When we arrived in Venice, the owner of the B&B where we were supposed to be staying met us in a square close to the hotel. Upon our arrival he told us that instead of the B&B, we were actually going to be in the apartment that they also own (on the same square). So instead of having one room and a shared bathroom, we have an entire apartment to ourselves!
The view from the apartment and the main rooms of the apartment.
We arrived in the afternoon and we mostly just walked around Venice. Everything in Venice is beautiful: the streets, the canals, the buildings - so there are plenty of photo opportunities. After walking about one block, Karen had decided that she loved Venice. And I was thrilled to be back! We also had perfect weather yesterday.
Canals and gondolas. Always pretty.
Rialto Bridge, one of only four bridges that crosses the Grand Canal. It has shops that line it and three different walkways for pedestrians. It was packed with tourists when we walked across. All of Venice is packed with tourists.
Canals!
Piazza San Marco and the tower. The cathedral is in the background.
The (very large) cathedral, partly under construction. It was under construction when we were here two-and-a-half years ago as well.
Despite the extreme amount of tourists in Venice (I think there are always an extreme amount of tourists), we haven't had to deal with bad lines yet really. At Piazza San Marco we decided to go up the bell tower to see the views of the city.
View of most of the main part of the city.
The lagoon and one of the nearby islands.
More of the city.
It's a very pretty city from above as well. Venice was lucky in that it was never destroyed by war or by conquering armies. The buildings have been intact for hundreds and hundreds of years.
We wandered the streets for the rest of the day and after dinner we went to watch the "dueling orchestras" at Piazza San Marco. We saw these bands when I came to Venice with my family a couple years ago and they were great. There are two big cafes next to each other in the piazza and basically one group plays for ten minutes and then the next group plays and they go back and forth for hours. People sit at the cafes, but dozens (or more) people stand and watch the orchestras, moving back and forth between the two cafes to watch both groups. The orchestras (five people each) are phenomenal, so it's a ton of fun to watch. We must have watched for more than an hour last night.
Today we did a lot more wandering and we also went into the cathedral at San Marco. There were services going on, so we couldn't go into the actual church, so we went up to go out to the "balcony" of the cathedral. We thought that was all we were paying to do, but we actually were paying to get into a museum housed in the upper parts of the church. It was full of mosaics and art, but it also brought us close to the ceiling of the cathedral which is one massive mosaic of stones and gold. It was unbelievable, and it was so much better to be up by the ceiling rather than down in the church. Unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures, but it was really amazing - one of the coolest cathedrals I've been into. There are also these four enormous horse statues that Venice stole from Constantinople more than a thousand years ago, though Constantine had stolen the horses from the Romans who had probably stolen them from someone else. (Also, Napoleon stole them from the Venetians for a little while, but they went and got them back.) They decorated the outside of the cathedral for a long time, but now they're inside and replicas have replaced them.
The views from the balcony of the cathedral were nice as well:
Piazza San Marco. On the right you can see the awnings where the two bands play.
San Marco, looking out toward the lagoon. The Doge's Palace is on the left.
With Karen and in front of the bell tower (cool statues at the top actually hit the bell to ring it - they have hammers that they bang on the bell.)
Our weather was good for most of the day, so we basically just wandered around some more. It started raining this evening unfortunately, but luckily with this apartment we could just come back and relax for the evening. It felt good to take a break! We watched a movie and just took it easy.
I don't have too many thoughts or stories, but luckily, as I said, Venice is beautiful, so I can fill my blog post instead with pictures!
The Bridge of Sighs (on the left), so named because it connects the palace with the prison and it was the last glimpse the prisoners got of the beauty of Venice...therefore, they sighed. On the right, another canal.
Buildings on the Grand Canal.
A canal in a quieter part of Venice. We walked away from some of the touristy areas to see some other canals/streets/buildings.
The Church of Good Health (I think that's the translation, I don't totally remember what it's called in Italian). The church was built in honor of good health to try to keep away the Plague. Didn't work so well, but a good idea nonetheless.
Gondolas on the Grand Canal.
One more!
Tomorrow the plan is to go visit two of the other islands that are a bit farther away from the main part of Venice. One is Murano, where they make the glass that Venice is famous for, and the other is Burano, a small island that has a bunch of extremely brightly-colored houses. We've been told it's a cool sight to see! Hopefully we'll have some sun for at least most of the day! I haven't seen either of the islands so I'm looking forward to doing some new stuff tomorrow.
I'm also looking forward to eating more gelato. We did that two times today.
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