Back at the Palazzo da Mosto, an interesting thing has occurred. Because there was such a long period of time between their arrival at the Palazzo and the operating hours, many of the teams have wandered off to do some sightseeing, while others have camped out by the door, forming a line to enter. Chip and Reichen, in particular, are wedged up against the door, wrapped in their space blankets. Aw, they look just like a couple of little microwave burritos. Josh talks about how disappointed he was to return to the Palazzo and realize that other people were waiting in line. Why they didn't realize that this would happen, I'm not sure. Unlike a train station, it makes perfect sense at a regular route marker to nab yourself a place in line, because order of admittance may very well matter a great deal. Similarly, Al and ClownJon are off balancing things on their faces instead of waiting in line, so when they get back, they have to do Crying Clowns for us to show how sad they are to be near the back of the line. Honestly, it's enough to make me cry myself, between Crying Clowns and the face-balancing. ["I'm surprised they didn't go for the Fast Forward in this leg; all that annoying mugging would have been right up their annoying alley." -- Wing Chun]

AirSteve and Dave are finding their way to the pit stop boat, saying that they're hoping they'll get a "healthy head start" from the FF. It's a combination of good and bad FF use, because on one hand, an injury is a good reason to use it, but on the other hand, it doesn't look like they checked the operating hours first, and given the long rest period and megabunch, they could probably have conserved the FF for another use if they had. But at any rate, they arrive at the boat, where they are welcomed to Venice by a sort of strange-looking boy greeter who wears quite a bit of mauve clothing and a three-cornered hat, and thus looks a little like a female stripper might at the beginning of a complex routine where she plays a member of the Continental Congress. "Steve and Dave," says Phil, anxious to break the good news, "You're team number one!" I'm not sure what the joke was there -- we clearly missed something -- but Phil is having a lot of fun with these guys. They chuckle and do their trademark high-five low-five near-miss gesture, which on the one hand is kind of irritating, but on the other, isn't as bad as all that hand-slapping that Aaron and Arianne used to trot out, so it hardly seems worth complaining about.