American tourister

Today we got up at 7:30 and had breakfast in the hotel. Breakfast was excellent consisting of fruit filled croissant, salami, bologna (this one's first name was not o-s-c-a-r :), cheese, and capuccino. After breakfast, we walked to the pesceria, a fish market across the Rialto. Unfortunately, they were closed on Sunday. We continued walking toward the train station which sits on one end of the grand canal. Along the way we noticed a couple of small stray dogs. At the train station, we hopped on the vaporetto to follow Rick Steves grand canal tour. The vaporetto ticket salesguy gypped me a euro -- the tickets were 12e and I gave him 15 in paper and he returned 3 coins. Being new to the currency, I didn't notice the 3 coins were 2 half dollars and 1 dollar - lesson here look at all change. The Rick Steves grand canal tour was fun. We saw the oldest building in Venice, which is the Turkish Exchange, old merchant palaces, and the wooden Academia bridge, before getting off at Piazza San Marco. We headed right for the Doge's Palace. We got in line, but noticed Rick Steves suggested calling for the secret itineraries tour. I tried calling the number, but I misdialled. By the time I figured it out, we were at the front of the line. The guy at the ticket counter said the tour was sold out until next week. Bummer.. We got entrance tickets anyway and made our own tour which turned out very well. The highlight was the bridge of sighs and the Correr museum with historical artifacts of old Venice. It was noon now and we followed Rick Steves suggestion for quick entrance to the Basilica. We entered to find the church itself didn't open until 2. So, we grabbed some lunch at a panini shop and ate in the square. The Basilica was interesting with its ceiling mosaics, but nothing special. After the basilica, we went back to the hotel and rested up. At night, we took a gondola ride after some negotiation (the old i'm walking out of here! ploy). Our gondolier, Franco, was a nice guy and quite adept at steering the narrow canals. The skies were clear and the moon was just coming out. After the ride, we walked around looking for a restaurant. We stumbled upon a local spot, where the service was so-so and so was the food (seafood ravioli tasted like canned tuna, speghetti linguine, tourbot fish with clams, and a mixed salad), except for the tiramisu which, while i'm not a big dessert person, was excellent. It was getting late and we have a big travel day ahead so we came back to the hotel.
One final note on Venice: the city's main business is tourism. Everywhere there are tourists from the US, Germany, other parts of Italy, etc. There's not much of a feeling of Italy here, except by imagining its past glory. Its a floating time capsule.