Venice

When we planned our trip, I was ambivalent about visiting Venice. I think if I hadn't been reading a series of novels about 15th century Venice I might have said "let's skip it." Boy, would that have been a mistake! We liked Florence and surroundings very much and Bologna lived up to expectations as well, but Venice was the highlight of the trip for me. I had heard how dirty and unpleasant it was (Susan didn't like it much at all the first time she visited). We were surprised at how clean it was without noxious smells from the canals. It was very impressive.

Venice is not the easiest city to get around in. Many streets are not identified and the network of canals makes it difficult to go directly between two points. (originally there were no streets at all. Travel was entirely by boat.) A good map is essential. That was our first purchase and I'm pleased to say that Susan navigated us around the city without incident. Venice was crowded at times and at times there seemed to be no one around--it was very weird. Here's a street scene just around the corner from our hotel.

This is one of the larger secondary canals that branch off from the Grand Canal, which is the main street of Venice.

These are smaller canals and you can see that they are multi purpose.

 

There are streets and many of them look like this. No people this time.

 

There were flowers everywhere, mostly in window boxes like this one.

This is the Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge. This is about as narrow as it gets.

Our first view of St. Mark's. You can discern a distinct oriental look to the cathedral. This is due to the close ties between Venice and the Byzantine Empire. The third picture is of some of the detail over one of the doors. This, like much of the art in Venice, is all mosaic (and that is real gold leaf).

 

The Doge's Palace sits right nest to St. Mark's. This gives you some idea of the detail in the construction.

The clock tower sits in the middle of St. Mark's Square. This is not the original. It fell down one night. Miraculously no one was injured but a cat. The tower was rebuilt to the original specifications. Hmmm...does that mean it's going to fall down again?

The Rialto Bridge. Like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence it is covered with shops.

While we were waiting for our vapporetto (a water bus), a procession of boats came by. They ranged from single rowers to a very large boat with a couple of dozen rowers. Here's a sample of the boats you can see on the Grand Canal. We were told that you could always tell Venetians from tourists--Venetians never sit down in a boat.

  

Here's that woman again. Is she following me?

This is the gondola we rode in. Before we got to Venice we read that one had to ride in a gondola or miss a unique experience. Once I heard that they cost 80 euros for a half hour--per person--a gondola ride sounded too unique for me. However, we hooked up with the same tour company that we used in Florence and the tour included a gondola ride. If you are ever in Venice, that's the way to do it. The company provides fabulous tours at very reasonable rates. We got a half hour gondola ride, a walking tour of Venice, a tour of St. Mark's, a tour of the Doge's Palace and a tour of the Grand Canal (four separate tours, actually) for a very reasonable price. It took all of one afternoon.

I've mentioned before how crooked everything is in Italy. Here's another example. See the tower in the background? That's typical. It's often hard to figure out how to hold the camera. Looking through the lens there's always a tendency to try to straighten things up. The key thing to know about Venice is that all the buildings (and all the streets) are built on tree trunks pounded into the soil below the lagoon.  One church we saw (it was massive) allegedly was supported by a million tree trunks. I have no idea how many are under St. Mark's. Hardly anything is level in the whole place.

Venice is known for its glass works. Here's shot I took of a shop window along our tour.

Venice is also famous for its dress and masquerade balls. The key to the ball is the variety of masks worn. Here are some examples. The masks were not meant so much as disguises, but to allow famous and or notorious people the fiction that they were not recognized.

We really liked Venice. I'm glad we didn't leave it off the itinerary.

Next up: Verona, Milan and Lake Como.