Return To Venice

This is a view of the Doge's Palace from our Gondola Ride.

Em & I on the Grand Canal in Venice.

After a very lazy final day on board the ship, we disembarked in the morning and headed to our hotel, Ca Furlan. It seems to be part of the Venice experience to lug your luggage over bridges and down twisting streets. However, thanks to the map that Kate loaned us and the directions from the hotel, we arrived without getting lost. My French came in handy as the lady who checked us in did not speak any English but enough of the Italian words are similar so with my French and limited Italian, we communicated. Our room is lovely - biggest room yet and it even has a bathtub. We look out at a canal and it feels very Venetian. Once we'd deposited our luggage in the room, we headed off to Murano.

Murano is where all the glass is made. It is lovely there. The canals are wider, streets are wider, fewer tourists, and it is clean and fresh which was nice after pulling luggage on a hot day through the VERY crowded Venice San Marco area. Once you are out of the main areas, Venice is quiet though. we had lunch sitting on this lovely open air courtyard and then cruised the shops and admired the lovely glass. we bought a lovely little pitcher and I got some earrings. Once we arrived back at San Marco we were hot and tired and so we went into the Hotel Danieli which is a very fancy hotel and had a cold drink at the bar, rested and cooled off. Then we meandered back to our hotel for a little rest before dinner. We had these amazing calzones and then wandered some more. venice seems to mostly be wandering. It is so fun to see the shop windows and come across lovely little piazzas and churches and bridges. We ended up back at Piazza San Marco and listened to the music a bit and Dan had a gelato and then we returned to our hotel and called it a night.

Sunday - More roaming in Venice
Dan and I slept late this morning and then had breakfast at the hotel before heading to the Doge's Palace. We didn't quite grasp the political make up of the time, but it was amazing to see the ornate palace. Apparently the Doge had no political power and could only leave the palace under guard. There seemed to be many political segments - senate, councils, etc. The palace is covered in amazing paintings by famous artists, gold painted ceilings, marble fireplaces and more. We even got to cross the Bridge of Sighs so named because of the sighs from the prisoners being taken to their cells for their sentence. It was stunning to see the vast difference between the richness of the palace and political and judicial rooms and the cold, dark, stones of the prison.

After the Doge's palace, we wandered over to the Rialto shopping area and browsed the stalls and shops there. It was easy to imagine it always crowded with people shopping as it was today. We grabbed a snack (I had some sort of cross between a roll up sandwich and a grilled panini which was very good and Dan had some chocolate pastry) and then caught the vaporetto (water taxi) back to San Marco.

On our way back to the hotel, we passed an artist stand and noticed a painting that we liked. We thought about it and then wandered up and down looking at other artists work and decided we really liked the first one so we went back and bought it. 2 minutes after we started our transaction another couple came back wanting the same painting. It was interesting in that he'd given us a better price than he'd offered them and they were disappointed that we got there first. We even have a little biography on the artist. Dan has wanted to find something here and this seemed to speak to both of us so we're glad we went ahead and got it. We walked back to our hotel and now are resting a bit here in the air conditioning.

Our plan is to return to Murano this afternoon as we thought of something else we'd like from there and then we're not sure what we'll do. We're going to walk a new way and catch the vaporetto at a different stop so as to see some more of Venice.
Tomorrow morning we hope to see St. Marks Basilica and possibly go out to Lido island and/or Burano. And we think we'll probably take a gondola ride. They are very expensive, but seems like a thing to do at least once!

We're now sitting in the Detroit airport - very tired and still one more flight to go, after getting out of Venice 30 minutes before a planned Italian airport strike. As planned, we went back out to Murano on Sunday afternoon and found a lovely little shop and the owner who was also the artist, showed us his workshop and much of his amazing work. Each piece was signed and he showed us how he did some of the techniques. It was very neat. We wandered around Murano some more and then back to Venice, dinner and wandering and early to bed.

Monday morning we got up and headed to San Marco again - this time to see the basilica. We found a final few souveniers and then got in line. Things moved quickly once it opened. It is a beautiful church with amazing mosaic floors and almost the entire ceiling is gold leaf. It was very impressive. So much marble!! We did a quick tour and then went back to our room for a rest. There was lots of resting and reading the last 2 days.

In the afternoon, we went to Lido island which is like almost any other beach resort town. We had a great pizza lunch and then wandered down the main shopping street and found the sandy beach. It wasn't a particularly spectacular beach, but it was a hot sunny day and the beach was warm, soft sand and the water was lovely. We enjoyed relaxing on the beach for the afternoon.

After another rest, shower and some packing, we went over to the Rialto bridge area and ate at a place along the Grand Canal for our final meal in Venice and then we strolled down to San Marco and negotiated a price for a gondola ride. The gondola ride took us through the smaller canals of Venice and see some of the sites we hadn't seen walking Venice, such as the home of Marco Polo and the palace of Casanova. It was really a great way to finish our trip to Venice.