Last day in Venice

The last day, so we have to catch up on things we missed.  We had to tour the Basilica of St. Mark, had to visit the glass factories in Murano, and had to take a gondola ride.

Let's start with the Basilica.  It was a one hour guided tour, but we were told no pictures.   So I think I may have been the only person in the place who didn't take any.  It was a work of art inside.  The entire ceiling (and there was plenty of it) was filled with mosaic tiles depicting Christ and the apostles.  Most of the tiles were gold, so plenty gaudy.  It took 7 years to complete the building but a hundred years to finish the decorations.

 Every time we look at this building, we notice something else. Notice the golden-winged angles and the golden lion, the symbol of Venice.

The floors of the Basilica are mosaic patterns in different colors of marble.  The floors were once flat, but because of the unstable nature or the soil, the floors are now as wavy as the water in the canal.

Venice is famous for its glass artworks.  The island of Murano is where most of the glass artwork is produced.  We signed up for a free tour of one of the factories.  

 Above one of the glass blowers finishes a vase.  It took about 10 minutes.

Here is a glass horse he completed in about 5 minutes.

After the tour, they take you to the show room where there are hundreds of kinds of glassware and glass objects on display...figurines, glasses, vases, sets of plates, etc.  Of course the idea is for you to purchase something.  We found a nice candy dish, maybe 8 inches around on a short stem.  I figured it would probably cost about 100 euro and maybe 30 more to ship it home.  I almost choked when the salesman said it was 800 euro if I take it with me and 900 if they ship it.  It is still in the showroom.  Oh well, it was a nice boat trip.

When we got back we found a place where you could get a ride on a gondola.  The ride was about 30 minutes down the Grand Canal and into a couple of the small canals.  I am glad it wasn't 35 minutes.

What a good looking couple!

This is one of many huge liners that come up the Grand Canal.

Since there are no trucks to move cargo on the land, everything is moved on boats and then on hand trucks like this.  It is designed so that it can get up and down the steps of the bridges over the canals.

Pigeons are a problem, especially in Piazza San Marco.  A few years ago there were as many as 20,000 of them in the square.  So they passed a law forbidding the feeding of the birds.  Now the population is down to about 2000, but they can still be a nuisance.  Here a lady holds some food in her hand to attract the birds for a picture.  At the many outdoor cafes the pigeons fly right up onto your table to grab a snack.

Thursday is moving day again as we take a train to Milan and transfer to a train to Como.  This is our last stop on our voyage.  We will probably not blog again until Friday.

 

Around Venice

Tuesday was a mostly sunny day with just a few showers in the afternoon with temps in the low 70's.  We went on the walking tour that was rained out on Monday.  Our guide, Rosanna, took us through back streets to see some things we wouldn't normally see or notice and explained things that are not in the tour books.

She explained why tourists get lost so easily.  First, Venice is divided into six districts, and houses and businesses are numbered, like street addresses, from 1 to about 6800.  But they do this in each district so there are six of every number.  One area might be 5300's and the next 2400's, there is no pattern.  Also the  street names are not unique even within each district.  There are hundreds of streets named Calle di Forno, which means "street with an oven" (or bakery).  There are also lots of streets named Marie or Marco, etc.  So they usually give directions by landmarks not street names.

Unlike other cities, there is only one Piazza (meaning square) in Venice, Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark's Square).  The rest of the open areas are referred to as Campo (field) or Corte (Courtyard).  The Piazza was the only open area that was paved from the outset, while the other open areas were grassy or planted with flowers or vegetables.  Most of these areas are now paved as well.  A lawn service would not be a good business in this city.

There is no source of fresh water in Venice except rain water.  So each Campo or Corte has a "well" which is really a cistern.  The Campo has a large paved area with drains that lead to a huge waterproof tank underground.  The water passes through a sand filter and into the tank, then water is pumped from the tank for drinking purposes.

This is the view from our balcony of the courtyard.  The well is covered to protect the water below.  The punishment for poisoning a well is death.

Here is a picture of a spiral staircase at the rear of a "palace".  The story behind the staircase is that the owner wanted a way for his horse to climb to the top floor.

