Venice pt2

Italy was great, but to be writing up this post at my own computer with a real keyboard/mouse, a land-line connection and most of all, two monitors... it's wonderful. I missed having screen real estate so, so much. So to business- the last day of Venice!





I awoke Monday and headed to St. Mark's Basilica. It's funny, because I knew going into this that I'm not a huge fan of art museums, or art in general. That's why I skipped Florence and went to Siena. Despite this, touring churches is something that I really do like to do. It's probably because churches have an association not only to Art but to History as well. And Rick Steves Audio Tours do not skimp on historical information, so I had a good time at all the churches I went to. St. Mark's has more history than most. During one of the Crusades, some of the Crusaders got confused (or just bloodthirsty, perhaps) and went and attacked a fellow Christian city, Constantinople. They took back a lot of treasure and a ton of it is in this church. Venice also traded extensively with the east, and so the result is that this church feels extremely Byzantine, which was cool.


After, I headed to the Rialto Bridge for the "market" there. The shopping, as previously explained, is excellent in Venice. But to say that Rialto Bridge is a market is like saying that the Roman Forum is a city. I'm sure both were once true, but now they are both tourist attractions - and good ones! It was fun just to wonder around through the potential suevenirs and to select several. I'll put up a photo eventually but at the moment unpacking isn't something I feel like doing. The bridge is huge and very wide, and there are souvenir shops everywhere. There are also shops in every direction out from it. I got this lunch at one of them and ate it overlooking a canal. It was nice. Every once in awhile someone on a boat would drive through. It was cool.

Afterwards I was walking and got hideously hideously lost. My attitude in Europe has always been that getting lost in a city is no big deal- just find a main street, flag a taxi, and they'll take you back to the hotel. It doesn't really work this way in Venice, unless you want a 40 euro taxi bill.

I thought I was on a street parallel to the grand canal, which means I could just take the #2 waterbus back to the hotel. Umm, apparently not. I walked aimlessly for maybe 60 minutes, trying to just enjoy the fascinating city, but becoming increasingly concerned and tired. Eventually I found a vaporetti stand, but there was no ticket counter. I later found out that you can pay the guy who ropes the boat to the dock, but didn't know this at the time. Luckily the vaporetti stop had a map and a YOU ARE HERE dot. It was a kind of weird map but it worked for me. I miraculously found myself at the train station... that is quite a trek from my hotel! So I got back to my hotel tired, but impressed with my wanderings.

The last event of my trip was a "classic bars tour" from a venetian. They have these places in Italy with little snacks, and wine. People eat it standing up, or at tiny tables. You can make a leisurely dinner of it, eating a meal's worth of food and four (not full) glasses of wine over the course of two or three hours. We went to three of them. Alessandro the Venetian was a character, and was knowledgable about the city and, obviously, Italian life, and that's pretty much what I had hoped for. It was a relaxing way to end the trip, and was the only tour I paid for! The rest was Rick Steves audioguides. I've listened to my ipod in a lot of holy and/or ancient places, this trip...

It was a loooooooooooooong trip home, not encompassing anything particuarly interesting. And now I am back! Conclusionary post to come sometime soon.