Venice

Friday, March 16 – Sunday, March 18 2012

Few places in Europe, are as unique as Venice.  Let's be honest, a city built entirely on marshy wetlands and whose major streets are actually waterways can't be anything but charming.  Clearly it wasn't a question of whether or not we would make it to Venice, it was simply a question of when. 

For those unfamiliar with how Venice came to be…  Over 1,500 years ago, barbarians invaded the mainland; some of the people who fled then established Venice.  Then in the Middle Ages the Venetians rose to power by controlling a major trade route between the east and west.  The opulence of their buildings (that can still be seen today) came around the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  It’s been a tourist destination for hundreds of years now and it was finally our turn to experience it!

We boarded the plane Friday evening, had a stopover in Rome and then got into town just before midnight.  The shuttle bus dropped us off at the "mouth of the fish" (Venice is shaped like a fish) and we were left with the semi-daunting task of finding our way through the small, dark and windy passageways to our hotel.  If we haven't mentioned it before, this is a good time to bring it up - we would be LOST without our smartphone in Europe.  One of the first things we did when we moved to Geneva was get a smartphone with touchscreen maps and an intra-Europe cell phone plan.  Having maps with GPS is a godsend, especially in peculiar positions like Venice at midnight. :)  Long story short, we found it after only a few wrong turns and quickly went to bed so we could start our exploring the next morning.

It sounds bad, but after traveling for essentially two years straight, it can become a little taxing (yeah we know, we won't hold our collective breath for your sympathy). :)  While we would normally start our trip planning months in advance, it's just not that feasible when we pack in a trip pretty much every weekend we have left in Europe.  Point being that we've started to relax a little bit on the structured itineraries and feeling like we need to see absolutely everything.  Luckily Venice is a perfect place for the relaxed approach.  One of the best things to do here is to literally try and get lost (along with a few major sites we wanted to hit up).  First thing Saturday morning we set out toward some of those major sites.

On the way we stumbled across this cool fish market (we could tell immediately by the smell).  Since Venice is right on the ocean it makes sense that they have fresh seafood readily available for the eager townspeople and tourists lucky enough to have means to cook in their room.  We did not so we settled on just browsing this unique set of offerings.  Check out the head of the swordfish below - that "blade" was easily 3 feet long.

We followed the masses on what seemed to be the most popular route and guessed that it would lead us towards Rialto Bridge - our first destination.  As we got more acquainted with the walkways we realized that, while it's fairly easy to get lost on the smaller back roads, the main walking paths are pretty well marked with yellow arrow signs telling you the direction of the major sites (see to the right).  But, as mentioned before, most of the time you can just follow the crowd and you'll eventually end up in a familiar place.

It's hard to miss Rialto Bridge.  One reason is because it's so grand; the second, as we came to find out, is that it is one of the few bridges that crosses the Grand Canal—which winds through the middle of Venice, splitting the city in two with our hotel on one side and every major site on the other.  We got very familiar with this magnificent bridge throughout our two days.  Historically there has been a bridge at this crossing since 1181.  Surprisingly the current bridge was finished in 1591 (it’s in remarkable shape for being that old).  Here are some views of and from the bridge.

We continued down the main walking route and eventually made it to the grandiose and world-renowned Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square), complete with Basilica di San Marco (St. Mark's Basilica), Campanile di San Marco (St. Mark’s Tower) and lined with some of the fancier looking buildings we've seen to date in Europe.  We started off with a quick tour of the piazza, which is named after that Mark, from the Bible.  His remains have actually been housed in the basilica (see photo in next section, below) since A.D 828.  Something we learned on this trip is that the winged lion is the symbol for St. Mark (there are other animals symbolizing Luke, Matthew, and John as well... who knew?).  We noticed that there are a number of winged lion sculptures all around the city, a couple shown below.

The church was built in the 11^th century.  It has all sorts of treasures taken from other cities over the years.  Several of those treasures were in the church’s treasury that we visited (kind of by mistake because we originally thought that's where Mark's tomb was).  Part of the room was lined with these gold shrines filled with body parts of saints from years past.  We found this a bit strange, almost idolatrous in a way.  What's the point of encasing a piece of someone's vertebrae if not to use it in some form of worship?  Weird.  Anyway, check out the cool mosaics and grand interior. 

