Travels with Bill and Nancy--Italy Page 3

Italy Page 3

Thursday, 9/23/10 – Off to Venice
Got up, finished off the breakfast supplies and by 9:20 am, were headed to Venice. We took the road through Cortina, site of the 1956 winter Olympics. The views were wonderful through the Dolomites. Jill, our GPS, behaved herself pretty well – then lost her voice about lunchtime – don’t know why the cat got her tongue.

Last view of Sassolungo	View of Daira
View from the Great Dolomite Road	Steve's car

Steve pulled off the main road for lunch at Longarone. We found a great parking space and a terrific little restaurant with an unpleasant waitress. However, we all agreed that it was the best pizza in all of Italy.

We got back to the main road, only missed one turn (with voiceless Jill) and then made our way through Mestre and found the parking structure right across from the train station – not an easy task. We said good-bye to Steve’s wonderful BMW and hoped nobody would ding it while we were in Venice.

Bill had all the instructions carefully worked out – from the parking lot, we took a bus to Venice. We didn’t know how to pay for the bus ride – so we went for free. From the bus, we walked a few blocks, lugging our suitcases through hordes of tour groups. Bill directed us to the office to pick up our key to the apartment. The lovely gal in the office was very helpful. Next we were off to take the vaporetto (public water taxi). We were treated to a long, glorious ride up the Grand Canal to our destination – cost €6.50 and took about 45 minutes. The boat was packed and made several stops. The views were awesome. This is one amazing city! Bill, with his clear instructions led us down a few blocks and we found our apartment in Arsenale.

Bill on the vaporetto	Venice
Venice	Venice
Venice	Venice
Venice	Venice
Venice	Venice

Venice

We made our way up three floors on a narrow marble staircase, picked our rooms, unpacked and headed for a beer. It had been a very long trip from the Dolomites, but we had finally arrived and were ready to do Venice.

As we drank our beers, I found a restaurant in Rick Steve’s book close by and we made our way through narrow alleys, over bridges, past amazing little shops. At last we found Trattoria da Giorgio ai Greci. The canal side tables were full, so we found a table inside – nice and cozy. The waiter was pushing the sea bass – but way too pricey. Bill and I had the spaghetti and lasagna and we shared a very nice wine ($44) with Steve and Daira.

After dinner, we went to San Marcos Square to scope out all the landmarks for tomorrow’s adventure – Tourist Office, church, Correr Museum, etc. The square was alive with ensembles and music from Vienna with a full moon peaking around the corner of the Bell Tower. In spite of the crowds, it was a magical night – and Venice is pure magic.

Friday, 9/24/10 – Venice (museums, museums, museums)
We were awakened early by dogs barking and street noise. I looked out my window and waved at my neighbor in the next building about 6 feet away. Unfortunately, I tried my hair dryer and blew out the circuits forcing poor Daira to take a cold shower in the dark. Bill was frustrated because he couldn’t get the circuit breaker to work. Luckily, on the way out, I spotted another breaker box and things were back to normal in an instant – a big weight lifted.

We found a café (in the Sandwich district) and had some breakfast – I even had cappuccino. We all headed back to San Marco Square (and the Correr Museum) to buy passes for 3 museums (€13). With pass in hand, we went our separate ways realizing the different pace and different rhythms we have.

Bill and I covered a lot of territory.

I wanted to knock off the top museum (of the three) while my brain was still fresh – so we went the Doges Palace – with our audio headset, we saw

Legislative seats of government
Council of 10 meeting room and the spooky face where the ballots were deposited to execute someone for the heck of it
Ballroom
Paintings – weird ones, religious ones
Golden staircase inside
Grand staircase outside – nobody goes there now
Prison
Bridge of Sighs
Weaponry
Chastity belt
Armor – even for the horse
Maps, giant globes

Doges Palace	Doges Palace
Doges Palace	Doges Palace
Doges Palace	Doges Palace
Bridge of Sighs	Bridge of Sighs

Doges Palace	Doges Palace
Doges Palace	Doges Palace

After the Doges, we found the place to buy our train tickets out of here and then went to the Tourist Office. Bill made a call to the rental office to get another set of towels – It was a very trying 20 minutes – but he got through.

Then we had another trying 20 minutes getting through flooded San Marco Square on platforms with hundreds of tourists – all intent on avoiding the high tide and rising water.

San Marco Square

Clock Tower

Walkways in San Marco Square

Flooded San Marco Square

We walked back to the Sandwich Street and found a basic little café that didn’t seem to appeal to tour groups. We had beer and a toasted ham and cheese sandwich – and it hit the spot.

