Thanks to double glazing and the shutters in our windows we slept a bit later this morning and thus arrived at the breakfast room at peak hour, it’s the first time we’ve had to wait a little for a table but the bacon and scrambled eggs were worth the wait.
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| Quiet canals |
When we looked out the window we noticed that the tide was high and with rain predicted tomorrow we decided the first priority for the day was our gondola ride. The hotel called one for us but when he arrived the landing stage was already occupied by the gardening boat, so we did the Venetian thing and walked across it to reach our seat on the Gondola. We had a wonderfully peaceful ride up the quiet back canals into Cannaregio before looping back through Castello and out onyo the Grand Canal for a short stretch.
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| Gliding under the Bridge of Sighs |
Along the back canals we passed the garbage collection boats, delivery boats, an ambulance boat and a multitude of other small boats! It was fascinating. High tide was a little challenging for our gondolier as he had to duck very low to get under some of the bridges and at one stage he even asked Neil and I to snuggle up on one side so the boat tipped sideways so the point at the front could make it under the bridge! A gondola ride isn’t cheap and it’s a real cliche but it was such a magic experience, we didn’t regret it at all.
After that we set forth again to explore the many lanes and bridges heading across the Rialto bridge. On the banks of the grand canal near the Fish Market the water level was so high that it was lapping up over the edge of the canal. Everywhere we go they have the little tables out stacked ready for the Aqua Alta (high water) that often floods Venice in the cooler months.
We walked along , following the signs “Al Ferrovia” (To the Station), passing touristy shops near Rialto, but increasingly more ordinary local shops as we went further afield. The weather today had turned very cold, about
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| Neil on the Rialto bridge |
16 degrees and Neil was feeling the cold in his short sleeved short so we popped into a cute little place selling all sorts of ordinary things like socks and t shirts and undies to buy him a long sleeved polo. The attendant pulled a selection from one of dozens of little shelves and Neil walked out much warmer ( we had already passed dozens of staples where he could have bought a souvenir shirt but he had no mention of wandering around in a shirt with “I love Venice” plastered on the front, and I couldn’t even persuade him to buy one of the striped Gondolier shirts )
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| Santa Maria della Salute |
The area around the station was very busy and we enjoyed watching the passing parade as we sat waiting for our Vaporetto Del’Arte water bus. This is a hop on – hop off bus service that winds up and down the canal and provides an audio commentary of the sights. It only cost us an extra 10 Euro on top of our normal Vaporetto pass and it was well worth it, the queues for the standard vaporettos were long and the boats were packed but our bus was almost empty and we could wander from side to side and get great views of the sights.
We stayed on the boat all the way to San Giorgio Maggiore, which is the lovely Palladian church across the canal from St Marks Square. There, we hopped off and paid the small fee to ride the elevator to the top of it’s bell tower and had a simply fabulous view across the entire lagoon. It gave us a real sense of the geography of Venice which eludes you a bit at ground level. It’s also nowhere near as crowded as the Campanile in St Marks square.
We sailed back to San Marco on the No 2 Vaporetto and set out to find some lunch, it was so cold we enjoyed sitting inside a little trattoria and listening to the table full of “deep south” Americans at the next door table, brought back memories of our holiday last year!
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| On Accademia Bridge |
After lunch we just wandered up to Accademia bridge , and then back down past our hotel where we discovered a nice little restaurant on a back lane which looked like a great spot for dinner, they had a display window at the front showing all the fresh produce and the Porcini mushrooms, which are in season now looked wonderful. We made a reservation and headed off again.
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| Books in a gondola in a bookshop! |
I was delighted when we stumbled on “Librero Aqua Alta” , a gorgeous little second hand bookshop. Lynette had sent me a link about this place months ago and I was so pleased we found it, it’s an extraordinary shop with books piled high all around the walls, in bathtubs and even in a full sized gondola in the middle of the store! Out the back they’ve created a staircase of books that you can climb to look out over the wall and onto the pretty Canal below.
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| Coffee set to Music |
Before heading back to the hotel we sat at one of the cafes in St Marks Square and listened to the orchestra while we warmed up with coffee and hot chocolate. We knew in advance that these cafes charge like a wounded bull , but it was worth it just for the pleasure of sitting in what Napoleon called “The Drawing Room of Europe” . We watched the pigeons fighting over scraps and fluttering around the tourists who like the idea of pigeons siting on their heads. We watched the orchestras at each cafe take a turn to play, and the crowds of camera toting tourists move from cafe to cafe, following the music. We watched the hawkers pushing roses into the hands of little girls and then turning to Dad to ask for payment. We watched the young couples being overcome by romance and dancing to the music before exchanging kisses. We watched a couple walk by, map in hand, and arguing in Russian before sitting at a cafe and making up at last. It’s hard to stay cranky when you’re in one of the most romantic cities in he world!
This evening we had a wonderful meal of Porcini Mushroom Risotto in the quaint little restaurant which was lit inside with pretty “grape bunch” lights and was full of hungry people, glad to be inside out of the cold. Tomorrow will be wet so we’ve planned an indoorsy day in the museums.