With our very thorough and satisfying tour of the Basilica now complete, we turned our attention to the Doge's Palace. Unfortunately, the wait for the next tour (the palace is only offered as a guided tour) and the price of the tour (quite expensive, actually) meant that it did not fit into our time schedule. We had called Graham in Agordo, and he was expecting us for drinks and dinner 5:30pm or so, which meant we had to be back at our hotel in Mestre by mid-afternoon (in order to make it up there in time).
So, we instead decided to walk back to the train station at a relaxed pace, stopping for lunch and doing a little window-shopping along the way.
We chose to return by the quickest and most major walking route between San Marco and the train station, and as a result we got to experience the large amounts of tourist traffic that clog this route. Still a nice walk, though.
By roughly 3pm we were back at the train station, and by 4pm we were back in our Audi rental car, heading north away from the coastal lowlands and into the rugged mountains of the Dolomites.
(If you want a much better contextual understanding of what we did in Venice and where, check out the detailed trackmap and details of our walks in Venice below. Note that you'll have to click on the trackmap's link, located at the bottom of the map, in order to get the detailed view with photo points).
Since there's a lot of map information below, I'm afraid some of you might miss the 'next page' button that leads to our visit with Graham and Meg. So, just in case, I'm going to place a
next page link right here!