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.