While taking the water taxi, had to get a photo of a gondola :)

It got dark pretty quickly, so we took a little walk to the Piazza San Marco and then grabbed a bite to eat at the Hard Rock Café.

Yummy food and yummy cocktails, then it was time a for a little walk outside and then off to bed.

The next day, we decided to get up early, get breakfast and then go and visit the famous Basilica di San Marco at the Piazza San Marco. 

(Venice is known for their amazingly intricate carnival masks. There were so many shops selling them and the windows were filled with these beautiful creations!)

There I am, at the Piazza with the Basilica in the background. Can you see the water on the left side of the photo? Ya, because of some rain and the rising of the ocean during the night, the city was flooding! I guess this is totally normal for the residents of Venice but for tourists it was quite a site to see. I'd definitely recommend bringing a pair of good boots or rubber boots, since you never know when you'll have to walk through some water in the city. Some vendors were even selling these plastics things which you can put over your shoes and legs. Too funny!

Boo, they were doing construction on the Basilica so it didn't look to great at all :( It's such a shame when you go visit a city and such an important monument is half covered. Oh well!

Because of the flooding, the city set up these wooden planks for tourists waiting in line to visit the Basilica to stand on. It was kinda crazy! And, the line was unbelievable. We got to the Basilica about 45 minutes before opening and luckily we didn't get there later since we probably wouldn't have waited in line much longer than we had to.

It was very beautiful inside. We weren't really allowed to take photo's but we snuck some in with our iPhones ;) The quality isn't great since it was also quite dark in the Basilica but I'd definitely recommend walking in and taking in the beauty in person. And entry is free!

Afterwards, towards the middle of the day, the flooding in the city went down (they have holes in the ground for water to be able to go down) and we went for a walk alongside the ocean. 

From this side of the city you can look out onto the ocean and see the other islands which are part of Venice. If we had had more time, we would have taken a boat tour to the islands, that would be really nice!

At some point while walking along the seaside we turned into a random alleyway. Here we discovered a typical market where fresh fruits, vegetables and seafood were sold.

(They were selling fruits & veggies out of their boat!)

We then walked back to the Piazza (our hotel was very close to the Piazza and city center) and grabbed some lunch at the Hard Rock Café. Afterwards, we decided to splurge and go for a ride in a gondola! 

Here you can see how narrow the alleyways/waterways are!

This is the oldest bridge in Venice, Ponte di Rialto.

This is the grand canal of Venice. The water taxis and public transport use this long, wide canal which is formed like an "S" throughout the whole of Venice.

The gondola ride was expensive, 40€ per person, and lasted 30 minutes. But it's so worth it since you'll probably only ride in a gondola once in your life :)

After seeing the old bridge from the gondola, we decided to walk over and cross the bridge and we stumbled upon a nice market on the other side. That's where we bought the fun colorful pasta which I already blogged about here.

There were so many tourists! Insane! But I always love hearing a variety of languages when travelling.

We stopped to eat a crepe and this crepe stand was selling "chocolate kebabs".

In Switzerland, a doner kebab is a Turkish dish where you take meat, which is cut off of a big piece of meat on a rotisserie, add lettuce and veggies and some sauce and wrap it all up in a tortilla/flatbread/pita. In this case, the vendor had a piece of chocolates on the rotisserie (in the photo above) and he took a thick piece of crepe and shaved slivers of chocolate into the crepe, making a "chocolate kebab". What a fun idea!

After going back across the bridge back to the San Marco part of the city, we did some SHOPPING :) That, of course, was an awesome part of the trip, in my opinion ;) We stopped at a lot of different shops. I ended up purchasing some items at H&M, a pair of white All-Stars at a shoe store and some makeup at KIKO Makeup Milano which I'll share in a separate blog post. 

After shopping, we took a little break at our hotel and then headed out again for some dinner. We found a cute Italian restaurant and sat outside. We didn't take any photo's of the restaurant or dinner, unfortunately. We enjoyed a pizza, some lamb with veggies and potatoes, and a yummy bottle of Chardonnay. We got deep into conversation and we made friends with the family sitting next to us which was from England/Australia/Canada :)

On Sunday, we went for a little walk after breakfast, then checked out of our hotel and took the public transportation boat back to the parking garage. We were parked on the roof and you could see all the cruise ships at dock! So cool :)

I know this was a long post filled with a ton of photo's but I thought it'd be nice to share my Venice experience on here since I also love seeing other people's photo's from travels.

Until next time :)