Venice II: Revenge of the pretty things...

And here's more Venice, more pretty pictures and more babbling about it all. Sunday was really our biggest touristy day, wherein we managed to see a lot of the things we'd (fairly randomly) put on our list before getting there. Monday & Tuesday were a little more low-key, totally unplanned, "maybe we'll go see that," poking about in shops, kind of days. Which, really, were no less enjoyable.


We began Monday by, as always, hopping on the vaporetto to get across the lagoon:



Our goal, as always, Piazza San Marco:


(The tall tower in the middle is the belltower; the large white building to the right of it is the Doge's Palace.)

We started off the day using our fantastic museum pass (haha, student discounts rock) to go to the Museo Correr, which is across San Marco from the Basilica. It had a fantastic exhibit on the "spheres of heaven and earth," which essentially meant there were a lot of globes, both terrestrial & astronomical, incredible astrological drawings, & one entire room fitted out like an old library in a lord's mansion. Everything was old & just about my time of history & gorgeous. Sadly there were no pictures allowed...& the guards were very diligent so I wasn't able to sneak anything.

Our general goal after that was to find internet, which we eventually did; but we did that via wandering (our main mode in Venice), since we stopped in nearly every interesting shop we saw along the way, got turned about several times by people giving us different directions to internet cafes, and ate lunch. Also I would like to note that by "directions to an internet cafe" I mean that whichever Venetian we asked would say, Oh, they are everywhere by the Ponte Rialto, and would wave a hand vaguely in some direction, often not actually the direction of said Ponte Rialto. (Directions in Italy are even worse than directions in Ireland, and let me tell you that is saying something.)



Another fantastic display...there were ones like this in nearly every shop window we passed (unless the shop was selling ties or lingerie. Or gelato.)



These were some of my favorites, simply because they were so unique--we didn't see anything else like these except for this one shop. Transformer masks, maybe; or something a comic-book hero would make in his garage during his teenage years. (Or like a steampunk alternate-universe carnevale. Whoooboy! Somebody write that!)



Typical Venice: colorful houses, intricate bridges.



This is looking down the Ponte Rialto--it's the widest bridge, I think, with two lanes of pedestrian traffic flanking a row of shops down the middle, with other stalls sprung up wherever they can find space. It's a bit mad.



A display at one of the temporary stalls at the Rialto market, just to give you an idea of how jam-packed with stuff these places are....



And a closeup to show you some of the beautiful hand-painting on these masks.


We found internet, at some point during that meandering, & continued wandering away from the bridges into the maze that is San Polo (or whichever island we were on at that point). And we were cold. So we found someplace with tea...



A perfectly sized pot, with two cups for each of us. And the tea was the most exquisite Earl Grey I've ever tasted. It didn't need anything to add to it. I very much enjoyed it:



And the shop was all wood and glass countertops with Murano glass on the shelves and fresh food in cases, & gorgeous sunflowers just sitting by the register:



In fact the place was so good even the pigeons wanted to be customers:



(I wish I'd gotten my camera up faster; this cheeky little bastard was five feet through the door and bobbing about like he owned the place.)


I really don't remember what else we did after the tea, except that it was more of the same--wandering and window shopping (& actual shopping...) and exclaiming over how pretty everything was. In any case, the next time I pulled my camera out was at dinner. We were fairly exhausted & ready for food early on in the evening, so we found a place we'd passed by earlier, a touristy restaurant near the Ponte Rialto, right on the Grand Canal. They actually had a well-priced menu (honestly probably cheaper than a comparable meal out in Dublin) & it felt awfully fancy.



Here's Lee, looking pleased at how ritzy our surroundings are.



The table next to us, when it was a bit darker & they'd lit the candles.



And our food. Tagliatelle con funghi for me, spaghetti bolongase for Lee. Delicious.


Tuesday was equally fantastic. We got up early to get to San Marco & stand in line for the Basilica, which fifteen minutes before it opened had already stretched round the corner of the building.



It had rained the night before, and men were busy in the square putting up walkways for everyone to stand and walk on to avoid the worst of the puddles, some of which were quite impressive.



The basilica itself was gorgeous (no pictures allowed of course). It's grandiose, and dim; it feels less holy, for me, & more like it ought to be holy but is struggling against its fame & the amount of people who pour through it every day to gawk at it because it is famous. (Since I'm one of them I can't legitimately complain; that's just what I felt.) Still, it is beautiful. Byzantine, mostly, with all the mosaics & gold; but definetely Italian Byzantine, by the architechture and the fact that although the gold & color mosaics were Byzantine of themselves, the figures within them were entirely Italian Renaissance--a strange juxtaposition, but it worked. Some of it seemed familiar, in a vague way--I'd been here with my parents when I was ten--but it wasn't until we got up to the rooftop that I really remembered. What a view...



