Venice (Part One)

This entry is a continuation of the previous four posts documenting our 2 weeks in Italy and the Mediterranean. To get a feel for the whole trip, you should start at the beginning.

Friday, May 8th

We took another early train from Florence to Venice (about a 2.5 hour ride). We walked out of the station and within about 30 seconds Jenna concluded that she "was going to love Venice". We checked into our room at the Hotel Santa Croce (very nice) and headed off right away. The first thing we did to help get a good view of the city was to take a "grand canal tour", which is nothing more than taking a ride on the local public transportation - the water bus - through the main canal in the city. We got views of the Rialto Bridge, St. Mark's Square, and all of the other main sites, from afar (we'd go back to visit all of these later).

We continued onto another boat out to the islands of Murano and Burano. Both are a bit of a tourist trap, but with good reason. Murano became well known for its artisan glass blowers. The place is now full of small shops selling various glassware, ranging from small ornaments all the way up to elaborate chandeliers. We wandered around for a while looking for the perfect souvenir and an elusive glass blowing demonstration. We ended up with a tree ornament of a gondolier, but the only demonstration we could find had a 5 euro cover charge, so we passed on that.

Burano is another nearby island that is known for its lace making and for its colorful houses. We weren't too interested in the lace - mostly doilies and fancy parasols, but we'd heard the place was nice so we just walked around a bit. We ended up wandering in through some of the side streets and away from the tourist shops and it was very peaceful when we found the more residential areas. The houses there are all painted different colors, something that dates back to the city's seafaring past, where sailors knew which house was theirs based on the color (so that they wouldn't come back to the wrong house after a night of drinking). It was nice to walk through the area among the canals and colorful homes and the locals.

After spending most of the afternoon on the islands, we headed back into town to the hotel, where we freshened up and headed back out for dinner. Rick suggested a couple of canal-side places, but after looking at their menus we decided they didn't look too good, and were way over-priced. We ended up winding through the mess of small alley-streets and canals to another suggested place and enjoyed a nice, reasonably priced meal on a patio overlooking a small square. After dinner we headed to the Rialto Bridge to enjoy the sights of the Grand Canal from the best vantage point of the city.

After sight seeing and people watching from the bridge we made our way down to the canal to check a big item off our list - a night-time gondola ride. We were really glad we did it at night (which comes at a slight premium). During the day, most of the canals are crowded with loud boats, and the back canals are crowded with tons of other gondolas and thousands of tourists on the streets above. On our ride, there was hardly another person in site. We got a lot of good history from our guy, and it was nice to just take this moonlit ride through the romantic city.

Saturday, May 9th

We only had half a day to spend touristing before we needed to get to the Venice port to catch our cruise (more info on that in the next post), so we didn't plan a lot to do this day. We started with a trip to St Mark's Square (home of the city's main church of the same name) and the Doge's Palace.

The Doge (or duke) was the ruler of Venice. He was elected from the aristocracy, and once put in power he kept the title for life. This was a huge honor, of course, but came at a price, as the Doge was only allowed to leave the palace if he had an entourage of other aristocrats with him, and in order to ever leave the city, he had to request a pass from the lower rulers, which was only given rarely and only for a few days at the maximum. Also interesting is the fact that each new Doge furnished the palace himself, so when one died, the family had to go in and remove all the furniture to make way for the next guy. When the last Doge was ousted from power by Napoleon, he left and took all his stuff with him, so there is now nothing in there!

We toured through the palace, seeing the bedrooms (with no beds), the various meeting rooms where the important state matters were discussed, the armory, and the prison which is connected by the famous Bridge of Sighs. This small bridge spans a canal between the palace and the prison, and got its name because as the prisoners walked across it after being sentenced, they would sigh as they got their last look of the city through the small windows.

After leaving the palace, we didn't have enough time to do anything major or see any sites, so we just meandered through the streets and along the canals back toward the hotel. We grabbed a slice of amazing pizza from a small shop and then a little later enjoyed some afternoon delight (gelato of course!). Venice's streets are interesting, because for one, they are all very narrow and generally short, being cut off by the various canals that run throughout the city. Also, although they have names, they are only displayed on the most important streets. As such, finding your way around can be difficult. The only help is that every couple of blocks there are signs with arrows to the major sites (like St Mark's or the train station). We followed these signs, getting lost once or twice, but made it back to the hotel, where we'd left our luggage, by about 2:00.

At this point, it was time to head off to the port to hop on our cruise ship and head out into the Mediterranean...(to be continued).