Day 19: Leaving Venice

We are leaving Venice, and this means that we are on our way out of Italy, and that means our Italy vacation 2012 is at an end.

Leaving Hotel Gazzettino, we splurged again on a private water taxi to the airport instead of the 1-hour ride on the water bus. Luggage is loaded and we are on our way.

Farewell to the Grand Canal.

Good-bye Rialto Bridge. I think we crossed you 14 times in our wanderings in Venice.

Venetian buildings reflected in the polished wood roof of our taxi.

The only thing about going to the airport in a beautiful polished wood water taxi is that we have to fly on Alitalia back to Rome.

Tim in line to check in at Alitalia. Is it me, or his is smile just a little fake? All kidding aside, our Alitalia experience makes all US airlines look like 5-star travel experiences. Suffice it to say that efficiency of processes, customer service, and user-freindly flying are still unknown concept to Alitalia.

Our destination after Venice is the Rome Airport Hilton--hopefully with American style air conditioning and level floors. No offense to our hotel in Venice.

Great vacation with wonderful friends and some fabulous experiences in (for us) new parts of the world. But it's great to be going home.

Day 18: Lido Island and Tim's Birthday

We enjoyed our trip to Murano Island so much that we decided to do some more island hopping today. We took the vaporetto again, this time to Lido Island. Lido is actually a large sandbar, one of the barrier islands that protected Venice from invasion by sea. The Venice lagoon was always difficult to enter because of these sandbars, so Venetians never was forced to build fortress-type walls for protection. They simply had to guard the few narrow passages through these barrier islands from the Adriatic to their lagoon

In later more peaceful years, Lido became the beach retreat for Venetians, and a place where many wealthy Italians and Europeans built vacation homes. The beach is very long with soft powdery brown sand. The Adriatic is about the same color and temperature as our own Pacific Ocean in Manuel Antonio.

Yes, I have sunscreen on.

Two of the lovely old palazzos we found on Lido.

After a day at the beach, it is time to celebrate Tim's birthday. We chose Ristorante A La Vecia Cavana, a charming small restaurant we found on our wandering in the Jewish Quarter in Venice. Vecia Cavana claims to have "authentic Venetian food," so we decided to find out.

Lovely, classical interior of A La Vecia Cavana.

Our waiter was helpful but not pushy. In fact, he steered us away from more expensive wine choices to this fine locally produced Valpolicella.

Tim is one year older today!

We opted for the "authentic Venetian" experience: Baked Turbot Veneziana. Turbot baked with olives, tomatoes, and potatoes filleted table-side by our waiter.

Don't forget the sauce!

Prego! Lovely presentation and delicious. The best food we found in Venice.

And after dinner, of course a gondola ride on the Grand Canal at night with a bottle of Prosecco.

Our gondolier. He mostly talked, but didn't sing "O Sole Mio."

Last night in Venice and the end of our Italian vacation. Happy Birthday, Tim!

Day 17: Murano Island

You can't come to Venice without running across Murano Glass. Every other shop in Venice has some for sale. All the chandeliers in the hotels are Murano Glass, or at least Venetian glass--or maybe Chinese copies of Venetian glass, who knows? At any rate, we decided to go to the source--Murano Island.

We took the vaporetto--Venetian water bus--to Murano Island. Crowded and hot--just like a city bus in any other city, except we were zipping across water instead of hot asphalt.

Ashore on Murano, we headed to the glass factories. Venice forced all the glass factories to move to Murano in the 1200's as a fire prevention measure. Over the centuries, the glass makers have perfected their craft, making Murano glass famous (and expensive) world-wide. August is vacation month in Italy, so most of the glass factories were closed.

We did find one glass maker working and giving a demonstration of his craft. He moved incredibly fast, and in a few minutes blew a glob of molten glass into a pitcher, formed the base, decorated it with some ornate curves of glass and formed the handle.