We headed to the next museum on our list, Ca’ Rezzonico. It wasn’t easy finding our way through the mazes and over the numerous bridges, but we finally managed to get to the Academia Bridge and then on to the palace.

Venice	Venice
Nancy and the Grand Canal	Bill and the Grand Canal

Venice	Venice
Venice	Venice

The museum, Ca’ Rezzonico, in the Dorsoduro District, is a splendid 18th century palace. We really liked what we saw (but no photos allowed):

Wedding room for one of the sons
Paintings by Guardi, Canaletto and Longhi
Saw paintings everywhere including gruesome scenes – sweet woman driving a stake into a man’s head
Bedroom, toiletry, baby cradle
Medicine shop set up – rolls and rolls of blue and jars with contents sealed away
China, glassware (remained me of Vienna’s museums)
Ballroom and a nice gallery on the 3rd floor where the common folk once lived.

We had to hurry out of there to find our way to the Rialto Bridge to meet Steve and Daira and Alessandro Schezzini, the guide recommended in Rick Steves’ book (041-906-223 or (mobile) 335-530-9024) for a walking tour. The bridge was packed with people, but somehow, we all managed to connect. Another couple, Terry and Stu, from Minnesota also joined our group. Alessandro was cool and funny and enlightened us on ways of the Venetians.

Alessandro and his group

Daira, Bill, Steve and Alessandro

Italians are passionate about their Gondoliers. Alessandro told us about:

Gondola racing competition
Getting a job as a gondolier requires that your father, or a close relative, was a gondolier
Gondola rides are very expensive (€80 for a 40-minute ride during the day, and €100 after 5:00 pm)
Women are now Gondoliers – not easy for macho Italian guys to accept
Now making plastic Gondoliers – Lordy, Lordy

Alessandro walked us to the original main square (the oldest in Venice) where a couple was dancing the Tango in hopes of gathering tips from the crowd.

Alessandro showed us a statue on a square of a bent over, despairing man supporting a pedestal. In the old days, every morning, a Town crier would climb the pedestal to yell out the laws and collect taxes from the crowd. This was before Gutenberg’s printing press, so there were no papers (only words) to issue the laws.

Alessandro also pointed out the clock with Roman numerals 1 to 24. Alessandro, not pleased with a gentle little man feeding pigeons in the square, said, “If the police were around, they’d surely ticket him.” We walked around to the water and saw the large market areas where people come to buy vegetables, fish and other commodities. Alessandro took us to another square to point out the only tree in Venice. He called it their Central Park. The sky was getting heavier and we thought we’d be caught in a downpour.

Venice

Clock with Roman Numerals

Gentle man feeding pigeons	Venice
Venice	Venice

Last Tango in Venice	Venice
Gondola parking	The only tTree in Venice

In spite of threatening weather, Alessandro continued enlightening us on the general state of affairs in Venice – both past and present.

Venice is built on clay with no bedrock. Lumber was driven down into the clay for the building support – which really isn’t much support at all. Now the lumber is petrified and all buildings are sinking evenly. Ground floors throughout the town can’t be used. Venice is sinking and the tide has claimed all the ground floors. (We have about 15-20 years to say goodbye to Venice.)

In the early days, it was the custom for the victorious soldiers to take the spoils of war, such as large marble statues and return to Venice. They dropped them off the boat at San Marco's Cathedral for a thank you offering to God. After a few hundred years of this serious looting and depositing of massive treasures at the cathedral, San Marcos began to sink. After the powers-that-be figured out what was causing the sinking, they sent out an edict to tell the soldiers to take your treasures elsewhere.

Alessandro said that old Venice had a very just form of government (which went against what I read in the travel guides). He said that there were a lot of wealthy citizens, but fortunes came and went quickly because they were in the risky trade business. Venice was the trade capital of the world. The wealthy folks took good care of their “help” and they all lived together in the palaces with the “help” occupying the top floors. There was a plague in 1500’s that wiped out 1/3 of the population.

In the old squares (there are many of them in Venice) the city installed a water filtration system to add minerals back into the water underground. You could see the old grate left over from this advanced system in many of the plazas and squares. Alessandro also told us that the old pipes scattered about the city are the best sources of drinking water – something we’d never guess.

Best water

Alessandro

Alessandro told us how the current preservation policy is choking off renovation in Venice. Nothing can be changed in the town. Huge old palaces with huge empty rooms cannot be reconfigured into hotels, apartments or shops. Plus, the cost of remodeling is outrageous. This policy is killing the tourist industry and killing any idea of urban living in Venice. (Many residents are forced to move out of the city because of high prices.)

