5/31/23
Day 7
Venice
Hello everyone, my apologies for being late with this email. I had it all typed out and ready to send but unfortunately for some reason it disappeared. Poof, gone like the wind, nowhere to be found in my email. But I remember everything I wrote and can just reconstruct it today.
Our first full day under the belt in Venice! It was another day filled with churches, pizza, fruit, naps, chess, and walking.
This morning we got up to make breakfast and get ready to go over to the Basilica Saint Marco. A gothic style church and museum built in 1094. We had left a little later than we wanted to but we figured we would easily make our ticket time if we walked fast. What we did not account for is that we had to take a water gondola across the main canal. That set us back only a few minutes, but enough to make us a little nervous. The actual ride across was quite fun.
We made it on time to our ticket time and were able to go in. The church is big, but not massive. Not nearly as huge as the Santa Maria in Florence. What it lacks in size, it makes up for in detail. Every part of the church, inside and out, was covered in art, sculptures, paintings, patterns, and designs. There was lots of gold tile mosaics on the ceilings and intricate marble patterns on the floor.Â
You can see in the pictures below the original Horses of Saint Marco, a depiction of the Final Judgment, and evil Aydan planning how to steal the whole church.
The museum was on the second floor and gave you access to the balcony on the front of the church. From the balcony you can see Saint Marks Square, Doges Palace and the Astronomical Clock tower.Â
At the top of the clock tower you see two soldiers with hammers, ready to strike the bell. They swing and ring the bell at the top and bottom of every hour. Below them you see the Lion of Saint Mark. That lion is the symbol of the city and is everywhere. Below that on the left is a blue tile with the Roman numeral 11 on it, signifying the hour. To the right of that is a blue tile with an 05 on it, signifying the minutes. The minute tile rotates every 5 minutes. Below that is the astronomical clock. A clock with 24 notches on it with a sun as the main arm. The clock progresses slowly through each of the astrology signs over the course of a year. You can also see what phase the moon is in.Â
Below you can see a picture of the clock and of me looking like a full blown vacation dad next to Doges palace.
Venice is a trippy place for a few reasons. The first is there is no cars. I know it seems obvious enough that a city of islands would have no cars, but when you walk around an entire city and don’t see one car it feels odd. Another reason is how small and unobvious the streets are. What might look like a small back alley to nowhere is actually the main road to the next plaza. Lastly everything is moved by boat. People, products, food, trash, materials, everything. Again, seems obvious enough since it is a city on water. But it is a very different experience when you are surrounded by the water and ships.
We walked back from Saint Marcos to do some laundry and for a quick nap.
The score is now   Â
Naps: 2 Â Â Â Â Us: 0
Our quick nap turned into a 3 hour sleepy hang out time. But now we were rested and ready to go out.
We wandered around for a while looking for somewhere to hang out, eventually landing on this bench near the sea.
We stayed there until we got hungry and then began the nightly hunt for pizza. We found a place that was a little fancy but it would do. We walked in and asked for a table. The waiter pointed and told us to go upstairs. We got seated in the upstairs room and we are nearly certain they put us in the foreigners room. Our reasoning behind it was everyone that was in there looked like tourists and were not speaking Italian, and everyone we passed downstairs looked local and were speaking Italian. It was very funny to us.Â
We ordered a bottle of wine while we were looking at the menu. (obviously going to get pizza) However, Aydan was feeling brave and adventurous. He had never had rabbit before and figured when else would he have the opportunity. Upon our waiter bringing out the food Aydan immediately recognized his mistake but by then it was too late. The pizzas were large and delicious. His plate of rabbit legs and potatoes were not measuring up to the pizzas. I was fortunate enough to capture him going through a some of the 5 stages of grief, ending with acceptance and more wine.
After we ate we decided to walk over to the Rialto Bridge. Along the way we saw a man glassblowing a ring and a building lit up with the colors of Italy 🇮🇹.
