Day 3 in Italy

Day 2 in Italy

Day 2 in Italy



Today, we had breakfast at the hotel.



From the hotel, we walked to Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square). This is the square you see at the beginning of Italian Job when Donald Sutherland comes out of a jewelry store with a gift for Charlize Theron.

Sean at San Marco Square

Italian or Venetian People

Most Italians I have met so far have a veneer of happy politeness, but is a thin veneer, and beneath it lies a rude personality. Maybe this is only indicative of Venice and we will find nicer people in Rome and Naples, but Italians will cut in front of us in line, shove past us, and will even talk rudely to us if we don't understand them the first time.



Piazza San Marco is the largest meeting area in Venice. They simply call it "The Piazza." From here, we can see the facing of St. Mark's Basilica, Torre dell'Orologio (the Clock Tower), the church of San Basso, all to the east of the square. To the north, west, and south, we find shops and cafes on the ground level, with office buildings above them.



We visited St. Mark's Basilica. There was a long line to get in, but we finally made it.

St. Mark's Basilica

Inside St. Mark's Basilica, we find ourselves on an undulating floor. This is a special construction common to Venice. The floor is built of a material designed to adjust to the changing ground beneath it. Much of Venice's building's floors have been there for 1000+ years, some for 2000 years, and can handle the constantly changing ground beneath them.



As a church, St. Mark's Basilica has giant pillars and arches, huge decorated ceilings, and a holy feel to it.



Signs strictly forbid taking photos inside the church, or even talking. They specifically prohibit explaining things. This stops most people, but not all. A lady behind us kept describing everything to her child, talking about history or religion in one breath. Other people around us talked, pointed, asked questions, and used their phones to blatantly take photos.

Entrance to St. Mark's Basilica

We paid the 3 Euros each to access the treasury. This contains the high-value items belonging to the church, including some incredibly large gems, several chalices, urns, and other containers and jewelry. Works of art depicting religious events, notable personages, and local landmarks decorated otherwise mundane items such as cups and trays. Sceptres, clothing, and body parts from ancient people also abounded.


We take a break for lunch at this time. By reading the menus in front of the shops, we finally settle upon Rossopomodoro. I had the calzone with Napoleon ham. The ricotta in it is far more sour tasting than any I have had in the USA. I don't know if all Italian ricotta is that sour. Also, the sauce had more "bite" or "tang" to it than I am used to.


The service is polite, but atrocious. Our waiter left us sitting for a while after the menus were closed, saying, "Just one moment," every time he walked by. We watched him seat new guests, clean up a few tables, bring food to other tables, take an order, and he keeps saying "Just one moment" to us - do they not like Americans or something?


While pondering their liking of Americans, I noted how most places we had been to played American or British music. One surprising song I heard was Akon's "I Wanna F___ You," but we heard plenty of rock, 80s new wave, and 90s RnB.


After we finished our meal and they cleared the plates, we had to wait over 10 minutes for the bill. I watched our waiter seat more guests, clear more tables, and take more orders, and asked him three times to give us the bill as he kept passing our table. Finally, I got up and followed him to another table. He started taking their order, and I interrupted him and told him I need the bill because we need to leave the restaurant. He said, "I told my sister to give you the bill."


A waitress there (I assume his sister) finally brought us the bill.


Leaving the restaurant, we return to Piazza San Marco. To the southeast, we pass St. Mark's Basilica and reach the Palace of the Doges (Ducal Palace). By walking along the water line, we reach the entrance to the palace and take the audio guide.


We spent 4.5 hours there, making it worth the cost admission.
In it we saw sculptures, paintings, and weapons. We walked through meeting rooms, the apartments of the Doge, and a couple of armories. Armories are always a favorite stop of mine - this one contained weapons and armor not only of Venetian manufacture, but those belonging to invading armies, or given as a gift to Venice.

Sean in the courtyard of the Palace of the Doges

Statue of Atlas in the courtyard

We toured the old prison and new prison, separated by the Bridge of Sighs, which links the Doge's Palace with the Palazzo delle Prigioni, which is just a prison - one of the only single-purpose buildings in the city.A nearby tour group called them dungeons ("Look, there's more dungeons over here!"), but I don't think you can build dungeons in a city like Venice - underground rooms would flood!

Bridge going over canal - a "block" in Venice

For dinner, we ate at Trattoria a Leoncini.



I had a steak and chips (fries, you American!). The restaurant also serves fish, and the steak was definitely cooked on the same surface as fish. I had never had a fishy tasting steak before ... It wasn't bad, just different. One side of it tasted way more fishy than re other side, which was more steak-like.

Day 1 in Italy

Joe dropped us off at John Wayne airport at 6:00am, California time.



Our first layover was in Chicago at O'Hare airport. This airport has the nicest restrooms I have yet seen at an airport. The seats have a plastic covering on them. Wave your hand in front of a sensor, and the plastic shifts, so the plastic used by theprevious occupant goes away and is replaced by new plastic. Very hygienic! Compare to the other airports on this trip, where they don't even have paper seat covers for the toilets, and you can appreciate Chicago's dedication to hygiene.


Although Orbitz allowed us to select our seats ahead of time, Lufthansa apparently chooses to randomly assign seats. People all over the planes who were traveling together had to swap seats with other people, causing great confusion! Lufthansa did this on the 8 hour 10 minute flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, and again on the 1 hour 20 minute flight from Frankfurt to Venice.



We arrived in Venice about 1pm local time.Sky is overcast, with some light drizzle falling, and it is pretty cold. The airline pilot gave the temperature in centigrade and I forgot the number already.Fortunately we planned ahead and brought appropriate clothes. Scarf, hat, gloves, coat, all appropriate for the weather that greeted us when we arrived in Italy.



We boarded the water taxi at 1:50, at the cost of 15 euros per person. It is very crowded. It should take 90 minutes to reach Zattere where our hotel is. We are staying at Pensione Accademia.



So far, there is nothing to see. From the boat, we see wooden markers rising from the water, showing the boat pilot where to drive the water taxi. There is enough overcast and haze that we can only see water beyond that.

We just passed a couple of buildings on some kind of atoll, but I could not tell what they were.



We have reached the area with land to our left and right, bridges overhead as the water taxi winds it's way slowly through the city.There are a lot of boats in the water. It makes sense that they are a staple of transportation here in Venice!The concierge at the hotel told me that there are no cars in Venice. I have seen no roads for cars to drive on so I will believe him.

In some respects, Venice is what you expect it to look like based on seeing movies like Italian Job. However, I think they clean up the city for movies like that ... Paint buildings, cover graffiti, pick up trash.Just like any other city, Venice has its share of dirt, graffiti, yard trash.


What may make Venice different is that houses don't have yards, front or back, so people's business seems to be out in the open for everyone to see. But you get the idea that the city has been like this for centuries, The city is crowded, laundry hangs out for all to see, and when you walk, it is with a building on one side of you, and water on the other.

By the time we arrived at the hotel, we were exhausted from the flight and fell down on the bed to snooze. I wandered across a bridge and got a Prosciutto pizza (ham, for you Americans), ate half, and brought the other half back for Kristin. Now we're going to sleep some more and prepare to go on a tour of Venice in the morning.