Alessandro laughed as he told us that although many shops sell carnival masks to the tourists, there is no carnival celebration in Venice. The masks are made in China and are selling like hot cakes in Venice based on a myth. Tourists are willing to buy anything.

We learned a lot from Alessandro in a couple of hours. A few little raindrops began to fall as we were moving through the crowds by gorgeous displays in elegant stores. We said, “Goodbye” to Alessandro and the couple from Minn. Alessandro gave us a good restaurant recommendation – a place called “Two Swords.” I can’t recall the Italian name.

It was a very nice place. However, Daira and I ordered the wrong dish. We got the gnocchi with salmon which was very sticky and hard to get down. Bill was happy with his steak and Steve with his calamari. Fat and happy and filled with Venice, we went back to the room.

We had a very nice day. It’s late now and I hear it raining outside.

(NOTE: Everyone was awakened by the thunder last night – except me. With sleeping aids and without hearing aids, I missed it all.)

Saturday, 9/25/10 – More Venice
Bill and I slept in – Steve and Daira were up and ready to go. They had an ambitious itinerary with lots of museums to cover. They left for the breakfast spot we found yesterday and we joined them shortly.

Our timing was good. We finished breakfast, made our way across Piazza San Marco to snap a few photos, then hit the Correr Museum right at 9, when the door was opening.

Nancy in San Marco Square	San Marco Square
Bill and friend	Plaque in Venice
Venice	San Marco Square

Correr Museum

The Correr is another wonderful museum – like viewing a scrapbook of this ancient city – I marveled at:

The library -- with its amazing carved bookshelves lined with first editions with publications such as “Robinson Crusoe” and other popular novels. Venice, with its superpower attitude, whole heartedly embraced the new printing technology.

The Map Room displayed the maps of all the places the merchant fleets traveled bringing back exotic goods from the east and passing them along down the Adriatic. I chuckled at the pre 18th century concept of the world with pitiful little “North America” and imposing Canada and huge Baja. I loved the illustrations on the maps showing demons and pudgy heads with puckered lips blowing to illustrate the direction of the winds.

Drawings and paintings illustrating the pomp and circumstance of the day. We saw lines of people – Popes, Doges, royalty, ladies in waiting, soldiers, horses, bands, and knights, all organized in a formal parade weaving along the promenade lining the canals. The ordinary people – kids with dogs, beggars, hawkers – dotted the edges of the great power and formality. The detail was fabulous with the expressions on the faces capturing their reactions to the great celebration and also to each other. Their eyes were plainly checking out who was doing what and who was looking the coolest.

The magnificent ballroom was oval in shape, covered in murals and lite by a series of candles from above. The orchestra played its tunes from a balcony overhead.

We passed through a couple of rooms that reminded us of Greece with large marble statues or busts of the rich and famous. I’m sure a lot of these treasures were spoils of war and may have contributed to sinking of San Marco cathedral.

We saw coins from around 500AD – beautiful designs and very important to Venice. After all, this was the trade capital of the world. (It wasn’t until after the 1700’s, when America was discovered, that new trade routes opened up, cutting into Venice’s business.)

We walked through the art gallery. Like most of what we’ve seen, there were Madonnas-and-child aplenty, scenes of Venice, cupids, nymphs, half horse, half person, violent scenes of torture, ships, war, soldiers, leaders and popes in goofy outfits, lovely ladies, and themes drawn from mythology, and the Bible. A few paintings caught our eye – The Last Supper, with figures so animated and arranged so differently from Michelangelo’s piece; the ugliest picture of Madonna and child (only a mother could love that baby) and intense Christ on the cross from the chest up.

That’s pretty much my brain dump from the Correr Museum. With each museum, I make more and more assumptions and get bigger and bigger ah-ha’s.

We dashed through the last of the art gallery rooms to get to San Marco by 11 to take the free English language tour of the cathedral. High tide had arrived along with the flooding. The hundreds of tourists made their way on 4 ft. wide platforms, jamming us all together, but the worst was being jammed in the middle of a tour group.

Flooded St. Marks Square

We found the place to check our bags (required for the cathedral tour) and then back up on the platform to get into the cathedral on time. Turns out that there is no English-speaking tour on weekends – damn those tour books that said, “11 daily.” Oh well, we’d have to do San Marco on our own (with no one telling us what’s what.) I last saw San Marco about 20 years ago. It stood out in my mind because of its exotic eastern feel. After having traveled to Turkey, it looks like it would fit nicely into Istanbul.

