Venice: City on water - part 4

Our last day here in Venice was dedicated for visiting the churches and basilicas.

Beside the very first basilica we saw on the way here when we landed on our very first day, St. Mark's basilica, we also saw a huge dome of Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute (The Church of the Virgin Mary of Good Health), which is on the other side of Grand Canal.








This 17th-century domed church was commissioned by Venice’s plague survivors around 1630 when the Bubonic Plague struck and killed roughly 80,000 Venetians. The Republic voted to honor the Madona by building this church in exchange for her intervention on behalf of Venice.

It took us over 2 hours to get to San Giorgio Maggiore church. It's an island church built by Palladio, decorated by Tintoretto and Bassano, and offering great views from the campanile.

Every visitor to Venice sees it on their way to the island, and most if not all of them snap a picture of it, yet barely a handful ever bother taking the quick water taxi (vaporetto) ride over to visit it.







The interior of San Giorgio Maggiore church.

Different views toward San Giorgio Maggiore church.

One of the many bridges across the Grand Canal.

View from the boat dock in the front entrance of Grand Canal. It's so closed to the water. We walked down a few steps and dipped our hands into the warm clean water of Venice ... :-)

You can pick and choose a private water taxi to visit anywhere within a 30 minute ride. Of course, it's expensive but there are a few islands that you can't get on without a boat, unless you can walk on water ... P-)

This street next to the entrance of St. Mark's Square is super busy with lots of people, pigeons, photographers, stalls and beautiful view of Grand Canal.
This huge square is surrounded by old majestic buildings and of course tons of shops. The beauty and history of Venice is really unsurpassed compared to anywhere else we've traveled to.

This the center of all activity of Venice. From designer stores to fine diners to cafes to stalls to music performances, everything is here.

Our hotel is only a short distance away no more than 5 minute walk. So after a looooong walking day, we stop here for some rest, and to have our dinners, always huge loads of carb. Italian meals are not much of anything else beside bread.

The wild and audacious pigeons of St. Mark's Square are well fed every day. They all would gather here to eat, poop, and do their sex thing right in front of the tourists.

 A closed up look at the mural wall depicting the activities of the history of Venice.

And just like everywhere in Europe, all the bridges here have some "love locks" to witness the commitments of these puppy lovers ... :-)

After 3.5 day and 3 night stay in Venice, we took off early on the fourth day to catch a flight to Naples. It took less than an hour to get to Naples Capodichino airport from Venice. We were heading directly to Molo Beverello port to catch a ferry to Capri Island. 

Venice: City on water - part 3

We visited some of the famous Murano Glass factories in Venice on the third day. These factories were specialized in fancy glass-wares for centuries in Europe.









Murano’s glass-makers led Europe for centuries, developing or refining many technologies including crystalline glass, enamel glass, glass with threads of gold, multicolored glass, milk glass, and imitation gemstones made of glass.













Most of these beautiful Murano glass pieces are very expensive and fragile so bringing them home is not very practical. And we still had a few destinations to go before coming home so we didn't buy any. This decision has brought a lot of regret later. 





There's another fine art one could find almost everywhere in Venice is Mask. These Venetian Mask are very well known and very well liked in the world.

 
They are super fancy and gorgeous. Every one of them is made in a unique way, and none is like the others. Many of them are sold in the hundreds and quite a few are running in the high thousands of dollars.





We stumbled onto a mass-production mask shop sold for a portion of the price that other shops had asked for. They didn't look very bad but they were not very well detailed.

Guess what, these were the Chinese-made masks that were brought here to fool those cheap-spending tourists.

Today, the artisans of Murano are still employing these centuries-old techniques, crafting everything from contemporary art glass and glass figurines to Murano glass chandeliers and wine stoppers, as well as tourist souvenirs.





There were a few high end shops here and there selling the costume we had seen in movies. They are worn during their annual carnivals of  mask and costume. I saw some costumes with the price tags in ten of thousands Euros.