To the right, the clock tower & part of one of the four bronze horses standing atop the roof. (These are copies; the real ones are inside.)



Looking backwards, the ornate front of the basilica roof, & more of the horses.



Another mosaic, just tucked away in an alcove on the roof.



And the view toward the lagoon, the open end of Piazza San Marco, & the two pillars. Atop the lefthand pillar is a statue of St Mark's Lion; the righthand one has a statue of St Theodore. Theo used to be Venice's patron saint, but he was too connected to Byzantine Europe & they wanted to assert their independence, so they needed a saint not connected to anywhere. Also, apparently there was a prophecy that St Mark's body would rest in Venice. So two merchant-travelers went to where he was buried, & armed with that prophecy & a boatload of moxie, stole his body & brought it back to Venice. Poor Theo was demoted, but I guess they must still be fond of him since he gets a statue in a pretty prominent place.


Determined to have a gondola ride before we left the only city in the world in which you can legitimately have one, we did a price comparison around San Marco. The gondoliers were offering us €150 or €120 prices, and when we laughed at them, said we were students & walked away some of them ran after us to offer €100...but we weren't buying. (We'd had a potential €60 offer the day before when it was raining.)

So we decided to wander up towards the Ca d'Oro (house of gold), which was on our list of things to see, although neither of us could remember exactly what it was or why we'd put it there. We got to see a part of the city we hadn't gotten to yet, & take more photos.

This is, possibly, my favorite photo I took:


Not only is the mask gorgeous, but I somehow managed to take the photo in such a way that something behind the mask makes it look like it has an eye, and is looking at you. Utterly an accident, but so cool.



Anyone want an enormous Lindt truffle? Those little ones in front are bigger than softballs.



It doesn't look all that impressive, but that's Marco Polo's house, when he was in Venice.



I refrained from taking photos of every tiny piazza we walked though, but I had to take a few sample photos, just to give you the idea. I loved them all.



And on the other side of that square, a bookshop! We didn't go in because we were eating (second dessert, I believe), but we lingered & I longed a little.



Another piazza on the way to San Sofia & the Ca d'Oro. There are over 200 bridges in Venice. I wonder how many belltowers there are?

As we passed the San Sofia traghetto (gondola ferry) stop & gondola ride point, we paused to look at the gondolas, & of course were accosted by several gondoliers asking if we wanted a ride. (Did we want a ride. Silly question.) One gondolier said €80, & we dithered a bit, but when he offered a "student discount!" of €60, we decided hang the cost, this is Venice. (Plus €60 is not bad for a gondola.) So we had a gondola ride! It was really lovely, actually quite relaxing. Honestly as a boat ride it wasn't much, but for the fact that it was a gondola ride, in Venice, it was great.



And boy were we pleased as punch.



The Ponte Rialto, from a gondola. Pretty much everything looks better from a gondola.

As we passed along one of the smaller canals, our gondolier points out a house to the side & says, "This here is very important...this is the house of the world's greatest lover, Giacamo Casanova...he lived in Venice for ten years. As you say? A sex machine." (Writing it down can't really do justice to his accent. It was glorious.)



Perhaps my favorite part about this photo of Casanova's house is the Italian loitering outside it with a cigarette, looking very un-Casanova.



Just another bridge. Prettier from the gondola.



Yet another belltower, and our gondolier. We decided his sunglasses were Cool, even if they didn't have the Cool tag on them.

After the gondola ride we finally found the Ca d'Oro, which turned out to be an art museum, with a gorgeous little courtyard attached--very Spanish, actually, or at least it reminded me of Spain. The museum was in what used to be an old mansion, and it was just as fun looking at the old house & room as it was looking at the art.

Afterwards we caught a traghetto across the canal. Traghetto are plain gondolas (not tricked out fancy ones) that just ferry people, usually standing up in the middle, across the canal. There are only three bridges across the Grand canal, so traghetti serve the same purpose. (It's the cheapest and shortest gondola ride you'll ever take!)