As we entered, we saw hordes of large tour groups and lots of folks snapping photos right next to the “No Photos” signs posted up and down the aisles. The cathedral is large and dark. It takes some time to let the treasures sink in. The mosaics high overhead depicted Jesus, and his gang of 12 and other stories. The mosaic tiles are mixed in with gold tiles reflecting the light and making you think “Wow, this is something.” After wrenching our necks to take in the mosaics above, we looked down at the mosaic marble floors. We saw the intricate geometric designs interspersed with figures, such as interlocking peacocks.

Mosaics in San Marco

Mosaic Ceiling

There are 3 museums within the church, with separate admissions. I noticed a few people bowing before something at the front of the church so we paid our €2 each to get out of the crowds and have a better look. Boy, am I glad we did – turns out it was the tomb of San Marco himself. The remains of San Marco was the whole reason Venice became powerful. Somewhere back in the 800’s, some Venetians had the wisdom to steal the bones of San Marco in Constantinople and smuggle them back to Venice in a pork barrel. With the remains of the rock star of Saints, Venice could build this lavish church and have people travel from afar to pay their respects. (Venice’s former star, St. Timothy, was just a gentle man carrying a child on his back. He was just not the image Venice was going for.)

After we viewed San Marco’s coffin and the amazing gold piece with 500 rubies, 400 sapphires and so many other jewels too numerous to mention, we continued our tour of the church. It was interesting to see a side church cove, with a priest administering communion to his flock of about 20 elderly folks.

We “did” the church and were ready for lunch. We retrieved our backpacks and decided to return to the spot where we had lunch the day before. The high tide causing numerous flooded walkways forced us into Plan B. We were lost in the back streets trying to avoid taking off our shoes and wading in water that couldn’t be very sanitary. Finally, we gave up, rolled up our pant legs, removed our shoes and headed into the cold, dirty waters of Venice.

We spotted Steve and Daira having a pizza on a sideway café. They saw the Doge’s Palace that morning and were enjoying a nice meal. We headed on in search of food and ended up in one of the many little pizza places. Pizza was OK – but big – should have split one. We chatted with the couple at the next table. They were from Cleveland and were freed from the cruise ship for the afternoon. The couple at the opposite table were from Topeka Kansas. All of us were armed with our Rick Steves’ guidebook. (Rick Steves has ruined so many places for us “independent travelers.”)

It was about 1:30 when we hit the streets again. A glorious, beautiful sky was overhead (time for sunglasses), but the streets were packed with lost tourists (like ourselves) and flooded walkways. It wasn’t very pleasant so we decided that we had done all the things we came to do in Venice (and had completed all the museums on our Museum Pass). I snapped a few more photos along the way. (We saw a group of Nigerian purse peddlers running from the police. We chased after them for our excitement of the day.)

Rialto Bridge	Venice
Rialto Bridge	Venice

Venice

We followed the signs to an Internet café and checked our email. Not much news from home – note from Lolly, note from Pat, nothing from the kids – but the stock market was way up. Good, maybe we can afford the rapidly increasing cost of the Euro. (Venice is very expensive – designed to squeeze the most money out of the tourist.)

We ambled in the direction of our apartment – stopping for a gelato and an occasional souvenir. The displays in the shops in Venice are like I’d never seen before – especially the glass shops. The Italians are fantastic designers, but Italians in Venice are the BEST of the Italians.

Store display	Store display
Store display	Store display

Store display

Door knocker on the streets of Venice

Back at our neighborhood, we bought some yogurt for breakfast and a beer for the afternoon. It was great being “home.” We opened all the shutters and let the Sunday afternoon life float in. Bill used the clothes line outside our 3rd floor window just like a real Italian – what fun.

Our Apartment in Venice	Our Apartment in Venice
Views from the Apartment	Views from the Apartment

Bill’s Laundry Hung Out to Dry

Views from the Apartment

Steve and Daira arrived precisely at 6:00. They were exhausted. They had covered three museums, and walked all over town. Sad to say they missed San Marco’s church. It was closed for some reason that afternoon.

Bill picked a great restaurant on Trip Advisor for our last night in Venice – La Mascareta (Osteria-Enoteca) in the Castello neighborhood - 5183 Calle Lunga Santa Maria Formosa. It was a most friendly place with a crazy Italian Owner / Chef ( Mauro Lorenzon) infecting the place with his impish big smiles. Daira and I had lamb chops to die for. Steve and Bill had spaghetti with clam sauce. We went home fat and happy and thrilled with Venice.

The owner of La Mascareta . . .

. . . enjoying his wine

NOTE: Observation on Italians – you know how I love stereotypes.

The young are passionate.
The old make a very loud noise when blowing their noises – much like a horn going off.
They all walk with intent on getting somewhere – probably through those awful tour groups – and they seem to have louder soles on their shoes.

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