We spent at least 10 hours of walking a day. There was no other way but walk and Venice is not small. We had the Venice map with all of its attractions and there's only one way to do it is to divide the city into horizontal grids. By the time we got back to our hotel every evening, we had piled up to 15 miles or more easily. This kind of tourist is not for people with walking challenge. 

Venice: City on water - part 2

First thing first, we had to find our hotel to check in our luggage and to refresh a little before we start on exploring the city. This task wasn't as simple as we had planned. The city is completely surrounded by water, bridges and waterways so the only transportation available is walking. The streets are so confused because the waterways zigzagging thru them. If finding an address in the middle of Hanoi is tough then finding a hotel here is ten-time tougher. It took us thru a bunch of very narrow alleys to reach our hotel. And it was so hard to look all the way up to find the tiny signage bearing the hotel name.



Our hotel was behind Hotel Violino D'oro in the picture and to get to it we had to squeeze thru a narrow alley between Hotel Violino and the tan and white building on the right. There wasn't any sign to point the way, and neither there's a lobby nor signage to tell if it's a hotel when you stand right in front of it. The entrance of this hotel is its restaurant. You have to go thru this restaurant to reach the front desk ... :-).


I booked the lowest price room I could find for the two of us and had not anticipated the room this teeny tiny. There's no space left for any amenities. The double bed took up ninety percents of the total space. There's a tiny dinning table with 2 little chairs pushing against the wall between the bathroom's door and the foot of the bed. You can't open the bathroom's door if there is a person sits at the dining table. I couldn't imagine the 2 average American would fit into this room. Oh well, we just needed some place to crash for 3 night stay.


The Grand Canal is the biggest waterway that snakes thru the city's of Venice in a large S shape, traveling from the Saint Mark Basin on one end to a lagoon near the Santa Lucia rail station on the other. On both side of the canal are buildings. Some of them are so old, and could have been built in the Medieval time.







There are several bridges built across it thru-out the city. There were all kind of water transportation from the large cruise ships, and commercial water buses (vaporetto), to private boats and water taxis, with the most famous and romantic of all, the gondolas.









Foot traffic gathers around three famous bridges that cross the canal: the Rialto Bridge, the Ponte Degli Scalzi, and the Ponte dell'Accademia.
Churches are many as well. Some were built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.











But the majority of the buildings here seem to be designed and build in the Renaissance and Classical styles of the sixteenth century.

We found a very nice market with fresh catch from the sea and very fresh produce brought over from shore, but they were a bit pricy. Everything is pretty expensive here anyways.
I forgot to mention that the tiny hidden room we stayed in Venice cost us one hundred sixty dollars a night ... :-(, and that's the cheapest that I found during the highest summer season.

Fresh fish and crustaceans caught and sold within a few hours in the morning everyday.

Fresh produce brought over from shore a couple hours away.

Tiny waterway with private boat docks are all over the city.

On the second day, we were happy to find a Chinese restaurant in Venice. It's the larger one of the two here that I had heard. A simple meal for 2 set us back sixty dollars.
We had to bite the bullets to dine here because we hadn't had any rice for almost a month here in Western Europe.

Merely a hundred feet to our hotel is the beautiful Santa Maria di Nazareth Church (known today as Scalzi).

The gondola ride is the same with a share taxi. You would find strangers who wants to share with you for the agreeable length of time from 20 minutes to 3 hours. It cost roughly about 90 dollars for a 20 minute ride. If you can find 3-4 people to share with you then you divide the sum to each rider accordingly. The same with 2-3 hour ride. It would cost a few hundred bucks among 5-6 riders. If you can't find any "friends", or you want yours to be a private party, then you have to foot the bills all alone.

Venice: City on water - part1

We left Vatican City early the next morning, hopped on a short flight straight to Venice. It's a bit over an hour flying, but getting in and out of the airports takes more time than that ... oh, well.

We landed at Marco Polo airport before 8 o'clock in the morning. It was good because there wasn't much activity there yet.

