April 13 – Split, Croatia. Well we've been very fortunate with the weather to this point so some set back was to be expected. The wind and waves have conspired against us and the captain just announced that our stop at Split has been cancelled. We'll have a day at sea to rest up and arrive a little early at Venice. I am not too disappointed by this event as we've been to Croatia before. So I hand an ordinary unplanned day at sea with the exception of the early start caused by expecting to dock.
Our entertainment was Opera Interludes again and this time they presented songs from a variety of operas including, Carmen and West Side Story. They all have good voiced but the baritone and the soprano were the strongest. I enjoyed it but a few people didn't show up. That's fine with me because it eliminates all the whining you might hear about why are we having opera.
April 14 – Venice, Italy - Day 1. I don't have to say much about this city, as everyone is very familiar with it. It started out as a very strong city-state that ruled a great deal of the coast of the Adriatic Sea. They were certainly the tough guys of the area and the people who did not become part of the Venetian kingdom were usually very intimidated by them. So much so that historical enemies united to create a state strong enough to discourage Venetian adventurism in their area.
The sunrise was pretty as we sailed into the San Marco (Saint Mark) Canal. After sailing past Saint Mark's Square and Cathedral we went down the Giudecca Canal (Jewish Canal) as only municipal boats and water taxis are allowed on the Grand Canal because it's very narrow and heavily congested. Just past the west end of the Dorsoduro and Saint Marta sections of Venice is the harbor where we docked. We're about a mile from Saint Mark's Plaza as the crow files but because you have to cross canals and the city's alleys (to call them streets would be an unacceptable exaggeration) are not laid out on a grid the walking distance is probably over two miles and if you are going to hit the most notable landmarks much further than that. Actually what you have is mostly passageways and sidewalks along the canals. On second thought, alley may also be a bit of an overstatement.
We have a guided walking tour scheduled that starts at the Plaza Roma, the train station and bus park. That's as far as land transport can go. After that it's boat all the way. When we arrived here on a tour in 2004 our luggage was taken to the hotel by boat but we started our walking tour here as well. Plaza Roma is only about 300 yards from the pier but because there are bridges to cross and some uneven surfaces between here and there the ship has busses drive us to the Plaza.
The city is laced with 150 canals that connect the 177 islands on which the city is built. Canals come is all varieties, everything from large curved and long to short, straight and narrow. It's estimated that there are over 400 bridges in the city. It's a little disconcerting to remember when you look at the map that the blue lines are not streets but canals because with very few exceptions all the pedestrian streets are little more than sidewalks. The main streets are all waterways. There are two types of bridges in Venice, wood and stone. At one time they were all wood but as they burned in various fires the major ones were rebuilt in stone of some sort and often very ornate. Some of the very minor bridges are still wood and a few larger ones are kept that way to commemorate the old style of construction. When we were here in 2004 the city had over 100,000 residents. That number is down to about 60,000. The high cost of real estate has forced many people who work here to move to the mainland. The bus and train systems are good and if you move to the right place it's not that hard to get into town.
Once you're at the Plaza Roma you can catch the vaporetto (the city's water bus system) to get just about everywhere including all the islands that are not connected by bridges. We, however, are going around town by the ten-toed express. As we crossed the bridge over the Rio Novo we could see that all the gondolas are still in their slips at this hour of the morning. There's a small garden at the end of the bridge with a marble statue of Pietro Paleocapa in the center. He must be an important figure because there was a pigeon standing on his head. Ah pigeons, the scourge of those immortalized in stone. Just rats with wings in my opinion.
Our first stop was as the Scuola di San Rocco. It's not actually a school anymore but still a very pretty Renaissance building. Today it houses a series of 56 paintings by Jacopo Tintoretto, probably the most famous of the Venetian Italian Renaissance artists, along with Titian. The somewhat renowned Michelin Green Guide gives it three stars and it deserves every one of them. On the north side of the square is the church of Saint Rocco, originally also Renaissance but remodeled in the 1700s to the Baroque style. The interior was not altered to any significant extent but the front façade is very ornate and includes sculptures and ornate columns and moldings typical of the 18th Century style. The columns were decorated with small bands of intertwining plant motifs, olive, fig, grape and pomegranate, as near as I could tell. Gone is the earlier central rose window. It was not destroyed but moved to the side of the building. It has eight more Tintoretto's for a grand total of 64 in the same location. Yikes, an Italian Renaissance bonanza.
From there we walked across another bridge to get to the Campo (Apparently small piazzas are called campos) Dei Frari site of the Church of Santa Maria Glorosia Dei Frari. This austere church from the mid-1200s has the second tallest bell tower in Venice and is the site of the mausoleum of Titian as well as the home for two more of his paintings. His large painting of the Assumption of Mary behind the high altar done in 1518 is one of his most attractive works.
Just walking down the small canals and walkways is very pleasant. You never know what sight is waiting around the next corner and the way this city is laid out the next corner is only about 20 yards from you at any given moment. They're doing some remodeling on the fourth floor of a building just across a small canal from St. Mary's. Apparently they're in the demolition phase because a man in a fourth floor window is filling a bucket with concrete debris and lowering it with rope and pulley to the sidewalk where another man empties it into a wheelbarrow for a third man to push to a remote location to dump either into a boat or dumpster that could never get to the construction site.
