Venezia, Vaporetto & Vivaldi
Saturday, June 27th and another beautiful 80-degree day enjoying the city of Venezia (Venice) where the streets are waterways and sidewalks are cobblestone. The outside of our building, address 1988 doesn't look like much, but the interior is great (our room is across the hall from Green's).
The garden view from our room is quite nice as is the garden in the main building where we enjoy an Italian breakfast daily.
After breakfast we took the Vaporetto (water bus) to San Marco Square. Everywhere you look is a postcard. Here comes our bus.
As we reach San Marco Square, you can see the bell tower and below, the Bridge of Sighs where we'll start our morning tour of the Doge's Palace just to the left.
Ric waiting for the tour to start. It was a good thing we reserved tickets online as the ticket line was very long.
The Doge's Palace is very large and was used as a prison in medievel times as well as adminstrative offices, court rooms and torture chamber. The most famous prisoner, Casanova was imprisoned twice and escaped once with the help of his jailer and a priest who he was blackmailing. After seeing the courtrooms and Casanova's cell, we could enjoy the elaborate and beautiful formal rooms...but had to rush.
When our tour ended, we hurried to join our Duomo tour. We had reservations ahead of time as the line to buy tickets can be very long (and it was!). We stepped right in and started our guided tour. Our guide was very good and knowledgeable but we think her biblical knowledge was not quite right and some stories seemed to be up to the listener to believe. It is called Saint Marks Cathedral because they have the bones of the disciple Mark in a crypt at the alter. Really? The bones were supposedly stolen from Greece by 2 men who wanted to get them for this church so it could have a relic for people to worship and thus they would come to the church. We thought it was interesting that this church was based on some stolen relics. Of course, that is if you even believe that the bones are those of the disciple Mark.
After our tours we stopped for a late lunch before walking back to our neighborhood B&B crossing many beautiful canals.
We had dinner at one of our neighborhood sidewalk cafe's with great views in every direction...maybe not so great at Mike's back, but wonderful.
After dinner we took the Vaporetto up the Grand Canal several stops to attend a Vivaldi concert. It started raining as we got off the Vaparetto but it wasn't too bad. We got there early so we could get good seats and it was full by the time the concert started. We were in the second row and glad we came early because our seats were close to the musicians.
The performance was outstanding with very accomplished musicians. The main piece of the concert was Vivaldi's Four Seasons. We especially enjoyed the celloist who was playing his instrument with his whole body and was very dramatically involved with the music. We loved the concert and were so glad we went and that Carla arranged It for us.
The garden view from our room is quite nice as is the garden in the main building where we enjoy an Italian breakfast daily.
After breakfast we took the Vaporetto (water bus) to San Marco Square. Everywhere you look is a postcard. Here comes our bus.
As we reach San Marco Square, you can see the bell tower and below, the Bridge of Sighs where we'll start our morning tour of the Doge's Palace just to the left.
Ric waiting for the tour to start. It was a good thing we reserved tickets online as the ticket line was very long.
The Doge's Palace is very large and was used as a prison in medievel times as well as adminstrative offices, court rooms and torture chamber. The most famous prisoner, Casanova was imprisoned twice and escaped once with the help of his jailer and a priest who he was blackmailing. After seeing the courtrooms and Casanova's cell, we could enjoy the elaborate and beautiful formal rooms...but had to rush.
When our tour ended, we hurried to join our Duomo tour. We had reservations ahead of time as the line to buy tickets can be very long (and it was!). We stepped right in and started our guided tour. Our guide was very good and knowledgeable but we think her biblical knowledge was not quite right and some stories seemed to be up to the listener to believe. It is called Saint Marks Cathedral because they have the bones of the disciple Mark in a crypt at the alter. Really? The bones were supposedly stolen from Greece by 2 men who wanted to get them for this church so it could have a relic for people to worship and thus they would come to the church. We thought it was interesting that this church was based on some stolen relics. Of course, that is if you even believe that the bones are those of the disciple Mark.
After our tours we stopped for a late lunch before walking back to our neighborhood B&B crossing many beautiful canals.
We had dinner at one of our neighborhood sidewalk cafe's with great views in every direction...maybe not so great at Mike's back, but wonderful.
After dinner we took the Vaporetto up the Grand Canal several stops to attend a Vivaldi concert. It started raining as we got off the Vaparetto but it wasn't too bad. We got there early so we could get good seats and it was full by the time the concert started. We were in the second row and glad we came early because our seats were close to the musicians.
The performance was outstanding with very accomplished musicians. The main piece of the concert was Vivaldi's Four Seasons. We especially enjoyed the celloist who was playing his instrument with his whole body and was very dramatically involved with the music. We loved the concert and were so glad we went and that Carla arranged It for us.
Comments
Post a Comment