The picture below shows a lone gondolier in this canal.  Gondoliers in Venice have to go to school and pass tests to attain a license.  Only one woman has taken the classes and passed the tests.  She was refused a license, however.  She protested that she was being denied because of her sex, but was told she was denied because she is not a Venician.  She still has a job as a gondolier, however, because she is the private gondolier for one of the hotels in town.  But she cannot work at one of the regular gondola stands in the city.

The only female gondolier in Venice is standing on the gondola dressed in white.

After a nice pizza dinner Pat wanted to have dessert at the Florian Cafe in Piazza San Marco.  The restaurant has been in business since 1720 and serves elegant lunches and desserts presented on silver platters, and served by men in tuxedos.  Tonight they were serving outside in the square and had a five piece ensemble to entertain us.

Look closely at the bill and you will see we paid quite a bit for our indulgence, twice what we paid for our pizza dinner.  This included a 12 euro cover charge for the music.  But it is a once in a lifetime experience.

Below is a picture of a typical bar, where we had lunch.  Bar's are not beer joints like we have at home...you can buy a drink if you want, but mostly they sell sandwiches (panini), coffee, and breakfast and lunch food at reasonable prices.

The guy on the left either works as a gondolier or somebody stole his clothes and he dressed himself from the souvenir vending cart.

And now about 14 seconds of the quintet.  Two other restaurants in the Piazza had similar entertainment.  What a treat!

Soggy day

Rain, rain, rain... We were supposed to have a walking tour and gondola ride today, but it was raining so hard that the guide told us if we didn't want to go today, we could use our voucher another day, so we decided to wait until tomorrow.  

See, we had already walked for about 2 hours straight, trying to get to Ponte Di Rialto, the bridge you always see in the movies and travel shows.  Well...we got lost, really lost.  We couldn't even find ourselves on the map we had bought at the travel shop.  That's because we were about a mile from where we thought we were.  When we finally asked a navy guy at the pier where we were, we were astonished at just how far we were from where we thought we should be.  We were even walking  in a direction that would get us loster.  OH WELL.

 We stopped going the wrong way here.  Notice the ocean liner in the background.  We were headed out to sea.

So we had to retrace our steps and try again.  This time we were a bit more observant, and noticed yellow signs posted up on the buildings that pointed to Rialto.  How easy now!

 Here is the Rialto bridge.  The bridge has three sets of steps.  This photo shows one side with the backs of the stores in view.  There is a similar view on the other side.

So we got the bridge and found a shopping mecca.  The bridge is covered with shops...mostly jewelry shops similar to the Ponte Vecchia in Florence.  And on the other side of the bridge, guess what...more jewelry shops and tourist type of shops.  Oh Yippee.

Well, it sprinkled the whole time.  Just enough to be aggravating, but not enough to warrant an umbrella.  But it never stopped and eventually we were pretty wet.

So we had lunch and went for our tour, but by that time it was pouring.  But like troupers, we went shopping some more. 

 About every fifth or sixth store is a mask store.  Why masks?  Venice had a tradition of Carnevale just before lent where masks were worn.  In the old days there was a good reason to wear a mask during the riotous Carnevale.  They helped wives and husbands to be unfaithful to one another and priests break their vows of chastity.  Things got so out of hand that Carnevale was banned in the late 18th century.  It was revived in the 1980's by local tourism powers, and is calmer now, but just barely.

In Venice you can get from place to place by boat or by foot--no wheels aloud in the city at all...no cars, no bikes, no roller skates, no skateboards.  Like other Italian cities, there are no straight roads or walkways, making it hard to find your way without a good map or even with a good map.  We will probably get lost tomorrow too.

 An unusual 24 hour clock using the old style Roman numerals where 4 is IIII, not IV.

View from the bridge.

Check out the windows.

Side view of the Basilica of Saint Mark.  You can see the line to get in for a look.  The line is about one and a half hours at this point.

Saint Mark's from the front.

 Bronze horses adorn the front entrance of St. Mark's.

 Artwork over the front entrance.

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Waterbus goes under the bridge.
 

La trena

We moved today from our farm house in Tuscany near Siena to Venice.  We drove to the train station in Florence, turned in the car at the rental office, and took the train (trena) to Venice.  What a wonderful experience.

