Saturday, March 26, 2011

After all that food and a late night,


UP AND AT "EM!!!! We decided the day before to go to VENICE today!!!

We got up and hopped on the 8:30 train to Venice. It took about 2 hours.

When you walk out of the train station in Venice, the Grand Canal is right in front of you! It's pretty cool. It's a very crowded city - you can see the docked cruise ships as you're coming across the causeway. The guidebooks say that only about 75,000 people live in Venice, but 13 - 14 million people visit here every year, most (like us) for less than a day.

It is very beautiful. We walked through the winding streets to San Marco Basilica.

Welcome to Venice! Outside the train station.

Venice is famous for Carnivale. This shop had some AMAZING costumes and masks.

The family McLean

No, we didn't go on a Gondola ride. :(

Right beside St. Mark's basilica there are two marble lions. It is tradition for young children to ride the lions, and they are worn smooth from kids sitting on them for hundreds of years. Here are mine... (except Katie who didn't want to!)

St. Mark's Basilica is beautiful. It's very different from most of the churches we've seen because it was built from 1024 - 1069 (or so), and wasn't really changed during the Renaissance like so many other churches were so it's a very Byzantine church. The ceiling is all done in mosaics with lots of gold mosaics and is very impressive. Apparently, the patron saint of Venice was St. Theodore, who most hadn't heard of. Venetians wanted a patron saint with more cache, so in 828 two Venetians travelled to Alexandria and stole the body of St. Mark, hid it under some pickled pork (so the Muslims would stay away) and brought it to Venice where they built the Basilica around it.

Cafe Florian with St. mark's in the background.

 So instead of going on a Gondola ride, we splurged on lunch at Caffe Florian in the square by St. Mark's. We had a little math lesson figuring out how long this cafe has been here. It first started in 1720, and was the place to be for things concerning politics, fashion, art, poetry - well, life in general! We sat and enjoyed the piccola  orchestra while people watching.

The ciocolatta calda comes unsweetened and you have to add sugar (although I thought it was perfect without!)

 After lunch we decided to head over to the island of Murano, famous for it's glass makers. We walked over to catch a water bus (vaporetto) but discovered for us, a group of 9, it was the same price and way easier to take a water taxi. On the way we saw two columns (see the picture below) on the right you can see St. Theodore and his alligator (his symbol) and on the left the winged lion - the symbol of St. Mark.

In the water taxi

Going back through Venice in the taxi

The ride to Murano was beautiful. We passed San Michele. It's the cemetery and an island unto itself. Apparently it's quite serene and beautiful and it looked it. The whole island is walled and I think there may be a convent there as well.

The cemetery island of San Michele.

The water taxi dropped us off at one of the glass factories and we were immediately taken in for a tour. We just asked to be taken to that side of the island and he dropped us off at Salviati.  I
 have some amazing video of the glass blower inside, but it takes forever to upload it here. Sorry. The kids were mesmerized as he made a vase, and then made a beautiful glass horse in about 3 minutes!

Making the horse

2 chandeliers hanging in the factory.

We went upstairs and took a look at the showroom. I wish I could have taken pictures. The glass was stunning, to be sure, but the chandeliers....hundreds of them in every size and colour - they were spectacular. I don't know how you'd choose! (if you were in the market for one...we thought it might be fun to splurge until we learned what we thought was 3,000 was 30,000!)(I didn't quite understand the system of their tags, and I think that was their point!)

Papa and Hannah in Murano

Cool glass-decorated doorway of another foundry.

After walking around for awhile, we decided we were all pretty tired and caught another water taxi back to the train station. After sitting for a bit, we discovered we were all REALLY tired! I'm glad we called it a day when we did. Did we see all of Venice? No - we barely scratched the surface, but the kids can't really handle much more than that. I'm really glad we went. It's beautiful. I understand the concern of those that are worried it's just going to become a big museum, and by only going for the day, I suppose we contributed to that, but I'm too tired to consider it right now!