Sunday 21st June 2015
Welcome to Venice
We arrived in Venice by train just before dusk. We weren’t there long before the question arose, is Venice the most beautiful city we’ve been to? Venice really is like no other city I’ve ever been to. Our evening stroll through Dorsoduro and San Marco after dark was incredibly romantic. The place was filled with street musicians and painters. One on the Ponte dell’Accademia was playing medieval sounding music.
Day Two
Day two was spent mostly exploring the Palazzo Ducale which is absolutely freaking massive! Followed by a walk around San Polo after which we came across yet another leaning bell tower, this time that of Santo Stephano. So that’s four we’ve seen on this trip so far. Turns out there are three leaning towers in Pisa, three in Venice, two in Bologna and that’s not all of them; the world appears to be filled with leaning towers and on the list is our very own Big Ben which at it’s highest point leans half a metre out of alignment!
Day Three
Having put off going up the Campanile di San Marco the day before in the hope of better weather, it was now or never. It was pretty well timed, we headed to Caffe Florian for Lunch straight after. During the meal, the heavens opened up, clearing the piazza and filling the surrounding porticos.
After lunch we visited the Basilica di San Marco. The area around the external walls was flooded as a result of the heavy rain and ramps had to be put down for people to be able to get in. The Basilica inside was like no other church I’ve ever seen. There were eastern influences all around and the amount of gold was bewildering.
We decided to cut the day short after visiting the Accademia. Though it stopped raining the weather was probably the worst we had for the whole trip.
Day Four
The weather today was glorious and entirely compensated for the previous day. We started the day with a guided tour of the city which was filled with interesting facts about the place. When we arrived we couldn’t understand how Google Maps knew where we were staying, given that the address was a name and number and the street name was not featured anywhere. Turns out that addresses in Venice are made up of the name of the sestiere and a single number. There are only six sestiere in Venice, Cannaregio, Castello, Santa Croce, San Polo, San Marco and Dorsoduro. There are thousands of properties in a given sestiere. The numbering is ordered by adjacent properties rather than distance along a street so when you come to intersections of streets the numbers of the properties can be thousands apart! This arrangement is apparently courtesy of the Austrians.
After the tour we walked to the most eastern tip of Dorsoduro. From here you have an almost 360 degree view of Venice, stretching from the northern edge of Dorsoduro, across the Grand Canal, to San Marco, then Giudecca, down the Canale della Giudecca and finally to the southern edge of Dorsoduro. From here we headed back to Rio San Barnaba for a gondola ride. The Peggy Guggenheim collection was fantastic, perhaps the most I’ve enjoyed a gallery in years.
Farewell Venice
Relatively speaking we were in Venice for quite a while but not nearly long enough. It is a beautiful city (perhaps the most beautiful in the world) with so much to see. We had wanted to visit the islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello around Venice but did not have time. Perhaps one day we will make it back. On the plane we were treated to a great view of Venice, with it’s silhouette clearly visible 🙂
Ramblers Rumblings 