To round off our day, we made it the goal of our next bout of wandering to make it back to our favorite mask shop near the Campo San Frari, with the friendly girl who worked there. We made it back (I felt accomplished; even having a map is no guarantee of being able to get anywhere), and spent some time just lingering in the shop, looking at more masks and watching her work:



They'd been lacquering the masks, before finishing them off:



And this is the shop, facing out from the back room towards the door:



And that's Venice. We had a last dinner there, stumbled back to the hostel, packed, fell into bed, & got up horribly early to catch a bus to Treviso & a plane to Dublin. We had Wednesday to do laundry & repack for London...& Thursday we got up horribly earlier, to get to London for the madcap three days there. But that's a post for another time. My eyes are closing...it's time for sleep.


((And to round out the post: Entirely unrelated to anything Venice, I would just like to say that although I generally like most of the t-shirts on Threadless, I find this one to be particularly endearing, because it is essentially my childhood. Except that I didn't have a dog. But still. I like it.))

Venice! Where everything is pretty...even the things that aren't.

Well, I'm back. From Venice. One of the most glorious cities in the world. This is why I adore Venice: I pretty much love everything having to do with boats, old cities, things made of stone that are over five hundred years old, masks, hand-made artisan crafts, and fresh Italian food. Fortunately for me, Venice is built on islands and public transportation is by boat, it is extremely old and gorgeous in every way, and masks and pretty things are in grand abundance. I will attempt to do justice to the whirlwind three days that Lee & I spent there. I will fail, but I will attempt...and at least there will be pictures!

Saturday

We left on Saturday afternoon, planning to catch the Aircoach & instead being taken by cab, after a cabbie pulled up to the stop & said, "You want to go to the airport for the same price as the coach? Hop in." Turns out he was going to the airport anyway, so he drives along the aircoach route & steals passengers, which I think is hilarious. Also, he reminded me very strongly of Sanjay from Slings and Arrows, which was even funnier. We did the whole airport rigamarole, but we got to board our aircraft by walking across & climbing stairs!



I know, it's silly for me to get excited about that but it feels so fabulously old-fashioned, like I ought to be wearing a hat and gloves to get on board the aircraft. There were some beautiful views out the airplane window as well:






We landed in Venice, and took bus to Piazzale Roma (a transportation depot, the last place cars can go in Venice) & then a vaporetto (water taxi) to our hostel. The vaporettos are wonderful, old clunky flat boats with a covered seating area. They stutter along the canals making noises that sound like they will just give up at any moment, and they pull up to the docks with a huge listing clunk. I love them.

Sunday

We woke up early on Sunday to avoid the tourist rush across to the main islands. I stumbled blearily out of bed, spent a long time in the bathroom arranging my towel so I could reach it but it wouldn't get showered on, and then spotted a window in the corner. I stumbled over to it, looked outside, and woke up instantly:



Yeah, so, we're in Venice. No doubts! We got breakfast at the hostel, and took the boat across to Piazza San Marco, where we spent a little time just taking photos and being touristy:



Basilica di San Marco. Gorgeous golden mosaics...



The clock tower, with the ubiquitous St Mark's Lion up there.


Then we went to the Doge's Palace (Palazzo de Doge). Sadly no photos were allowed inside; I would have loved to show you some of those rooms. They were gorgeous, all blue and gold ceilings, and Renaissance paintings everywhere, carved marble fireplaces. Hidden behind a doorway to a staircase that went nowhere we were allowed, we found a fresco by Titian of St Christopher carrying Christ across the Venetian Lagoon. My favorite room by far was the Shield Room, in which there are no shields but the current Doge's coat of arms. But the walls are all painted in maps of the 16th century, and there are two enormous globes--I mean enormous, maybe three feet in diameter--one of the earth, one of heaven. All old, and brown, and beautiful.

I did, however, take plenty pictures of the courtyard....





The stairway on which the Doge was invested. That's Mars on the left and Neptune on the right.



The view from the top...


After the Palazzo, we headed for el Teatro Fenice (the Phoenix Theater), via a church where we caught the second half of mass, a cafe where we grabbed some lunch, a gelateria, and various other mazes and amazing places of Venice:



The church where we went to hear mass, or rather, stumbled upon mass being held. We'd planned to find one somewhere, but this was the best we got....which really wasn't bad. It was lovely in Italian, and the church was beautiful.



And this is the sign posted in the entryway of the above church, which I adore. In case you can't read it, it says "You are in a Church. You are not allowed to behave indecently."



We sat by a canal to eat lunch...yum.


And el Teatro! It was beautiful...and ironic. This theater, and the company that built it, has survived and rebuilt from several fires, each time renovating the theater to look as close to the orginal designs as possible. Except for when Venice surrendered to Napoleon, & they took out several small boxes in the middle to make a royal box (which is riduclously sumptuous, all red velvet and mirrors and gold).