Next, he used a pliers-like instrument to pinch little peaks on the side of a glob of glass on the end of his pole, and then almost like magic, used his pliers to pull those bumps of glass into the head, legs, and tail of a glass horse. Then he gently moved the legs and tail so that the horse was rearing up on his hind legs and tail with his front hooves in the air and his mane flying. Incredibly fast and entertaining!

Murano is almost a ghost town this time of year, with most of the residents gone on vacation. Where do people who live on an island go to vacation--the mountains, maybe?

A kayak race in the lagoon off Murano Island.

A showroom on Murano with beautiful pieces for sale in an amazing variety of styles and colors. Wouldn't let us take any photos of course. And we did manage to pick up a couple of pieces as souvenirs--but in the shops in Venice, not on Murano.

Another vaporetto arrives on Murano with tourists eager to see how Murano glass is made.

On the way back from Murano, we stopped at Fondamenta di Nove, one of the "bus" stops, for a little al fresco lunch. We found a breezy, cool little sidewalk cafe on the water--a nice distance from the hordes of tourists and the heat of the noon-day sun in Venice. My caprese salad. The Italian tomatoes are so delicious this time of year, and I can't seem to get enough caprese and bruschetta pomodoro!

This is a Venetian ambulance. Everything moves by water here!

After a nap, we are ready for dinner. Ristorante Sempione was just across the canal from our hotel. The courtly white-haired waiter assured us this was "real Italian food."

Interior of Sempione. Classical Italian ristorante with waiter in white coats and ties. Very traditional.

This restaurant was on a smaller canal, but a busy one. Approximately 40 gondolas passed our table as we dined. 

See the gondolier over my right shoulder standing between two red poles? That is our hotel room just above the gray column. Very old, very quaint, and right on the canal.

A great locally produced merlot without the bite of some California merlots.

Jumbo shrimp cocktail. Their "cocktail sauce" is spicy mayonnaise.

Tim had pasta e fagioli. This version was more like a stew compared to the clear broth version we find at Olive Garden. This was better!

For the main course, we both had risotto with mixed seafood. The food at Sempione was definitely Italian and very good, but not great. We have found in Venice that it is hard to find bad food, but it is also hard to find outstandingly good food. Maybe tomorrow for Tim's birthday dinner.....

After dinner, back to Piazza San Marco for a little night music and a cognac.

The live music inspired some patrons to dance in the piazza.

It was a very global experience. Two boys from Texas with a house in Costa Rica, sipping French cognac in a 1,200 year-old Italian piazza anchored by an even older Byzantine cathedral, listening to a Johann Strauss waltz played by a quintet from the Czech Republic while Asian and German tourists snapped photos with their digital cameras. Pretty amazing!

Day 16: The Basilica of Saint Mark

The Basilica of St. Mark is the most famous church in Venice. It is a Byzantine style church whose original construction dates to 828 AD when Venice was more closely affiliated with Constantinople than with Rome, hence the eastern architectural influence. 

The basilica is dedicated to St. Mark the Evangelist who established the Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt. Mark was martyred in 68 AD, and legend holds that in 828 AD, two merchants from Venice stole Mark's body and brought it back to Venice concealed in a barrel and covered with pork meat. Mark's body concealed in this way was not found by Egyptian Muslim customs inspectors, because they would not touch pork.

Mark's body was buried in the original church, which was lost to fire, as was a second church. However the relics were eventually secured in the crypt of the present day structure of St. Mark's Basilica.

Tim at the entrance to St. Mark's Baslica.

Mosaic over the entrance to St. Mark's. Since the original church was Byzantine by design, mosaic became the decoration of choice for the new church. This Basilica took over a hundred years to build and another three hundred years to decorate. The interiors of the church include more than 8,500 square meters of walls, floors and ceilings covered in mosaics that basically tell the story of the new testament on the interior surfaces of the church.

View of the Venice lagoon from the second-floor terrace over the entrance to St. Mark's.

Tim and I are standing on the marble terrace over the entrance to the Basilica.

