Venice

Following our Christmas feast, I was not really so hungry for breakfast, so we had a smaller but nonetheless I got my money's worth. And still good food.
We take the train from Milan to Venice and sit across from a man holding his little Daschund or some small type of dog. Now I don't know if this is an Italian thing, a European thing, or just a not-in-the-US thing, but I have seen dogs on buses and trains and boats everywhere. The conductors get mad at you putting your feet on the seat more than they do about dogs. Seriously, I counted.
So we get into Venice and wander around for about an hour looking for our hotel, which is apparently how we roll nowadays. We find it off a major square, which means buses and "public gondolas," which are the public buses around Venice, pick up. There is a huge supermarket next dorr, which would be awesome except that it doesn't reopen until December 27...grr.
We head tot he old Jewish Ghetto and grab some Kosher pizza, which incidentally looks like the normal pizza by the slice from NYC, and less like the oblong rectangular pizza that you get in Rome at 2 in the morning.
We get to talking tot eh woman behind the counter and she says that despite the three Kosher restaurants, synagogue, Chabad house, and jewelry stores, there are only 400 or so Jews in Venice nowadays, down from over 4000 pre-WWII. There is a pretty cool square on which sits the Glatt Kosher place (that means like super-Kosher for the gentiles out there) which actually looks quite swanky, but its closed until early January.
We then head over to the tourist area around San Marco's square and get the cheapest "tourist menu" we can find, which is basically a prix fixe for 13.50€ and grab some sardines in onions, which is a Venitian specialty. Also, its quite tasty.
The way back gets pretty cold, not Chicago -27° cold, but windy and rainy and cold for what I've seen of Italy.
Pass out, wake up, hit the Internet bar, and eat some more (free) breakfast before we book our couchettes for Milan to Naples (basically 30€ bunks on a train to sleep on. Then we hop on our train to Bologna.
Oh yeah, waiting for the train I grab some 0.60€ vending machine espresso. Awesome.