Italy Day 2 - Venice - St Marks and all the Boats

Empty Column? Better add 100 saints, each  and every one specific and identifiable!

Guess where we went this morning? San Marco! This time to we wanted to see the cathedral. We arrived at 9am, and were near the front of the line when the cathedral opened. The cathedral is covered, inside and out, with mosaics, prominently featuring gold leaf.  It's massive and old, and the sheer amount of detail in the mosaics and carvings around the cathedral are overwhelming. We saw the reliquary of St Mark, and it's so much gold, it's the largest oldest goldwork and gemwork, it's also overwhelming and overdetailed. But still cool. Among even more gold we spotted various bible stories across the ceilings - especially in the outer section where there was a bit more space between them. I also especially appreciated the mosaic floorwork where precise geometric work in linearly increasing sizes, meaning every tile is just slightly different and yet all were perfectly cut. [At some point expect a post dedicated solely to the amazing floors across Italy]

This one's an easy one... 

   

After the Cathedral we jumped on the vaporetto (waterbus) and took it all the way across Venice, twice as far as last night. The new moon meant the tide was high, and we saw flooded sidewalks and doorways the whole way down, and admired the mansions of the old merchants, who had warehouses on the first floor, their homes on the mid floor, and servants quarters higher up. The Grand Canal makes a giant S, and our plan was to walk across the second lump of the S, San Polo. So we just started wandering in the correct direction, and figured we'd see what we saw and find lunch along the way. We found plenty of fascinating alleyways, some of which dead-ended into the flooded canal.  It was great. I love wandering lost, especially in Venice. We found lunch (carpaccio and pizza, with a really good house white wine), people-watched, and then headed back to the hotel. The only problem being we were on the wrong side of the grand canal. This was actually great, since it meant we had to take the trafdafdsafsdaf across, a $2 gondola-ferry. It was a lot of fun, and my dad was ecstatic to be riding a gondola on the grand canal in Venice, something he'd been enamored with for decades. It was fun. I'm gonna take the tyrtradafsdfasdfas [traghetto] whenever I have a chance.

We're now back at our apartment decompressing after lunch, doing laundry and figuring out what we're doing this evening. It probably involves boats. Maybe the ferry, maybe a gondola. We'll see.

This morning was such as success, we decided to do it again! This time we took the traghetto back across the river. Now that we knew what we were doing and weren't taking pictures we could enjoy the ride, even though it was only two minutes. We then immediately hit the vaporetto (an express this time! And we sat in the back, which offered great views), which we took down close to where we left this morning, only instead of heading into the city, we disembarked on the opposite side of the canal and headed out of the city center.

We now set off in yet another unexplored direction, taking streets at random with only a general sense of where we were going. We ended up going through the art district towards the residential district [Ghetto Nuevo]. This land was newer, the old copper factories having been demolished, with wider lanes, newer buildings, and almost no stores. I found it very interesting to see the other side of Venice, Mom thought it was rather sketchy. But we pushed through to the other side of the island, where we could look across the sea. There we found a vaporetto stop, and took the first vaporetto we saw - all vaporettos go to San Marco or the Train station, and from there we could transfer to another boat if needed. The day passes are great, you don't even think about it, just jump on the boat. This one was an older boat, filled with families and school children, and a fun change from the tourist-jammed boats we were used to. We circumnavigated most of the island, until it cut in and ended up back on the grand canal, across from the casino.

In the backstreets near Casino we found a gondolier (Matteo? Mattias?) and discussed pricing for him to take us toward our apartment. He began negotiations by insisting he wasn't a taxi, but my mom could deal with the awkwardness so we ditched that plan and decided to take the standard loop instead. He was a great guide and took us down the side canals, out into the main canal by the casino, and then back into the side canals. He told us all about his job and his life, he lives on Murano (nearby island) with his parents and grandparents - and he's following in his father's footsteps as a gondeliero. He's been a gondoliero for 4 years, and had to do 10 months of training to get the job. He said there are 433 gondlierors in the city, in 11 companies ranging from 20 to 77 men. He has to run a trafagererfs 2 days out of every 10, but said he prefers traditional gondolier work because the required breaks during tragasdfadsfadsing eat into the wages. He has his own boat, but it's in the shop for repairs so he's running his partner's boat today.  He told us about the tides, the depths of various channels, explained the signs we'd been curious about, about the water clarity (the propellers stir up all the silt on the bottom, during pandemic the lack of motorized boat traffic meant the water cleared up and you could see to the bottom, and see all the fish in the water). He piloted expertly, ducking under the bridges, kicking off the walls, taking corners within inches of the stonework, and yelling at the motor boats - as is traditional.

We were now the tourist attraction, and they were all taking pictures of us as we took pictures of the surroundings. And finally near the end, we found the flooded doorway from before from the opposite side... complete with baby swing! All in all very cool, despite being a routine tourist trap it's definitely worth doing so that you can enjoy all the back canals and the angles you can't get from the bridges. Mostly, a lot of water-damaged doors and crumbling brickwork, in various stages of disrepair or under  repair, complete with scaffolding anchored into the walls themselves.

Having checked off all the boxes on our Venetian todo list, we headed back to the hotel, cutting through the ancient markets and checking out the souvenir stands as we went.

We're back at the apartment to dry our laundry, heading out for dinner in a bit. Everyone's recuperating at the moment. I'm currently at 15k steps, about 7 miles, and I'm sure I'll throw another mile or so on there tonight, but that's all for the blog. Ciao!