Whereas our first day in Venice comprised an overview of the Grand Canal (Venice's main waterway and thoroughfare of goods, vaporetti, and dedicated trash, police, and ambulance boats) and St. Mark's Square, our second day revolved around the square's main constituents: The palace, the Correr museum (and former quarters of Napoleon after he conquered the city), the basilica, and the campanile. The Doge's palace and Correr museum were appropriately fancy, with their velvet walls, gold furnishings, and wall-to-ceiling frescoes. We even saw the largest oil painting in the world, which adorned an entire wall of a 53x26-meter auditorium.
Heather and Mike's recommendation for lunch led us to Antiche Carampane, where we had little tempura shrimp poppers (eyes, legs, and all), cuttlefish in ink, and some of the best spaghetti I've ever had. We wound our way back to St. Mark's for a tour of the basilica, which Ryan claims is his second favorite church after St. Peter's in Vatican City. They didn't allow photography, or my camera would be full of photos of their floor-to-(domed-)ceiling mosaics and iconography; the interior architecture was unlike anything we'd ever seen. Even the basilica's exterior is noteworthy for its unique blend of Romanesque, Baroque, and Byzantine styles. (It's regarded as the best example of Italo-Byzantine architecture in the world, thanks to Venice's close trade with the Ottoman Empire for centuries.)
We took the elevator (the elevator! Our legs were cheering the whole way up) to the top of the basilica's campanile, which swayed so much with the tide that I balked 10 minutes into the tour and jumped in line to head back down.
And finally, we ended the day with a gondola ride for two through some of Venice's smaller canals. Our gondolier sang, whistled, and pointed out noteworthy seaside palaces and buildings as we wound our way under three-foot-tall bridges (we barely cleared the space) and around tight corners. It was a lovely experience. Ryan was particularly tickled over the canal equivalent of street signs (of course, the names of the waterways) hanging at every intersection between narrow canals.
I'm going to bring up dinner, even though Ryan probably purposefully excluded it from his outline: We were so done with pizza and pasta that we went to Wok 'n' Go, and unashamedly chowed down on curry and spicy teriyaki in the middle of one of Italy's most renowned culinary destinations. (Not even sorry.)