After running around to see if we had more than one options on getting to Venice and finding there was none, we were heading straight to the boat dock which is a short walking distance away.

There are many options on how to get to Venice from here, all by boats of course.

For the rich and famous, they have their own yacht waiting for them there.

For the rich and not so famous, they can rent a beautiful and luxury yacht with its own crew for themselves. It's pretty expensive ... upward to a grand.

Then there are taxi boat, the smaller version but you can get a pilot, a bottle of champagne and a small speedy boat for yourselves, and it's still quite expensive ... upward to a couple hundred bucks.

Finally, there is a public version of the bus on water ... It costs less than twenty Euros for one ticket. These vessels are designed not for speed nor sea worthy but for ... public transportation.

They are super slow and they stop so often just like buses to pick up and drop off their passengers. It takes more than two hours to get to Venice by this.

A nice Taxi boat anchored at its dock.

Another fancy Taxi boat anchored nearby.

 One of the Taxi boat to get you in and out Venice for around 200 bucks one way. It does come with a pilot and a bottle of champagne :-). This one will take a mere 30-35 minutes from shore to Venice and vice versa.

This is a form of public bus on water in the background. It's a lot cheaper but crowded and slow. It takes more than 2 hours to get there and another 2 hours to get back for around 20 bucks one way.






From a short distance, Venice is a complete city built right on top of the water. It is located in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline, between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. The sea that Venice was built on top called Adriatic sea, and it is a part of the Mediterrenean Sea.

It was very hot and humid when we got here in late July, but the ocean breeze helped quite a bit. There were not a lot of tourists landing at the dock around this early time yet but around noon and then on, they came in wave, hundreds and hundreds arrived in every 15-20 minute interval.

They dropped us off at Piazza San Marco or St. Mark's Square, the biggest gathering place of this city. The first thing we saw, was the great Clock Tower and the beautiful St. Mark Basilica. The sad part was we couldn't see much of this basilica due to its restoration. It was built 5-6 hundreds years ago and always in need of repair and maintenance. 

St. Mark's Square viewed from the boat dock.

St. Mark's Square viewed from one of many inlets. Restaurants have outdoor dining tables and chairs set up right in the middle of the square. The prices between non-seating and outdoor seating are quite different. It costs double if you wanna sit out there enjoy the views. The foods here are pretty expensive to any standard.

This is one of the many beautiful artworks surrounding the basilica.

St. Mark's statue standing on top of one of the entrances.

One of the beautiful painting of Mary and Child.

The main entrance of the basilica was in repair and blocked out to the public.

A trip to Western Europe: Vatican: St. Peter Square

We got to St. Peter Square around noon. The scorching sun couldn't stop us and many tourists from all over the world. The view of this square is breath taking, and for some unknown reason, my heart was pounding in my chest.
There was a bit of construction-maintenance going on as you can see in some of the pictures taken here.
I am a Catholic so this is the chance of a lifetime that I have to get it all in. Before getting inside I was wondering that would there be another chance before I die!

Couldn't wait to get inside ...
The persons we saw first were these two guards with funny clothing, but their faces were as serious and menace as the Secret Service of America. They gave no acknowledgement that you or anybody else were there. Everything else around them were nonexistent. 
We didn't need to move. The crowd was moving in in one direction. I couldn't stop it.

Saint Peter Basilica is one of the holiest basilicas in the Catholic faith. It's so humongous with rows and rows of statues, paintings, ornaments, and sculptures that have been collected in the last two millenniums. It also is one of the biggest Basilicas we have seen.
It contains some of the most famous paintings and sculptures known to mankind.

It would be a huge blunder if not counting the famous Michelangelo Pietà among these sculptures.

St. Peter Basilica's sheer dimensions are staggering: 614 feet long, 145 feet high in the aisle soaring to 385 feet inside Michelangelo's dome which is itself 137 feet across.
I was completely loss track of time when I was in there.

On the way out ... looking back.