Venice - Day 11 and 12

Venice day 11

Bright and early we had to get off the ship.  We were like old pros now with the people mover and the waterbus to our Venice hotel and got there in no time.  Our room wasn't ready at 9am, so we checked our luggage and went out exploring.

First we went in search of the famed Rialto bridge, a very large bridge over the grand canal, lined with shopping stalls all along the bridge's span. 


But before we got there, we hit the Rialto fish and produce market.  Shellie took pictures of all the strange fish and other creatures, and we saw people shopping for giant pears and picante peppers in large bundles. 

 

Finally we got to the bridge and took our selfie from it,  on the other side we wandered around aimlessly and eventually ended up in St. Mark's square, the number one attraction for Venice. 

SMS (I made that up) is a huge plaza bordered by a lot of similar buildings with gothic and Byzantine architecture, and the famed St. Mark's Basilica at the east end.  People were feeding pigeons and two string quartets were playing music in tents on either side of the plaza.  St. Mark's Basilica was beautiful on the outside - tomorrow we are going to tour it.  We also got a picture of the Bridge of Sighs, a very small indoor bridge that links the Doge's place, where trials were held, to the prison. 

 

After SMS, we grabbed a waterbus to avoid the light rain and headed to the hotel.  On the way we had an excellent lunch and Shellie bought a carry on bag for the plane.

Our room was supposed to be a superior room - better than the first time we stayed there, but instead it was smaller, with a view of the interior courtyard.  It was ok for us so we didn't complain, but it was actually about 1/2 the size of our cabin on the ship!

 We were tired and took a short nap only to find that we wasted too much of our afternoon and didn't have much time to see two nearby sights: the Frari church and the Scuolo Grande of Saint Roch.

We tried anyway and based on their hours decided to do the Frari church and then hit the Scuolo in the morning,  the church was very beautiful inside with massive naves with humongous altars to saints around all the sides.  We were allowed to take pictures so check it out:

 

Afterwards we headed across the canal for dinner and casino.  We were lucky at the casino and paid for dinner at our favorite pizza place.  We liked the pizza we got the first time better, but the food was still good and reasonably priced.  We got home at a decent hour - big day ahead.

 

Venice Day 12

We didn't get up too early and headed out to find breakfast outside of the hotel.  We stopped at. Cafe across from the Frari church and they didn't have breakfast so we just got coffee and at some boxed Cheerios.  Then we went to the Scuolo Grande of Saint Roch.

This place was amazing with huge paintings around the walls of the first floor and the second floor ballot which looks like the Sistine chapel with its huge paintings.  I bought a book and at right you can see what the place looks like.

 

Then we headed to the meeting place for our 1:30 tour on the other side of the Rialto bridge.  Since we were early we ate lunch in the plaza (campo) by the meeting place. 

Our tour guide Stephania showed us three neighborhoods on the way to SMS and pointed out some great places of interest including where Marco Polo and Casanova used to live. 








Finally we reached SMS and St. Mark's.  We were able to skip the long line and go straight in.  Earlier in the day, SMS had flooded at high tide, so there were still wooden platforms everywhere to walk on.

 

We could not take pictures in the Basilica, so I will try to describe it and maybe show some pictures from the Internet.  We first went to the second story and balcony of the basilica when we could see the interior close to the domes and see out onto SMS.  Unbelievably the gold domes are covered in the inside in what looks like gold paintings, except it's actually 10,000 square meters of mosaics, made with tiny tiles the size of my pinkie fingernail.  Jawdropping.  They also had the original bronze four horses that adorned the front of the basilica - these were life sized and very detailed.  Now they are inside to preserve them and replicas are outside on the balcony.

 

 

 

From the balcony, we could take great pictures and video of SMS and the waterfront and the Doge's place and the library.  We went back inside to marvel some more at the mosaics then headed to the Doge's Palace. 
 

The Doge's Palace was where the head of the state of Venice lived and where trials and important events occurred.  It is a large building surrounding a courtyard.  The rooms and staircases are filled with some of the largest and most impressive Renaissance paintings.  I could take pictures in here, so hopefully you can get a feeling for the size of the rooms and paintings.

 

 

After going through the various rooms, we got to walk across the Bridge of Sighs, named for the sound prisoners would presumably make as they headed from the court to the prison building next door via the bridge.  The prisons looked more like dungeons and the rooms were small like our room at the hotel :(.

 

After the tour we went back to the hotel and out for an early dinner.  The first place  we went to closed unexpectedly while another couple an us were approaching it, so we both independently googled some other places to go and ended up at the same restaurant Al Nono Risorto.

 They had two specials and Shellie got one and I got the other.  The food and he service were both very good and we'd definitely go back.  Shellie even had scoops of Parmesan cheese on her food and she normally won't eat it!  We even had desert, and even though it wasn't the cannoli she'd been craving, it was very good.  Maybe they don't make cannolis in Venice - wrong region?

 

Now we have to pack to go home.  We are looking forward to seeing the kids at the end of a long travel day tomorrow.

 
 
In the morning, we took a water taxi to the airport in the morning and left Venice in the dust.

