barrantes tour and travel: A Day in Venice

For our first day in Venice, we got up and headed right to St. Mark's Square to visit St. Mark's Basilica as soon as it opened at 9:45am. There's a dress code for St. Mark's. They won't let you in if your shoulders or knees are showing. I was in a knee-length dress and Todd was in jeans, and we made it past the modesty police with no problem. They don't allow pictures inside, so here are a few from outside.

A jumping picture from later in the day (taken right after I got pooped on by a pigeon) from the far end of the square showing the Basilica in the background. The Campanile is the tall tower on the right.

The Basilica feels like it's painted with gold inside, and these mosaics on the front of the church give a hint of the grandeur inside.

This clock, Torre dell'Orologio, is pretty fancy. The guys on the top ring the bell on the hour. Below the winged lion (the symbol of Venice), a 'digital' clock changes every 5 minutes (on the right) in regular numbers, and the hours are on the left in Roman numerals. Below that is a 24 hour clock in Roman numerals with an astrological clock in the middle. It was pretty dang accurate and pretty impressive.

The building surrounding the square

Done with St. Mark's and heading home to change before exploring for the rest of the day.

It seems what almost everyone recommends to do in Venice is to just wander, to get lost in the maze of streets that make up this island city. My next post will be all about the streets and navigating, but the next thing we did was to walk from our room to the bus station and enjoy the streets of Venice.

Found a store for me...

Excellent door knockers

Very fancy apartment buzzers

Fruit & veggie stands

Costumed Venetians

The reason for doing this was to take Vaparetto 1 from the where it begins to the end. The vaparettos are the boats that function as the Venetian bus system. Vaparetto 1 is a slow ride (because it stops at all the stops) down the Grand Canal. If you sit in the seats at the bow of the boat with your Rick Steves' Italy Guidebook and read his Self-Guided Grand Canal Cruise, you've got a great overview to the city, its history, and a look at its main thoroughfare.

Rialto Bridge

Santa Maria della Salute

The entry to St. Mark's Square - you can see the Campanile on the left and that's the Doge's Palace on the right.

When our 'cruise' ended, we got right back on a boat going to way we came and got off on the south side of the Grand Canal to (hit the ATM) and to take a gondola across the Grand Canal. More on gondolas coming soon in my upcoming boat post, but it costs at least €80 to ride around in a gondola. The cheap way to get a taste of the experience is to take a traghetto gondola. These are gondolas at 7 spots along the Grand Canal which row passengers across the canal, since there are very few bridges across the canal. It only costs €2 per person (woot woot!) and gives you a taste of the experience for the 2 minutes you're in the boat.

From there, we did a tour of the Doge's Palace which is quite an impressive place. The Doge was the ruling duke (doge) of Venice, and this was the seat of power in Europe for over 400 years.

Inside the courtyard

A section of the courtyard

There were enormous oil paintings in every grand room and a couple of GIGANTIC rooms where the entire councils used to meet. The Hall of the Grand Council can seat 2,600 and features the largest oil painting in the world, Tintoretto's Paradise. Todd described the palace in a few choice terms of awe: "Really big f$&%ing rooms with really big f$&%ing paintings. Crass but true.

In addition to all the grandeur, the Doge's Palace is attached to the prison as it was convenient for the judicial offices located in the palace with all the other governmental offices. To get to the prison, you walk over the Bridge of Sighs, so named because you could hear prisoners wailing as they were walked across.

Here's what it looks like from the outside.

Here's what it looks like from the Vaparetto where you can see all the tourists on the next bridge over taking pictures of it.

And here's what it looks like from the inside looking out.

After the tour (and after nap time), we met our friend Lisa at the Campanile before heading to dinner. Lisa, a Pilgrim Lodge friend from Maine, was on vacation in Venice to attend the Biennale. I thought we would have to climb up via stairs, but we didn't! It was all elevator.