In Venice, since there aren't any cars and all the museums are really expensive, I spent the day walking. A lot. Of course, that's the way to do Venice, since its maze of bridges and canals makes it pretty damn hard to just go from Big Attraction A to Big Attraction B. So I wandered about, covered most of the length of the island, saw a lot of the big palaces and churches, but only went into two (because of high prices, queues, or being in religious use). Went to Piazza San Marco, which is beautiful, of course, but frustratingly packed with tour groups and pigeons. Seriously, there's more pigeons there than I've ever seen, and they seem more like rats-with-wings than usual. Whick makes me think - people hate rats, but feed pigeons and let them perch on their heads, so... I dunno. They're both disease-ridden feral animals.
Once you get over the beauty of Venice, its supreme oddness start to get to you; the way the buildings rise directly out of the water, the waves lopping dangerously close to street level, and the smell that comes from being a city built on a network of stagnant, briny water. When the city was founded, it must have sounded like a disaster - "let's build a city on a swamp in the middle of a lagoon" indeed.
The other thing about walking around Venice is that you get bloody tired. So I quit and went back to dull Mestre for an early night.
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