Wednesday 26 June – this is an entry over two days so has lots of photos

We visited Venice in May 2006 during a trip to Italy celebrating my 50^th birthday, stayed a few nights at the Lido but did walking tours around Venice itself and really enjoyed it.    We came back in 2015 on our Mediterranean cruise, the ship overnighted here so we took the train to Verona for the afternoon and the return train was delayed so we just missed a pre-booked evening walking tour and gondola ride.   I have to say I cried, but the next day we did a back-door tour of the Doge’s Palace prisons, roof space and staterooms and I felt a bit better.   But we haven’t really had the chance to just wander so that’s the reason for our visit this time and maybe I’ll get it out of my system.  I don’t know what it is about the city; is it the little lanes and dead-ends with always something new to see, or is it the beautiful old buildings on the grand canal even though they might be crumbling a little?   There’s something that draws me here.

But not in the heat!   And we’re trying to beat that this time.   So this morning we were up not long after 7 and had a slow ramble over the Rialto bridge and along to the fish and produce market where there was plenty to see including a horse meat butcher with a notice detailing the cuts of meat available (just like you see for lamb or beef), and a cheeky seagull that swooped in under a canopy and snatched a small fish off one of the stalls then flew off again.    I was fascinated by the packaged cellophane ‘tubes’ of flavoured rice, pasta and salt, all ready to be used for a meal.   Rose salt was a new one on me.     The colours of the fruit and veges were bright and very tempting, we bought some fruit to take back with us. 

Had a leisurely breakfast back in the hotel, a very good one too with very nice fresh pastries and meat, cereals, fruit etc, We’re at Hotel da Bruno https://www.hoteldabruno.com/en/hotel/ and as I noted yesterday, very happy with the recommendation from a friend in Nelson.    We idled through showers and internet catch-up then had to go and sort out Pete’s UK sim card as he’d been trying to top it up on line on the 3 network and found he had to have a UK registered credit card, our ASB isn’t good enough.  There was a 3 shop not far from the hotel so we wandered through the streets, looked in shop windows, and kept in the shade.   The 3 shop couldn’t help, not able to do anything to top up the card so we cut our losses and went on to the Vodafone shop as she suggested and bought a whole new card for the two weeks.    One of those things and definitely a nuisance but we need a working phone number for our tour and transport bookings.    And we were happy enough to just enjoy the sheer age of this city while we walked around.

Picked up some pizza from a nearby shop so we had a picnic in our room; there are lots of places to choose from and all are busy even late at night, and shouted ourselves a Bellini – a very posh combination for sure!

It took ages for Pete to get the phone up and running, and it was hot, so I did some typing and we generally just blobbed until 7pm when we went to St Mark’s for an after-hours tour of the cathedral.  They take groups of about 15 (four that night) at 8pm – unfortunately the first ten minutes was spent changing microphones because all we could hear was crackle; I think they should have done that as each person reported in.  

However, despite the start it was very well worth the money, lasted about 90 minutes and we got to go into the crypt and up to the altar which is more than normal entries are allowed, they just have a brief time.     We stood in the square for a while the guide, Pamela, gave us the history of St Mark’s which had originally been dedicated to St Theodore, and along with the winged lion of Venice his statue is in the square (photo) looking like he’s killing a crocodile.  Not really – it’s actually a dragon so it wasn’t just St George who killed them off.   The city decided in 828 that they would bring St Mark’s remains to Venice and he could be the patron saint, they hid them in a box of pork meat and spirited them out of Alexandria and one of the mosaics shows the Muslim border guards turning away from the forbidden meat.   The first basilica was built on this spot to house the remains.

The basilica has been rebuilt and added to over the years, and has suffered from floods completely filling the crypt so now it has permanent pumps and a drainage channel, floor has been raised, has been re-bricked etc.   All the groups firstly sat in the dark and then the lights gradually went on to light up the roof and walls and the 8000 square meters of mosaics in the building.   They were done over eight centuries and we were shown the difference between older mosaic figures which were very static and one dimensional, and the newer ones full of life and movement.   That’s the reason we take guided tours, you pick up things like that.  Another thing we saw was the marking around the marble columns which we all thought was a water mark from flooding……..no………each column had a seat at the base and the mark was from heads resting against the column over hundreds of years.    

The actual floor isn’t completely flat, the building is gradually sinking and has been closed periodically when it floods.   The basilica floor is covered in stone mosaics, I liked the griffin and peacock.  Behind the altar (which contains St Mark’s bones) is the Pala d’Oro screen 3 x 2m, with its small panels made of gold, silver, cloisonné and almost 2000 gems, the first part made in 976 then added to a couple of times.  It shows the life of Jesus and of St Mark, absolutely stunning.  The one diamond in the middle is the size of a small marble.    

So finishing at 9.30 we found another little alley (actually got a bit lost going back to the hotel – so many tiny lanes) and a really nice restaurant so stopped for dinner.  Another great day.  

Thursday 27 June

We didn’t wake until 8.30 – that’s what comes of having solid wooden shutters on the outside of our windows, who needs blackout curtains?     We eventually left at 11am heading for the Correr museum in St Mark’s square, originally a 16^th century palace which was used as HQ by Napoleon when Italy belonged to France, and it extends down one side of St Mark’s square.   The Correr collection was bequeathed to the city by collector Teodoro Correr in 1830, has been added to over the years.  Part of it is that typical palace design of rooms opening into one another, all looking out the windows, and doors the whole length of a building – luckily there weren’t many people there so I managed to get an ‘empty photo’.  The rooms were beautifully decorated, lots of plasterwork and painted cherubs, rich wall coverings.   In another part there were rooms full of marble statues which all start to look the same after a while, another wooden panelled room roped off and under restoration, a room full of a huge coin collection dating back 1100 years, then we got to the history of Venice part of the museum.  This had a 1550’s woodcut map of Venice and we could pick out exactly where our hotel is, the streets have been exactly the same for hundreds of years and I find it hard to get my head around the age of these old towns we have visited.     There were a few cases of gold, paintings on wood centuries old (my favourite was men sawing a tree), and Pete was pretty keen on the case containing sets of pattens which are overshoes with tall soles made for people to walk through the floods or mud – could he adapt his own sandals if it rains?

We took the vaporetto from St Mark’s across to Burano and had a snack when we got there.  Went to a glassblowing factory where I bought a cat and a green glass bead necklace, but it was just too hot to do any walking around, and in fact there were hardly any tourists there at all.  So we took the vaporetto back but got off at a different stop and walked back to our hotel with new lanes and small squares to see on the way.   We saw the Scuola Grande de St Mark and went inside to have a look at an exhibition – turned out to be all in Italian and it was the 200^th anniversary of this 1437 building becoming the city’s hospital.    So it knocks Nelson Hospital’s front entrance into extinction as you’ll see in the photo.  There were no photos allowed inside so I cribbed one from the internet – very impressive. 

In the evening we put some culture into our lives and attended a concert featuring Baroque music and some opera, this alternates with the ‘Four Seasons’ throughout four months of the tourist season, so there’s something on every night and the glossy pamphlet in the hotel lobby appealed - https://www.classictic.com/en/i_musici_veneziani__baroque_and_opera/10062/605149/ - seats were first in, first served so we lined up at door-opening time at 8pm and got front row seats which was perfect.   They were all dressed in 17^th century costumes and looked stunning, the musicians were very good and the baritone, tenor and soprano were all excellent especially the tenor who really engaged with the audience.   The Scuola Grande de St Teodoro is close to our hotel, it’s been upgraded and acoustics can’t be faulted.       So that was another day in Venice – hot but we paced ourselves and had a good time.