Venice - Day 2

On our second day in Venice, we decided to take a load off our feet. We plopped Collin in his stroller (that boy is heavy on your back!) and decided to get around via vaporetto (water taxi).

We began our day with a leisurely ride down the Grand Canal. It was amazing seeing all of the action on the water... vaporettos, gondolas, and plenty of delivery boats. We watched the boats full of produce pull up to the market, boats delivering bottled beverages and gelato, even a boat bringing a coffin to a funeral. There were boats everywhere, and somehow, they never seemed to collide.

We enjoyed seeing all of the buildings along the canal-
fancy homes and hotels, museums (this is the Peggy Guggenhein Collection), churches, the underside of the Rialto Bridge, and the Rialto Market. If you look down this side-canal, you can see the "garages" for the fire boat/engines on the right. Yes, they have boats for everything here! We took our vaporetto to Piazza San Marco, which is the main square of Venice. The Piazza is the home to a few museums, a clock tower, Doge's Palace, and St. Mark's Basilica.
St. Mark's Basilica was an amazing sight. The basilica was built in the 11th century, and houses the actual bones of Mark (as in, the author of the Gospel of Mark). St. Mark's symbol is the lion, so there are many lion statues and representations all throughout the square and the city. Entrance into St. Mark's Basilica was free! Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures inside. I found this interior picture on the web. Basically, the interior of this church is a gold-shining masterpiece. The ceiling is completely covered with mosaics, representing characters and stories from the Bible. You can only imagine the amount of effort that went into decorating this place! What a sight it was!

For an additional fee, Ethan and Tim decided to climb up to the roof to get a better look of the Basilica and St. Mark's Square. Here are a few pictures from their higher perspective.After our time at St. Mark's Square, we ate a quick lunch (pizza and foccacia), and headed back to the vaporetto. This time, our destination was the island of Murano, just a short distance away. Murano is an island located in the Venetian Lagoon which is known for its glass. I had read that you could watch the craftsmen do glass-blowing demonstrations there, and I thought that would be fun for the kids to see.

When we arrived to Murano, we found a main canal lined with glass shops. They had plenty of figurines of all kinds, jewelry, chandeliers.... basically, anything you could make out of glass, they had it. It took us a while to find a glass-blowing demonstration, but we finally did find one (that didn't charge us admission!). The kids enjoyed seeing the men working with the red-hot glass: blowing it, rolling, shaping, and breaking off the excess.

We headed back to the "mainland" of Venice after that, and were refreshed with some more gelato! We did some more wandering and a little shopping (I bought a necklace and a clock made from Murano glass).

Around 6pm, we thought we should start looking for dinner, with the plan of having an early meal before heading back to the hotel. Well, that was easier said than done. Venetians apparently don't do "early meals" because we couldn't find a restaurant that was open and in our price range. Once again, Venice became a labyrinth of alleys and canals, with no place to sit down for dinner. We realize now that most restaurants don't open until 7pm (yes, we wandered around that long!). But, we found a perfect place, overlooking the Grand Canal, that served some fresh pasta for a reasonable price. Yummmm....We finished up our time in Venice with a vaporetto ride back to the bus station. Sincerely, Venice was such a magical and romantic place. Ethan and I will have to go back, just the two of us, someday.

Ciao Venezia!!

Next blog: Verona.