 

The train got up to about 90 mph at times, but you never felt the speed, except when passing another train going the other way...wow!  The ride was smooth as silk and very quiet--you could actually hold a quiet conversation.  The train made 5 stops along the way.  On the way to the first stop, about half way to Balogna, the train rarely traveled above ground.  That means that for most of the 40 miles we were actually in a tunnel.  The rest of the trip was on the surface.

 

When we got to Venice we were greeted by a representative of the travel agency that arranged the trip and the hotel and we took a water taxi most of the way to the hotel.  Unfortunately, we could not take the taxi all the way to the hotel because the America's Cup was using part of the Grand Canal for the yacht race.  So we had to hoof it about a mile through the back streets accompanied by a porter who was pushing our luggage for us.  We just missed seeing the sailing ships as they had just finished their last lap about 10 minutes before we arrived.

We only had a couple of hours to look around and have dinner, and it was raining.  Our hotel is about 3 blocks from Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark's Square) so we walked there to look around.  The square is about the size of 2 football fields and is bordered by a beautiful church and some beautiful stores and restaurants.  String combos were playing a variety of music (mostly classical) at various spots along the perimeter.  What an experience.

 

Tomorrow we have a walking tour of some of the sites, so I should have more to say then.

Earthquake?

Hey, several people have told me there was an earthquake near Balogna early this morning.  We didn't hear about it until we got off the train in Venice this afternoon.  I got two emails about it wondering if we were ok.

Yes, we are ok.  The news story I read said the quake was at about 4 AM.  The funny thing is Pat and I both woke us at about that time this morning for no good reason.  Maybe we felt the quake, but we were 80 miles away...who knows?

Puttering around

Today we drove around the roads close to "home" looking for more wineries, trying to find the best way to get some of this delicious stuff home.  We had a bottle of Chiante bottled by Castello Badia Berardenga that is very tasty.  After following a google map to where google thought it was, we stumbled upon a sign that pointed in the right direction.  The winery is a former Monestary that looks a lot like a castle, complete with drawbridge and tower.  There are no signs to tell you where to go to buy the wine, and we were about to give up when we saw a couple of men tending the grounds...neither spoke a word of English.  I was able to muddle through a conversation where I understood only about every third word, but finally understood that he could not ship wine to the USA.  So we just bought a couple of bottles and were on our way.

Courtyard of the "castle".

A small horse or a big man would muscle these stone wheels around to squeeze the oil out of the olives.

Hey, why not mail the wine ourselves, so we went to the post office in Castelnuovo Berendenga... again no English.  Also she was a postal worker, so she really didn't seem to care...just like home.  But eventually she told me that they would not sent wine to the USA.

Now I know wine gets from Italy to the USA, but how?  So we looked for another winery.  This time we sent to a place called Castell'in Villa.  This place was really cool to explore.  Someone there was a modern artist who welded junk together to create works of art.

Well, she said she could send the wine to the US, but the shipping was more than the cost of the already overpriced wine.  So we went on.

Finally, we found a winery called Villa a Sesta who sells pretty good wine and can ship it reasonably, so he looks like the winner.

By the way,  the car we rented is an Italian car called a Lancia (I think made by Fiat) and it is a diesel getting about 43 miles per gallon.

 

Of course you don't get gallons here, you get liters at about 1.66 euros per liter.  That works out to about $8.00 per gallon.  I don't think O'Bama can be blamed for that.

The Italian roadways are designed for these smaller cars.  The lanes are narrower and the parking spots are smaller.  There aren't many American cars here except for the very smallest compacts.

Goodbye from the Black Rooster in Castelnuovo Berardenga.

Bologny on Balogna

Wednesday we did a lot of driving.  We started with the small city of Arezzo.  There wasn't much to see except the wall around the original city that had a mammoth door.

 

Then on to Ravenna.  It was an overcast day with some light rain now and then, but not bad driving.  I have to tell you I am amazed at the autostrada.  It is a system of 4 to six lane highways throughout the country similar to our interstate system.  Some of the newer and wider sections are toll highways, but worth the price.  The speed limits range from about 55 mph in congested areas to about 81 mph on the open road.  Of course the Italians regard the speed limit as a speed suggestion.  It is nothing to have a line of cars pass you going 100 mph.  I felt like the pace car at Indy.