Mark's bones

Next on the list was Doge’s Palace (‘doge’ = ‘duke’), the seat of Venetian government and home to the ruling doge.  You can see by the facade of the building that these people aren't joking around.  As mentioned earlier, the Venetians were a powerful force back in the day and clearly showed that power architecturally.  During their heyday they spared no expense to put a rich face on this city.  Unfortunately there were no photos allowed inside.  What you missed were some fancy interiors - mostly made of dark rich wood and walls lined with fancy paintings and other typical palace decorations.

One unique thing about this palace is that it is connected to the city prisons (convenient proximity, huh?) by the famous Bridge of Sighs.  Perhaps you can guess why it was named this - crossing that bridge and looking over beautiful Venice was the last moment of freedom for prisoners before they entered into captivity - wouldn't that make you sigh, too? :)  It's not much from the inside of the bridge but below you can see a nice view from the outside.  We did manage to sneak a couple photos from the prison... they didn’t seem to be as strict with the rule down there (although knowing the seriousness that Italy sometimes has around restricting photos in their monuments, we might have never left the prison if they caught us in the act!) ;)

 

Bridge of Sighs interior

Bridge of Sighs exterior

We finished our tour of the palace by enjoying the lovely inner square.  Our guidebook mentioned to keep an eye out for a grand staircase with Moses and Paul Newman at the top.  Say what?  But once we found the staircase and took a look at the statues at the top—yes, indeed, the one on the left has the uncanny likeness of Paul Newman. :)

You may not have realized this, but Venice is also surrounded by a few different islands that have their own charm and reasons to visit.  On a spur of the moment decision we decided to visit one of these on Saturday afternoon - Murano.  Murano is famous for its glass blowing and we wanted to see it live in action.  We were under the impression that once we arrived on the island there would be countless glassblowers doing their thing - unfortunately all was quiet.  Apparently they don't do the glass blowing in the afternoons.  I guess this was an example of our poor prior planning finally catching up with us!  Oh well, we did manage to see a video of some glass blowing in one of the stores and we took some time to walk around the small island to take in some of charm, then headed back for the main island.

Crazy glass art

The rest of the evening was spent wandering the evening streets of Venice, crossing various bridges over the countless canals and spying on fellow tourists taking overpriced gondola rides through the waters below.

In an attempt to avoid the crowds we decided to wake up super early on Sunday morning and take some photos of our favorite sites thus far.  Only a couple other people had the same idea so it was a nice break from the masses of tourists that usually lined these streets.  It's hard to narrow down photos in a place like Venice... here are several to enjoy. :)

After our early photo shoot we went back to the hotel to get ready for the day and enjoy some breakfast.  Normally we wouldn't make a point to mention something as mundane as breakfast, but our hotel was located right on the Grand Canal so we had the opportunity to eat on the balcony facing the water and soak it all in… alongside the giant red penguin, who was also enjoying the view... yeah, don't ask because we have no clue.

We wanted to get an aerial view of Venice (of course) so after breakfast we returned to St. Mark's square and took the lift up the Campanile for just that.  We happened to be up there on the hour mark so we had the treat of hearing the bells close up.  Yes, they were as loud as you can imagine!

Our previous (but limited) research told us that Sunday mornings at 11am there is a Gregorian chant church service just across the water from Venice on the island of San Giorgio.  Seeing that we had a little time to kill we decided to wander a little bit through the southern part of Venice with the plan to take one of the numerous water ferries that constantly ran through the surrounding waters.  The good news is that our leisurely walk provided us with some more glimpses of this great city (pictures below), the bad news is that we lost track of time a little and then discovered that the ferry route we planned to take didn't actually exist.  We returned back to St. Marks Square on the same route we left (not on such a leisurely pace this time) and finally found the correct boat route out to San Giorgio....

By the time we arrived on San Giorgio and rushed into the church, it was about 20 minutes after 11:00 and no Gregorian chants of any kind seemed to be happening.  Dang.  We were convinced that the service didn't actually happen (vs. it only being 15 minutes long) but were really bummed that we missed out on it one way or another.  We quickly got over it and poked around the church and the rest of the small island and then were ready for our next activity.

