Eastern European Vacation Day 2

Friday October 29th, our first full day in Venice.
We all met up for breakfast in the hotel where a small cold buffet is served in a nice room overlooking the canal – as advertised on the website you really can watch the gondoliers preparing for their day while eating your breakfast. We decided to visit St. Mark’s cathedral and the Doge’s Palace, a short 5 minute walk from the hotel. Before leaving we went out onto the hotel’s balcony overlooking the small canal. From this great vantage point we were able to watch the comings and goings as the city started to come to life; a boat transporting garbage (it was bin day), boats delivering goods and the gondoliers preparing their long skinny boats.

It had been 30 years since my previous visit to Venice and St. Mark’s square was pretty much as I remembered it; it really is a beautiful open space surrounded on 3 sides by high baroque style buildings with arched columns along the front that create cloistered-like walkways. St. Mark’s cathedral makes up the forth side of the square; it’s a magnificent 5 domed baroque structure with a distinctively eastern feel to it. The bell tower is the other significant feature of St. Mark’s; it’s a square, brick-built, tower that was actually carefully reconstructed early in the 20th century after it fell down. On my previous visit my cousin and I actually climbed the tower and he left his sweater at the top – I wonder if it’s still there?

After soaking up the atmosphere and taking about a million pictures, we joined the queue to get into the basilica. St, Mark’s is smaller than some of the other major European cathedrals, for example St. Peter’s in Rome, but it is still quite stunning inside. Almost the entire ceiling of the cathedral is covered in golden mosaic tiles, with scenes depicting various religious events. There were a lot of people inside and we were encouraged to move in a kind of biblical one-way system. Although the signs indicated that photography was not allowed, everyone seemed to ignore this and after much sole-searching we finally gave in and began snapping, tastefully with flash off of course, away. The guards did not seem to mind – so were able to narrowly avoid a life in purgatory – phew!

On to the Doge’s Palace, conveniently right next door to St. Marks. The Doge was the head man back in the days of the Venetian republic – kind of like a king, but elected. The republic established a governmental system that was able to maintain relative peace and stability from the late 1200s up to the late 1700s. As far as I can tell the aristocracy kept re-electing themselves and creating an ever-increasing bureaucracy – and the people loved it; strange. Of course this was during the time of, for example, Casanova.

We waiting about 15 minutes to get the entry tickets and then proceeded on a self-guided tour – which worked out fine since there were arrows pointing the way and displays explaining each room. The palace consists of four large multi-story wings around a central open air courtyard. The building not only contains the apartments where the Doge lived, but also all of the various governmental departments. There are several large and magnificent meeting rooms; one that could seat over 2000 people. Although there was almost no furniture left in the entire palace, most of the rooms have incredible carved ceilings and are much adorned with significant paintings from the period.

The highlight of the palace, at least for us, was a trip through extensive prison – Sandra especially liked this bit and was keen to point out that cells like those used in the prison were just what today’s justice system needed. We crossed over the famous Bridge of Sighs – so named because it was said that prisoners crossing the bridge from the courts in the palace we unlikely ever to return.

Having worked up a healthy appetite from all that prison visiting, we headed out in search of lunch. With no particular plan we walked along the water front in the direction of the Grand Canal and stumbled across “Harry’s Bar”. Harry’s was actually on our list of places to visit; it being a favorite hangout for the rich and famous back in the early part of the 20th century – it is also the place where the Bellini drink was invented. The place was very small, but amazingly, we managed to get a table right in the middle of the room and tried to pick out where Hemingway might have sat. Waiters were buzzing around everywhere – there seemed to be more of them than customers, most of whom were not tourists. It being Harry’s we order 4 Bellinis which were promptly served with a small bowl of olives and 4 small chicken croquettes, curious. While the drinks and experience were good – it was not 80 Euros good!

We considered Harry’s an appetizer and so onward we pressed, still in search of lunch. Heading inland we immediately came upon a tiny no-frills restaurant serving pizza and pasta and jumped right in. We had a couple of large, excellent, thin-crust pizzas and two plates of pasta – washed down with a litre of red wine; all for less than we paid at Harry’s for 4 Belinis.

We headed back to the hotel for a well-earned rest, getting hopelessly and delightfully lost along the way – that’s Venice.

In the evening we set out on a journey of discovery to find a restaurant we had read about on the internet. Armed with a GPS, 2 maps, written directions and some hints from the hotel desk clerk – we still never found the place. We ended up in a district near the train station that is not often frequented by tourists – we really enjoyed this, since Venice is generally full of them. It was nice to see a “local” area.

Being unable to find the target location (the internet reports did warn that it was very hard to find); we opted for another spot – again a very simple no-frills place. I was feeling adventurous so I ordered a couple of the local specialties; cuttlefish with spaghetti (basically pasta in a sauce made from the ink of the cuttlefish – yes it was jet black) and dried cod (reconstituted with milk) served with polenta. Both dishes surprisingly good, I’m always looking for new flavors.

We took the vaporetto (water bus) back down almost the whole length of the Grand Canal to a stop only a few minutes from our hotel. All in all a great day.