On the way to Ravenna you have to cross a mountain range similar to the mountains in West Virginia.  We must have gone through a dozen tunnels that ranged from a quarter mile to several miles long.  We took a different route back and found the same thing.  And the bridges were awesome.  Many were several hundred feet high and many miles long.

 Of course, I had to visit the namesake of my home town to find out why the founders wanted to name our city after this Italian seaport.  The tour book told us that at one time Ravenna was successively the capitol of the Western Roman Empire, the Visigoth Empire, and the Bysantine Empire for a span of 350 years starting in 402 AD, and was considered one of the greatest cities on the Mediterranean.

Now the original city remains inside its walls drawing tourists who want to see what is left.  The greater city is a modern seaport but with the typical Italian style of buildings.  The old city has several noteworthy remnants.

The Basilica di Sant'Apollinare in Classe dates from the 6th century and retains the beautiful mosaic tiled walls with depictions of processions from long ago.  The church itself is in rough shape with some of its beauty still intact in some areas.

Dante's Tomb is tucked in among the buildings.  His ashes were actually hidden nearby during WWII just in case the tomb was destroyed.

Maybe the statues that are on the front lawn of the old Ravenna Township school, now Brown Junior High, were inspired by these guys adorning the central park.

No trip to Ravenna would be complete without a visit to the leaning tower of Ravenna!  Well it is not as spectacular as the one in Pisa and not as easy to get to, but it does lean...even more than the one in Pisa.  There is yet another leanier in town, but we couldn't find it (we were tired).  Maybe we could get something like this to replace our flagpole.

A statue to Giuseppe Garibaldi, a famous general and politician of the 1800's, has a prominent spot in the middle of the city.

Yes, Ravenna has a post office.  I immediately recognized it as the Ravenna post office because when I went in there were only two people working the counter, one was playing solitaire on his computer and the other had a closed sign in front of him.

So long Ravenna.

On the way back we decided to stop in Bologna for dinner.  Bad idea.  First of all, Bologna, at least the parts we saw, doesn't even look like an Italian city.  It looks more like Cleveland.  Second, we couldn't find a parking spot anywhere.  People were parked on sidewalks, on the grass, double parked...what a mess.  We drove around for about an hour and gave up.  We ended up having pizza in Florence.

Today we stayed around home...our Tuscany home.  We visited several small towns and tried to find a vineyard that was open.  First we went to Castelnuovo Berandengo, a town maybe the size of Kent, sitting  by itself on a hill surrounded by fields of grapes and forests of olive trees.  The real reason for the visit was to shop at the open air market.  The main street was blocked off and lined with tables of vendors of every variety...farm products, fish, clothing, linens, etc.  

This picture shows only a few of the tables, because like most streets in Italy, it is not straight and you can only see a little bit at a time.  There was actually about a quarter mile of tables.

We went back to our apartment with our loot and decided to go back for lunch.  The market was just closing up at noon.   So were all the stores in the town!  In Italy it is the custom to close the stores at around noon so that the shopkeepers can go home for lunch.   Only the restaurants are open then.   They reopen at about 2:30.  So that's why the post office in Ravenna never has anybody working at noon!

So we just wandered about and took some pictures.  Below is a picture of some artwork on one of the buildings...no doubt by a budding master.  Then a picture of a building Pat thought looked cool, and then a picture of a typical street.

 We found a vineyard where the owner was kind enough to show us around and tell us about his wines.  The tasting room was an old press room where they pressed grapes and olives.  Pat liked the large earthen vats in front of the old presses.

Another little town waaaaay up on a hill was Villa a Sesta.  Not much there but it was nice to look at...especially the arched entryways through the wall that surrounded the town.

Let me finish with some pictures from another small town called San Gusme, perched on yet another hill, surrounded by grapes and olive trees.

 

Through the olive trees, way up on the hill you can see the villa of another grape farmer.

You want grapes, we got grapes!  Thousands of acres of grapes.