The Grand Canal is certainly one of the highlights in Venice.  As mentioned before, it is the major channel of water that cuts through the center of the island – nearly 150 feet wide, 15 feet deep and 2 miles long.  It used to be a river and played a significant role in forming the islands and marshy lagoon.  It’s home to the most extravagant of Venice’s buildings, which we were told we needed to view from the water to really appreciate.  One of the recommendations we received is to take a Grand Canal cruise inexpensively by riding the public ferries.  We decided to extend this joyride by taking the ferry from San Giorgio all the way around to the "mouth of the fish" to begin the official river cruise.  Here are some photos from that extended ride.

The sites on the Grand Canal are pretty interesting and we learned about them in our guidebook as we drifted along...

The tallest buildings you can see in this photo are actually smack dab in the middle of the world’s original Jewish Ghetto (formed in 1516).  In fact the name “Ghetto” came from geto, the copper foundry located here.

This is a Casino.  Especially unique because of the red carpet leads up from the water (welcoming in all those high rollers arriving by gondola). :)  This is also the building where German composer Wagner died in 1883.

Some of the fancy buildings that we saw on our tour are actually only fancy on the exterior of the building that's facing the water (and plain looking on the other sides).  You can see a couple examples in this photo below—quite the illusion if you're not paying attention.

Of course we had our moment to go under the magnificent Rialto Bridge... too bad there's graffiti all over this side of it!

Sadly, many of the bottom floors of a lot of Venetian buildings are abandoned because of the constant damage they receive from floodwaters.  Believe it or not, Venice floods almost 100 times per year due to rising seawaters and because it is sinking into the sediment it’s built on (well, technically it’s built on 15-foot wooden pillars driven into that sediment) - so much so that it has sunk almost a foot over the past 100 years.

The rest of our boat cruise was less informative and more visually stimulating... here are some photos...

After our boat cruise we tried the whole "get lost on purpose" thing that everyone says to do when you're in Venice.  What a great idea!  Right before we got lost though, we stopped by the Church of San Zaccaria to see if we could spy on the final resting place of John the Baptist's dad.  Unfortunately it was closed, but seeing the church was still intriguing.

We set off on our ‘get lost’ excursion, purposefully avoiding the crowds and winding through some extremely narrow walkways.  Check out how Dave barely fits through this one - yes, that's an actual city 'street'.

After about an hour or so we stumbled upon what appeared to be a military base.  It looked really cool so we snapped some photos.

We stepped into this deceptively huge church.  It's crazy to us how such a massive church doesn’t even show up in the guidebooks when we’d guess it must have taken a lot of money and a lot of years to build it.  We loved the brick interior especially.

In our last-minute research we also found out about neighboring Burano Island, described as a small fisherman's island where all the buildings are painted in bright pastel colors.  The website we read challenged people to walk around on the island and try not to smile as you take in the atmosphere.  We decided to take on the challenge!  Of course we lost immediately because upon arrival we soon realized that Burano is seriously one of the cutest (almost cartoon-like) little villages we've ever seen.  Just look at the photos and we're sure you'll agree... :)

On the way to Burano... these might need to be replaced soon

 

You're not seeing things - this 
tower was definitely leaning

What's the deal with the quotes?  
So, it's not really shopping... but you can call it that. :)

It was Sunday evening, back on the main island, and we finally gave into the power of the gondola.  We dropped hints earlier that these rides were for high rollers - well it's not that bad in terms of price but it will run you about 80-100 Euros a pop!  WOW.  But, when in Venice it's a must-do, right?  Actually, we made up our minds a while ago that we would take the plunge but we finally decided that an evening ride sounded particularly nice.  It was so worth it, too, because you get to see a whole different side of Venice, winding through the dark narrow canals that are only accessible by these small boats.  We asked our 'captain' how much the boats cost and he said about 50,000 Euros each.  I guess we now understand the inflated price! :)

We had an early flight the next morning in order to make it back to work on Monday morning.  Late Sunday evening we packed up our things and stayed at a hotel near the airport to give us a less stressful morning than trying to find our way off the island at the crack of dawn.  What a fun trip and a destination we look forward to returning to someday!