After walking through a maze of small passageways and across very small canals we arrived at the Campo San Polo (Paul) a fairly large plaza from the 1400s. In the center is a large well. There are wells all over the city. Technically I guess they are not exactly wells. The Venetians used their piazzas and campos as water collection surfaces. They would create a large container under the area and then slope the marble tiles toward zones that had holes drilled through the tiles allowing the water to fall into a cistern. The 'wells' were large raised openings that allowed the people to draw water from these collection areas. In some small areas these wells were less than 2 feet in diameter. The one in Saint Paul's is about 8-10 feet across, the largest I've seen.
From there it was through another series of walks and bridges. On the way we came upon two men unloading fruit, flowers and vegetables from a small boat to a handcart for delivery to someone unreachable directly by canal. Our next stop was at the Campo San Silvestro and the church of the same name. This church is home to another Tintoretto, The Baptism of Christ, one of his most famous. This is one artist that is still well represented in his hometown. This is a testament to the strength of the Venetian City-State. Unlike many countries Venice was no ones whipping boy. They did most of the whipping; consequently their artifacts are largely still here. Since Italy was allied with the Nazis during WWII, they didn't steal much Italian art until the end and most of that was from Rome.
Our tour started at 8:30am and 10:30 we reached the Grand Canal at the Rialto Bridge, the most famous bridge in Venice. This is about two thirds of the way to our destination, Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark). There are some public restrooms here so the guide gave us a break for those who needed one. I took the time to try to get some pictures of the bridge. It's hard as almost every foot of canal edge is taken up with cafes and slips for boats and gondolas. That wouldn't be so bad but the pilings for the slips and canal side cafes stick 12-15 feet into the air creating a forest of poles in the foreground of your picture.
There were a number of nice shops right next to the bridge and many of them were selling high quality Venetian Carnival masks. Carnival in Venice is a winter festival that lasted for three months in the 1700s. I'm not sure I'd want to wear the required mask for quite that long. Today it only lasts for a couple of weeks. There are a number of traditional masks that are unusual but the most unusual is the plague mask. Plague was a frequent occurrence and one mask was designed with a very long nose into which you could pack various herbs and flowers to mask the smells resulting from all the death. It's a bizarre mask and so, of course, that's the one I bought. They're having a Venetian Carnival Ball on the ship so we both acquired a mask. If you saw the movie 'Eyes Wide Shut' you've seen most of the traditional masks.
The Rialto Bridge was the first bridge to be made of stone after a fire destroyed the wooden one. The Grand Canal it crosses is the widest to be bridged and I guess they were finally tired of building new bridges of that length after every fire. It's also very high. It was built in the early 1500s and is designed so that an armed galley can pass under it. It's also very wide. There are two sets of stairs about 15 feet wide each on either side of a center section that has shops inside its stone arches.
The sides of the Grand Canal are lined with restaurants, shops, cafes and hotels in this area and the boat traffic is like wasps buzzing around a nest. Somehow they seem to read each other's minds and navigate safely.
On the west side of the Grand Canal in the San Marco District things got much more crowded. This is the main tourist area and the kids are on spring break so the area is crowded with high school age teens. If I'm not in any hurry I love this situation because a high percentage of the kids want to practice their English with a native speaker. Once you greet them as a group those who speak English will usually gravitate rapidly in your direction wanting to talk. Even if you attempt to speak to them in Italian they know you're American and usually say "Hello" in response, then the talking and grinning starts in earnest.
After the guide said a few words about St. Mark's Cathedral, Square and the Doge's Palace we were turned loose for free time. Diana and I returned to the crowded, narrow passageways leading into St. Mark's through an area of small shops and fast food places to see what was available. We returned to the square to find that all the tourists and students were being hustled out of the cathedral for Noon Mass. The crowd was really dense and we were trying to move against the flow. I decided to climb a small platform and cut across it to a small space that was less crowded and in a few minutes we were through the crowd and in the mostly empty plaza. All the students were heading to the area we had been in because the fast food there was within their budget for lunch. The cafes on St. Mark's Plaza are expensive. In many a cup of espresso is €10 or more, that's over $14 at the current exchange rate. Lunch will be about $40-50. I had toyed with the idea of eating downtown at one of the off plaza spots but the crowd made my decision and it was back to the ship for lunch.
By the time we returned to the ship by boat it was 2PM and after lunch and a hot shower I decided to have some down time and sit on my veranda for a while and try to catch up on my journal. (By the way it's April 23 as I'm writing this, so even though I was successful in catching up to Venice during today and the day at sea, after 4 long days off the ship, 2 in Egypt and 2 in Israel, you can see I am seriously behind again.)
Our entertainer for this evening was a local group of called The Singing Gondoliers. They were good. They sang traditional gondola songs, which consist mostly of Italian opera and folk music. Once they relaxed and got into it their personality and good humor kicked in and the show was very enjoyable.
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