Crossing So Many Bridges in Venice

Friday, February 19
Elena and I got up around 6am to take the métro to Gare du Nord (a train station) where we took a train to Beauvais, a town north of Paris. We tried to get a taxi to take us to the airport, but the phone number on the taxi stand sign didn't work, so we figured out what bus to take. We went out to the bus stop in front of the train station, and the bus came almost immediately. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to make our 10:55am flight to Venice. Then when we got to the Venice airport, we had to take another bus to take us into Venice because the airport is pretty far away. When we got to Venice, we had to take a water bus to San Marco Square since our airbnb is near there. Typically people staying at that airbnb calls the woman who owns it (Grazia) when they get to San Marco, and she takes them to the apartment. But we didn't have a phone to call her so we try looking for the apartment on our own despite not having a street address (which I didn't know Elena didn't have). We ended up going into a hotel and having the front desk call Grazia. The man at the front desk gave us directions to the apartment and said Grazia would be waiting for us. We got to the door that we believed was our airbnb but not Grazia was in sight. We waited probably ten or fifteen minutes before leaving to get lunch since we hadn't eaten since we left the Ferguson's apartment this morning. We found a café that had free Wifi, so Elena was able to contact Grazia and she said she would meet us at the apartment. Thankfully she was there waiting for us when we got back after finishing lunch. The "apartment" is more like a hotel room with a mini fridge and a few dishes. It was small, but nice. The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around Venice and crossing so many bridges. I always felt like we should end up back in a familiar place, but we never did. I would have been completely lost if it wasn't for Elena always leading us around with her excellent sense of direction.

Crossing over the bridges almost always gave a beautiful sight.

 A beautiful sunset the first night!

 Another little canal

 Another pretty view of Venice

We were surprised by the number of tourists there in the middle of February. We just kept saying, "Imagine how crazy this would be if it was summer!" I'm really glad we didn't go in the summer because the crowds of tourists were big enough when we were there. We went out for dinner at a delicious restaurant that we couldn't find again until the end of our time in Venice.

Saturday, February 20
The next day we went to the famous San Marco church, which is beautiful and extravagantly decorated. Surprisingly we didn't have to wait in a very long line to get in probably because we got there not long after it opened.

 San Marco and the bell tower

We couldn't take pictures inside the building, but it was just as extravagantly decorated on the outside.

After the basilica we wanted to go up the bell tower, but the line was pretty long, so we decided to quickly visit Doge's Palace since it was right next to San Marco. (I think all of the tourist attractions are in San Marco Square because walking around anywhere else you would get lost! But that didn't keep us from exploring other areas of the city.) We didn't expect Doge's Palace to be so big! We probably spent two hours walking around through all of the rooms. I swear every room in the palace was open to the public; okay probably not every single room, but nearly all of them. We had to pay 19 euros to get in, so we were reading every sign there was to make the most of our visit, not expecting it to be as long as it was. One of the first signs mentioned "the start of a long journey" or visit or something like that and I brushed it off not realizing it really is a LONG visit.

 Doge's Palace

 The first four or five rooms had old pillars and capitals that were part of the palace but have been replaced. 

 The courtyard of Doge's Palace

 The beginning rooms were a lot of government official meeting rooms. They were all ornately decorated with gold and paintings all over the walls and ceilings.

 The next part contained the armory collection, which was extensive.

It was about at this point when I was feeling I would never make it out of the palace. Dreaming of making it out to the beautiful blue skies.

 This is the largest room in the palace. After this was a long tour of the dungeon.

Looking out to the courtyard. Almost made it!

 We made it out to the enjoy the beautiful day!

Before going up into the bell tower, we got lunch along the Grand Canal. I had a spaghetti with clams and Elena had spaghetti with squid. We had to have some seafood while in Venice!

We had expected it to be a bunch of stairs going up into the bell tower since we were used to that in Paris, but instead it was an elevator that took us quickly to the top.

A perfect day to get beautiful views of Venice.

 Looking down at Doge's Palace on the right and San Marco on the left.

Elena and I happy to be visiting this beautiful city.

The 19 euros we paid to get into Doge's Palace was a pass that let us into three other museums, so we thought we would check out another one called Museo Correr since it was just on the other side of San Marco Square. Again it was much bigger than we had expected. Just visiting the two museums, we saw enough to make the nineteen euros worth it.

 Inside Museo Correr. The first rooms are the original decorations of the Imperial Rooms

 The next part was a large art collection that all seemed a little random. I had studied this piece of art in one of my art history classes at Augustana.

 An enormous engraving.

A little Book of Hours. I always found these interesting and beautiful when studying them in my art history classes.

There was another part to the museum, but we didn't know how long that would be and we were getting tired from all of the museum visits.

In Italy when you buy a drink between 5pm and 7pm or 8pm a restaurant or bar will have a little buffet out that is free, so Elena and I were filling up on the free food that came with our drinks. We also bought some cheese and bread and fruit and snacked on that for the rest of the night. But we didn't have a knife in our room so we had to use a fork to break of chunks of cheese. It was still delicious!

Sunday, February 21
On Sunday, we decided to take a boat out to a few of the smaller islands around Venice. We could have taken a tour for twenty euros or bought an all day pass for twenty euros, so we bought the all day pass so that we could take our time seeing what we wanted to see.

 See ya later, Venice.

 Hello, Murano.

Our first stop was the island of Murano; most famous for it's glass. We didn't want to spend a lot of time on this island, but the boats were too crowded for Burano that we had to stay a little longer. 

 We sat outside and got coffee.

 We walked around and found this interesting glass sculpture.

 After lunch, we made it on a boat heading to Burano. Passing by an old building that seems to have been overrun by nature.

 Benvenuto a Burano.

 The buildings are all so brightly colored!

 Hanging with the Tobey cousins ;)

 Such a beautiful little island.

We took a smaller boat to a smaller island called Torcello (pronounced like Torchello). We had to wait in a huge crowd of people who were waiting to go back to Murano and Venice, but we didn't realize that until the tiny boat came up and we thought there was no way we were going to make it on, but the guy called out for people going to Torcello, and we were two of only a handful going. 

 Torcello

 The churches on Torcello

We didn't spend a lot of time on Torcello because there wasn't much to see, and it was getting later in the afternoon. We thought we could take a boat from Torcello back to Murano, but we found out that we could only take that little boat run by one guy back to Burano and then we could go back to Venice. We had to wait in an even bigger crowd this time for fifteen or twenty minutes. Finally a big passenger boat came, and we weren't sure if we would make it on, but we did. Thankfully we didn't have to stop in Murano before going to Venice because the boat we got on took us back to Venice.

 The boat ride back to Venice

 We go back on the other side of Venice so we had a long walk to get back to our airbnb.

 The Venice arsenal

Another beautiful sunset in Venice.

Monday, February 22
Monday was our last full day in Venice and we took it easy. We walked around some more to see what else we missed and tried to go in more churches, but you had to pay to get into all of the churches, which seems very strange to me.

 This is a small theater that we could go into for free. It is strange how they put this marble facade on the front of a regular brick building. 

 We walked across a tall bridge over the Grand Canal.

 This is where gondolas are made, which we just happened upon. Elena had read about it but we didn't go looking for it. 

Another pretty little view of Venice.

Again we filled up on free buffet food with our drinks for dinner. Then we went out for dessert because we both wanted tiramisu. We found a restaurant that looked good, so we went in and ended up splitting three desserts—tiramisu, crème brulée, and a chocolate mousse—all of which were delicious! 

The next day we had a little bit of time to walk around the market and buy some fruit and something to eat for lunch on the afternoon train to Rome.