4 Days in Venice and Origin Stories

So Venice!

Not one of us, but you'll see...

Well, if it seems like feast or famine with our bloggity-blog, it's because our access to the internet is not uniform.  For a while we were blessed to stay in places that always had wifi, but that isn't always possible as we stay in a variety of places (as you have seen).  In both Cinque Terre and Venice we were staying in places with no wifi, but now, in Bled, Slovenia, we have wifi and are playing catch-up

After traveling from Cinque Terre to Venice last Thursday, we were pumped because Venice is, well, Venice!  And what a place it is:

Venice at twilight

Vegas Venice

 One weird thing in our time there is that the sky of the real Venice looked exactly look the one in Vegas, especially at twilight.  Nighttime in Venice is pretty awesome as well, it is completely calm, quiet, and mostly deserted.  The cool air and water add a slight chill, but surprisingly there is no smell to the water.  One of my favorite experiences in Venice is to wander in random directions at night, and just seeing where you end up- frequently in an alleyway whose dead-end is a canal.  But being lost in Venice is delightful, and when there are gelatto stands all over the place, delicious as well.

Gondola Traffic Jam

Grand Canal at night

Aside from being a cool place to just be, Venice also delivers the big sightseeing hits, mostly centered on St. Marks Square.

St. Mark's Basilica and the Campanille bell tower

The Basilica is roughly a million years old (of course) but what makes it special is that in the 800's, near the height of Venice's power, during the Crusades, the venetian armies went through Constantinople on the way to the Holy Land.  This was bad news for Constantinople because Constantinople had held many relics since becoming the capital of the Holy Roman Empire in the 400 AD's.  Venice decided not to go all the way to the Holy Land for their relics, especially when Constantinople (a fellow christian city) had so many right there, so why not take treasures and, according to legend, the bones of St. Mark?  So the basilica has all the stuff they stole, and is pretty impressive in it's own right.

Inside the basilica.  Wow!

The bones of St Mark?  Why not, especially in this cool case!

These horses date from sometime BC, and have been looted at least 4 times!

Two layers of the basilica - the top (gold) layer represents heaven and holiness, and the brown marble bottom layer represents the earth and man, and the basilica is where the two meet.  Pretty neat!

View from the balcony - awesome!

 We learned about the mascots of Venice, shown below on pedestals at the entrance to the square.  The first was St George who slew a dragon, but this was later replaced with the winged lion, symbol of St. Mark, when they took his bones.  Why not?

 We also took a cool tour of the Doge's palace, who was the most powerful man in Europe in Venice's heyday.  It was weird to tour a place like that and think that one day when the USA has come and gone (as it certainly will) tourists will walk through the Oval Office and the White House and try to picture the USA in it's prime.  The tour also includes a passage through the "Bridge of Sighs" which is an enclosed bridge where prisoners being transferred from the palace to the jail would see Venice one last time and sigh...sure, why not.  Either way, it is probably the most photographed non-sight ever.

Inside the Doge's Palace and some cool cloud background

Bridge of Sighs- doing our part to add to the legend.

 Some other things, including a romantic canal-side dinner, complete with interesting seafood.

Romantic!  Awwww....

Yes, that is an Octopus, and yes, it was delicious, all eight legs of it.

 We also went to the island of Murano, part of the same island group of Venice, but it's own island.  This island is famous for it's glass blowing, and we got to see an amazing glass blowing demonstration.  If you ever get the chance to see it - DO IT because it is an incredible sight to see artists working molten pieces of glass.  Once they take it out of the furnace, they only have a few minutes before it cools to make the entire piece.  Hard to describe, fun to watch.

 We also stumbled across a free museum of music, where they had a ton of really interesting, cool, old instruments.  It didn't make a good first impression though...

No gelato?!?! What kinda lousy, no-good, rotten stupid place is this?

 But we got past our hard feelings and went inside and we're glad we did.  They had all sorts of instruments that I'd never imagined, but it really showed the evolution and experimentation of our current stringed instruments.  Some examples shown below

A 7-string viola!  That would be tough to play!

Violin from 1595!  Awesome!

REALLY teeny violins!

This guitar has a second set of bass strings.  You play the first set with your fingers and the second with your thumb.

 Was that guitar the predecessor for THIS?

Oh yeah...

I think so!

We also noticed this little gem, right outside.  The picture doesn't really do it justice, but pay attention to the angle of the tower versus the angle of the buildings and chimney.  Yikes, that's some serious lean, and this is typical of Venice I'm afraid. 

Overall, we found Venice to be nice and still a must see, but to be honest we weren't really overwhelmed with it.  It is great and there is no other place like it on the planet but there are a lot of tour groups, touts, and all the shops sell the same leather purses, glass trinkets, and masks.  But that's missing the forest for the trees.  Was it worth 4 days?  Yes, and I'm glad for every one, but I'm glad to be moving on at the same time.  Look for our next posts from Slovenia and Croatia!