So, we weren't actually allowed to take pictures inside El Teatro, & in the auditorium and seats there were very attentive guards; but in the other rooms no one was around, so I stole a couple photos just to show you how amazing the entire place was:



One of the rooms the audience would mingle in during intermissions. I mean. Wow.




That carpet is rose colored (the photo's a little dark), like the seats in the auditorium. Everything was golden and cream and rose & pastel blue. Beautiful.



And this is the outside.


Just past the Fenice is a beautiful little courtyard. That small building in the back is a hotel, & is, I've decided, where I'll stay the next time I go to Venice. (When I am rich, apparently, and can afford it...)



I could spend so long here...

And the rest of this I'm doing as one great lump, because there's no set pattern to any of this... Here are pictures of masks, of bridges, of buildings, of why Venice is strikingly and disgustingly picturesque:



I took rather a lot of photos of bridges...there are over 200 bridges in Venice, and I feel like I photographed most of them. This was one of my favorites, though.



After the theater, we wandered a little further & found a great little cafe selling pizza rolls (tomato, fresh mozzarella & rocket leaves rolled up in dough & grilled in a panini press...the best lunch ever), and we ate second lunch while wandering toward somewhere. This stall was selling masks, etc, near the cafe:



So I had to take a photo of the sign. I didn't touch the masks, though!



Lee, in the pair of cool sunglasses we found at a stall near the Ponte Accademia. You know they're cool, because they say so on the tag. No other sunglasses are cool like these ones are cool. Remember that.

& this is just a taste of the incredible window displays that the mask shops had:



More to come, I promise you.

And these are some photos of our favorite mask shop, just around the corner from the Campo dei Frari, which we were looking for when we stumbled on this place. It's gorgeous, full of beautiful displays (as they all are, really). But this one was really lovely; & there was a girl working there who was so super-friendly, who kept going into the back & coming out with other masks & saying "try this one...oh, it fits your face shape!" or "this one for the color of your eyes!" She was so nice. We talked to her while she worked, gilding a mask with gold leaf, about how she got into this job (she wants to design costumes for theater & film, maybe opera houses in Europe, & practical experience is the best way to get jobs). I don't know her name. But I really liked her.



This is one of the Carnevale costumes. The larger mask shops also sold & rented costumes of all kinds. I would give my left leg to go to Venice during Carnevale...except that I'd need it for dancing.



Lee, in one of the gorgeous metal masks we found. So pretty. So, so expensive.



A somewhat overexposed (but artistically so!) photo of a mask in black velvet. It was the kind of velvet that had various other tones in it, so depending on where you were standing it looked tinted with gold or brown or red. Mmmm.




Another costume.


After we tore ourselves away from the mask shop, we walked the few short steps to Basilica Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, an enormous church, all brick and stone, housing a lot of art, mostly in the form of elaborate tombs.









The outside of the church....it was huge! It reminded me a lot of Spanish cathedrals...

We went back toward the grand canal, & found a trattoria on a small canal over a little bridge (....which I realize in Venice means nothing), where we came in just a little before opening time. We hung out at a table while the owner chatted with various people who were in there, and set up, we assumed, playlists on his computer. The playlists were amazing...I know at one point there was a cover of "Light My Fire" followed by a cover (I think so, because I didn't hear any singing) of "Nights in White Satin" by the Moody Blues. Several other songs were just as fabulous. And speaking of fabulous, did I mention the food?





Insalata mista & spaghetti pomodoro...simple, plain, expected maybe. But oh, so good.

During our wanderings near the Ponte Accedemia, we ran into a young man in a red cloak holding a sign that said OPERA, so we stopped to see what was going on. He was selling tickets to a variety of events, at a discount; so we bought tickets to a string quartet concert at a church, which we went to after dinner. It was lovely...felt very civilized. They played Vivaldi, Handel, Pachebel's canon, some Mozart...& there was a mezzosoprano singer for some of the pieces. So sophisticated.


So that was Day One of Venice. But I got back to Dublin today, have spent a lot of the day doing laundry & uploading pictures, & I am tired. A lot of my clothes are still wet, I have to pack again because we're going to London tomorrow...& we have to catch a bus at five am. It's 10:25pm right now. So y'all are going to have to wait for more Venice. I will probably do a ridiculous round of Venice & London posts when I get back, after I see my parents!

& now I really do have to pack. And sleep. Love all. Ciao.