Sat, June 13
Ohhhhhhh, what a day. Ha. The train ride from Lausaunne to Milan was uneventful. I cranked out a few blogs I was behind on and listened to some tunes. Our destination was the Italian Riviera -- just southeast of Genova. We didn't have anything booked though, and were really nervous that we'd arrive there and be out of luck since it was a Saturday during a summer weekend. If we just showed up and got stuck, it would not be fun because its sort of off the beaten path and was going to take 3 hrs just to get there from Milan.
So our plan was to try to book a place during our stopover in Milan. I spent nearly an hour and half calling different hotels throughout the entire Cinque Terra region with absolutely no luck. I did get to talk to about a dozen and half real Italians though! Ha. We gave up on getting to the coast and I started calling some places in Venice. I quickly found 2 places with vacancies --one expensive, one not so expensive. Knowing we'd have SOMEWHERE to stay, we went ahead and reserved tickets for the next train to Venice.
During the train ride I read up on Rick Steve's version of Venice and also touched on Florence, since that would be our next destination. In Venice, you're greeted by a canal as soon as you step foot out of the train station. We had targeted San Marco square as our destination for sleeping, which requires a vaperetto (boat) ride to get there (unless you want to walk 45mins with 20lb packs).
Both our travel books failed us here. They said to take boat #81...but it did not exist, which we found out by walking back and forth several times between the two boat docks like idiots. We finally realized that it had changed, and boarded the #2 boat headed to San Marco. After a 20min ride, we arrived just outside the square. As you enter the square, you're rewarded with a view of the gorgeous San Marco Basilica and Bell Tower just ahead of you. 
We crossed the square and plopped our bags down around a fountain area. Kev and Joe guarded the bags while I struck out to find a hotel. The streets were extremely confusing when you were looking for a particular place. I didn't find any of the hotels that were listed in the travel book. I ended up just popping into different places and asking if they had vacancies and what their prices were. After some very professionally performed legwork, I had two options. Try a brand new hotel that had a triple for $170, or go with a pension that would split us up into 2 rooms for a total of $150 incl breakfast. Armed with my knowledge, I returned to offer the choices to the guys. We opted for the $150 a night place--glad we did. After checking in and coming back downstairs to head out for the night, the lady who ran the place offered us the triple for the next night for $100. Sweet. Good luck finding a non-hostel place in Venice for less than that. (The deal got better at checkout, she charged us $130 instead of $150 for the first night) We went out and explored a little of the area down near San Marco and along the Grand Canal. We found a vendor selling local wine from one of those fountain machines you typically find filled with Hawaiian Punch or Slurpees. We bought in. $1.5euro for a small cup. Nice.
After exploring we sat down to eat at a pizzeria that featured personal sized pizzas for about 8euro each and half-carafe's of house win for $6.5euro each. We ended up having 3 by the end of the meal. 
Great Italian pizza, good (not great) Italian wine. An outdoor square. A decent price! Hard to beat. Afterwards we drifted back into San Marco square to listen to the dueling orchestras that play there every night in front of some of the restaurants. Hundreds of tables are set out on the square. If you sit down you get charged a $12 "cover" charge on top of whatever your drink or meal costs. But if you just stand around and listen, its free! So we did that for awhile. As soon as one orchestra finishes, the orchestra at the next restaurant along the square starts up and the majority of the crowd drifts down towards it. After two performances, we sought out some gelato to satisfy our ice-cream cravings. After that...it was close to 10 or 10:30 and we were pretty tired from our travels so we called it a night.
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