Detail of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's.

The bronze Horses of St. Mark's Basilica. These are replicas. The originals were moved to the interior of the church when air pollution began to cause deterioration in the 1980's

Piazza San Marco from the front terrace of the Basilica. These buildings were used for governmental offices in the time of the Doges. Now they house an insurance company.

These are the original Horses of St. Mark's Basilica. They date to antiquity and may actually be more than 2,000 years old. They are almost pure copper instead of bronze, probably because at the time they were created, copper was more conducive to gold plating. It is thought that these magnificent sculptures were once completely covered with gold and the eyes were set with precious gems. They probably formed part of a monument called a "quadriga" which was a racing chariot pulled by four horses. They stood above the Hippodrome in Constantinople, but were looted from there in 1204 as part of the Fourth Crusade, when they were brought to Venice and mounted over the entrance to the Basilica.

This photo does not do them justice. They are finely detailed down to the veins standing out on the necks and faces. They are breathtakingly beautiful in person--even though they have lost most of their gold plating and precious eye stones.

Photos are forbidden inside St. Mark's, but this one from the Internet shows the mosaic ceilings with all the lights on. Although the surfaces appear to be painted and gilded, it is all done with glass mosaic. Mosaic was the preferred decoration for eastern religious buildings, and with Venice the center of glass manufacturing, mosaic was a natural choice to decorate the new Basilica.

Another view of the cupola at the junction of the transepts. Hard to see in this photo, there are 14 marble statues standing across the top of the screen that formerly separated the congregation from the priests celebrating mass. These 14 figures represent Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the Twelve Disciples. During the invasion of Venice by Napoleon, these marble figures were hidden in barrels of oil to prevent their looting by the French Emperor. The oil stained the marble, and from this distance, they appear to be bronze.

The main altar in St. Mark's Basilica where the relics of the body of St. Mark are enshrined.

After leaving St. Mark's, we crossed the Rialto bridge to wander in the shops on the north shore of the Grand Canal. Of course we ran across more churches!

This the Church of St. Roch (San Rocco in Italian.) St. Roch was born in Montpelier on the border with France, to a woman who was barren until she prayed to the Virgin to grant her a child. Roch supposedly was born with a red birthmark on his chest in the shape of a cross, which grew as he did. Like Francis of Assisi, he gave away his worldly goods when his parents died and began a pilgrimage to Rome. These were the plague years, and Roch is reputed to have saved many people from the plague by curing them miraculously as he traveled.

Relics of Roch's body were brought to Venice in the 1500's when he was declared a patron saint of the city, and this church was built in his honor. Every year on St. Roch's feast day, August 16, the Doge would make a pilgrimage to this church to honor him. This year, the church and the School of St. Roch will perform an opera in his honor. Too bad we will miss it.

Next door to the Church of St. Roch stands the stately Scuola di San Rocco (the Confraternity of St. Roch) which was founded in 1478 by a group of wealthy Venetians. The Scuola was dedicated to victims of the plague that was killing Venetians in that time, and fit nicely with St. Roch's history as patron saint of plague victims.

In 1564, the great Venetian painter Tintoretto was hired to decorate the interior of the Scuola with frescoes. These are still available today and can be seen for a small fee. They are said to be among Tintoretto's best works.

Near St. Roch's church stands the massive brick cathedral of St. Mary of the Friars (Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari). Built by the Franciscan order in the 1300's and dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, this massive church boasts the second highest campanile in the city. Only St. Mark's is higher.

Entrance to St. Mary's of the Friars.

Imposing facade of St. Mary's. The churches in Venice, like all the buildings, are crowded to closely, it is difficult to appreciate their architecture from a distance. Back up too far to take a picture, and you just might find yourself in a canal!

Interior of St. Mary of the Friars.

Enough churches for today, or as Tim would say, then end of our "ABC tour" (any bloody church) of Venice. How about some wine? I think the saints would approve.