it was a locals only kinda place.

Back at the hotel, the girls had not followed directions and it took some time to rouse them from their dark room for breakfast before heading out.  We checked out of our room and, along with Connor,  headed to Ponte Rialto to check out the local mercado which was described by our tour guide the previous day.  We took 

the back routes like this one, on Fondamente Arsenale, which was a maze of paths and bridges laid out in no particular order - making for a very enjoyable walk.  The city planning here must have been amazing, zero lot lines, pedestrian paths with laundry hanging above and the neatest foot bridges over canals connecting 127 small islands.

  

Tourists have started placing locks on the bridges with couples names engraved or written on them as a way to profess love - like carving names in a tree or spray painting a bridge.  

We found the market and walked around looking at crazy fish, eels and octopus for a while.

Afterward,  we hit the gelataria and then met the rest of the crew to enter the Basilica de San Marco along with the masses congregated at the piazza.  A very, very, very popular place.

From there we stopped for a quick picnic on a bench in Campo Bandiera e Morro then headed back to the hotel and caught water taxis to the bus terminal where a private bus took us to Florence where we will stay for 5 nights with a couple day excursions into the valleys of Tuscany.