 

Katakolon and Olympia Greece - Day 9

We arrived in the port city of Katakolon, Greece for our last stop of the cruise and the closest port city to Olympia.  We decided to go our own way instead of taking a professional tour, but I had Rick Steve's guidebook which was plenty detailed.  We did use the ship's tour bus to get there.  Sadly, like Santorini, the hospitals are unmanned due to a lack of doctors and nurses in Greece, so they have to drive a ways to get medical help.  Also, they just ran out of contract for waste disposal, so now they have trash piled up along the main thoroughfares while the work out a new solution.  Very sad.

BUT.... the land was very beautiful - lots of hills and mountains, lots of greenery, olive trees and more vineyards all the way to Olympia, the site of the first Olympics in 776BC.  The Olympics was held here for nearly 1000 years until the fourth century AD, then discontinued until it was resurrected in 1896.

When we got to the site, we bought a combo ticket to the archeological site and the museum.  First, we went to the site and saw a number of areas which were probably massive and beautiful in those times.  Now all that' slept are the outlines of buildings with columns and a few key walls to mark the buildings that once stood there.  However, we were still able to feel the atmosphere as we walked the shady tree covered site and see enough remnants to key our imagination. 

 

The massive temple of Zeus in the center of the main area only has one large column standing, but you can tell how huge it was and there are pictures of how it would have looked with its 40 foot high Zeus sculpture, like Lincoln at the Lincoln memorial.

There was a pillar that once held the winged victory statue - we later found the statue in the museum.

 The highlight was to see the original stadium, with its grassy banks around an oval dirt infield.  At either end are the original marble starting blocks for the inaugural event, the 192m dash.  We got lots of pictures at the blocks and overlooking the stadium.

 

 

 
 

We also saw some fairly intact temples with original columns and writing. 

 

After a brief stop at the outdoor cafe, er, snack shop, we walked the short distance to the museum.  The museum made a nice progression clockwise through the ages, my favorite being the Bronze Age Griffins, weapons, and helmets.  There were are lot of statues, including the original winged victory Nike sculpture above.

After the museum tour, we walked into the nearby town to get souvenirs and have a beer (Alpha beer from Greece).  I wanted to buy a lot of math shirts but settled on one Pi shirt each for the kids.  There was a museum dedicated to all of the great Greek mathematicians and scientists, but we didn't have time (and Shellie didn't feel like geeking out like I did).

 

We returned back the town of Katakolon and stopped at a couple shops and had a beer and some Tzatziki at a little curbside cafe. 

 

Then a short walk to the ship and we were off to sea for a day, where all we did was wake up late, walk the ship, take naps, and had a great sushi dinner at Izumi.

Santorini, Greece Day 8

Today we went to the beautiful main island of the group of islands called Santorini.  Santorini rests at the top of a huge volcanic crater rim for which the dormant caldera is underwater.  From the islands there are spectacular views of the Mediterranean.  The cities themselves with their white houses and blue domed churches are a beautiful contrast.

We visited  winery overlooking the Mediterranean and  tried some local wines.  We liked the white wine the best.  Grapes are grown all over the island and thrive on the humidity. 










After the winery and the island tour we went back to the ship.  We had two choices - a cable car that repels almost straight down the cliffs of the island or a donkey trail - a winding set of switchback stairs that you can travel on by foot or on the back of a donkey - watch out for land mines!

Kusadasi and Ephesus Day 7

Today we docked into the Turkish port city of Kusadasi (koo-Sha-dah-seh). It is a gateway to the ancient town of Ephesus, home to a lot of Christian icons and once a bustling city of 250,000 people.

We booked an all-day guided tour which departed the dock at 10am.

Our first stop was the House of the Virgin Mary.  After passing through four miles of flat countryside, we got to the ancient city of Ephesus.  But instead of stopping there, we continued up a very tall hill to the former home of Jesus mother, Mary.  Late in life, John the Baptist and Mary moved to Ephesus where she lived until she died.  John put her up in a house at the top of a large hill to protect her.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but I took a picture of a picture of the altar built at one end.

We also gathered holy water from a blessed stream and I brought it home for the kids.

in sAfter this we returned to the archeological site for Ephesus.  Home to the Ephesians in the Bible, Ephesus was a modern marvel of the time.  It was one of the largest port cities in the Mediterranean and had 250,000 people.  We saw many reconstructed buildings that were excavated including the famous library - you can see it in the background.

The main streets were made of marble and they had some sidewalks which were all brightly colored mosaic stones.

We saw the public toilet area where the citizens sat around a fountain filled with frogs whose croaking masked the sound of their business.  Running water flowed through the bathroom to whisk away waste and to let people wash their hands.



We also saw a large stadium where 25,000 people could sit.  We were told that a Sting concert partially destroyed the foundation which now has to be repaired. 

You could see a great view of the stadium from a hill jut above the Appian Way - a marble path leading from the city to the former waterfront that Cleopatra and Mark Antony used when they visited.


After seeing Ephesus we went to a Turkish lunch buffet and shopping center.

Then we went to St. John's Basilica where John the Baptist lived and preached.  He baptized people in the in-ground font at the left.


Finally we went back to the port city of Kusadasi to see how silk rugs are made.  We watched a guy take a silkworm cocoon and after getting it started, he pulled almost a mile of silk thread from the single cocoon.  You can read more about it here.  Then we watched a lady making a rug.  She was on a fairly small loom and with the speed at which she worked you could tell it would take a long time to make a single rug.  Shellie looked at a 6'x9' rug they priced at $40,000 and I made her run away.

We hoofed it back to the ship after our 7 hour tour.  Next day is on the Greek island of Santorini.