Jet Lag Has Reared It's Ugly Head

It's 4:00 a.m. Italy time and I am wide awake.  Have been for hours. I just came in from my patio that overlooks the Grand Canal.  It's a full moon and the lights reflecting on the water are nice.  Today is going to be a LONGGGGG day.  Especially considering that Gracie only fell asleep an hour ago.  This is not going to be pretty. 

We woke up yesterday at 1:00 in the afternoon so our touring options were somewhat limited.  We decided to find somewhere to eat and go explore Piazza San Marco.  I am a little confused about the situation with the food.  It was a bit different in Rome.  There is "Self-Service, stand at the bar, sit down, cover charge, no cover charge, tip, don't tip, only tip a little, worker man gets the water out of the frig, you get your own water..."  I probably ended up paying more than I should have for lunch if I would've known what was going on.  Either way, it tasted delish.  I got a caprese sandwich on foccacia, Jake ate spaghetti and Gracie had some bomb lasagna.  Here we are chowing down.

I know it looks just like Filipe's but trust me...it's so not. 

I let the kids have the cameras today so they could shoot away at anything that interested them.  You can see Jake's pics and comments at his blogsite http://www.theadventuresofjakes.blogspot.com/ they are hysterical.  His fun was all about people watching and I think I might have a stand up comedian on my hands.  Gracie's will be up and running today. 

We made our way to the square and took an elevator to the top of the campanile di San Marco (bell tower) which has a 360 view of Venice.  It is just a sea of houses.  There are no vehicles allowed on the island so it's walking or boat rides everywhere.  It truly is a maze.  I seem to have a good sense of direction though because we haven't gotten lost yet. 

Here's the campanile.  It's 325 ft. tall!

The mess of houses.  Unfortunately from this view you can't see the waterways but they are all in between with bridges connecting everything.

Here's just a few more pics of the day...

One of Jake's shots

                                   This is the view standing on top of the Rialto Bridge

Standing on top of the Rialto Bridge is when I started to feel like I was at Disneyland.  There are WAYYYYY to many people here.  I much prefer the shadowy empty alleyways than this mess of people.  Here and in St. Mark's Square I don't feel like I am in Europe at all.  The only thing that reminds me that I am is the occasional local European woman who is dressed to kill.  I'll post more about that later. 

We ended the day by going to Hard Rock Cafe.  I know, so American, but with a month full of pasta, pizza, pasta, pizza ahead of us, a little honey-citrus chicken salad sounded good.

That's it for today.  No profundities.