Day 69 ~ Venice

April 1, 2018 Happy Easter!

We managed to snag some free wifi, so I thought I'd go ahead and publish some pics from our day in Venice. (Color commentary to be added later!)

“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.”

 ~ Truman Capote

I didn’t understand that quote at first, but I do now. Venice is a city of excess in everything—Old World opulence, insane crowds, bewildering transportation. It’s exciting. It’s rich. And it can overload your senses in short order.

But for us, it started as a glittering light show as the Pacific Princess made her stately way down the Giudecca Canal. Cruise ships are required to move at a snail’s pace to avoid creating a flood-causing wake.

Our first glimpse of St. Mark's Square at our early morning sail in

We had an excursion planned with Princess, but when we heard it was rated “strenuous” because of all the bridges we’d be crossing, we decided to cancel and strike out on our own. I still did plenty of climbing and walking, but it’s much easier if I don’t have to scramble to keep up with a group that’s moving faster than I can go.

Because it was Easter Sunday, we wanted to attend a worship service someplace. St. Mark’s Basilica would have been grand, but it was supposed to be crammed to the rafters and precedence would be given to locals instead of tourists. So when we heard that San Giorgio church was celebrating a mass with Gregorian chant, we decided to make that our first destination.

We launch out on our own using the Vaporetti water bus system.

Venice is made up of 118 islands. To reach the one where the church is located, we first had to make it out of the port. A shuttle took us from the ship’s terminal to the port gate. From there, we walked across a piazza (small square) to catch the People Mover (a driverless tram that would take us to Piazzale Roma) where we’d find our next mode of transport. Our first challenge was that the ticket machine for the People Mover (1.50 Euros each one way) didn’t seem to like either our euros or our credit card.

Our neighbor on the PP came to the rescue! You may remember Elaine from my post on Exmouth, Australia. She’s the one cuddling a joey! She had met up with her husband for a romantic couple of days in Venice before she continued on with the World Cruise on her own. What a brave lady! And a supportive husband! Anyway, her hubby’s ten euro bill was accepted by the machine and he wouldn’t let us pay him back. Bless the man.

So by arguing with the machine for about 20 minutes, we saved a 20 minute walk. When we reached Piazzale Roma, we bought 24 hour passes on the Vaporetti (local water bus) for 20 euros each. (Our money worked fine here. Go figure.) The pass was more economical than single tickets would have been. It’s 7.50 each time you board a vaporetto and since we used them 4 times during the day, we saved 20 euros.  

We knew the chnces of being admitted for Easter mass at St. Mark's Basilica were slim, so we went to San Giorgio instead for a Gregorian chant mass.

The water taxi was pretty exciting because it was so full, we had to stand. Traffic was heavy on the canals and we wallowed and pitched with each swell in the wakes of other transports. It occurred to me that it maybe wasn’t a good time for me to have decided I didn’t need to wear my scopolamine patch while we were in port! But I did okay and we arrived at San Giorgio with five minutes to spare before mass began at 11 AM. (We’d left the ship a few minutes after nine so you have an idea how long it took for us to negotiate our passage.)

The art work alone made me feel like I'd "had some church."

The choir behind the altar 

This impish little fellow riding a dolphin was repeated all along the choir railing. There was so much decorative detail, it would be easy to miss these small, but delightful, ones.

We’re not Catholic, but I feel we Protestants owe the Catholic Church a great debt that gets overlooked while we’re focusing on our differences. The Catholic Church kept the light of the scriptures going through some very dark times in this world. I often think of those selfless, nameless scribes who painstakingly copied out the sacred texts. And not only the Bible, we owe what we know of Homer and Aristotle and all the classical literature, philosophy, and history to the monastery libraries. Anyway, we may not have understood much of the mass because it was conducted in Latin, but we still felt blessed by the worship experience.     

We reboarded the vaporetto and rode over to the main Venice island (San Giorgio is in the background), looking for  place to have lunch. One offered Easter brunch for 60 euros each, another 84 per person. We kept walking.

While we were eating our lunch, we spotted several tour groups plodding along trying to muscle through the crowd. The funniest sight was one tour leader who was holding his flag aloft and talking a blue streak, completely unaware that NO ONE was following him. When he realized it, he started frantically searching the kiosks and stalls trying to round up his lost lambs.

We found a cafe where I could have tortellini & the DH had lasagna for 10 euros each. Soft drinks 3.50 a piece. Is it any wonder the man is smiling?

The infamous Bridge of Sighs through which condemned prisoners were led from their trial in the Doge's Palace (left) to the prison they'd likely never leave alive on the right.

The campanile in St. Mark's Square inexplicably collapsed in 1902, but was rebuilt to again in the same style.

The winged lion of St. Mark was very much in evidence around the Basilica, but despite the grandeur of the place, I couldn’t get past the story of how Mark came to be Venice’s patron saint. The powerful Venetian Republic felt it needed an equally powerful saint, so the gospel writer’s body, but not his head for some reason, was stolen from its tomb in Alexandria, Egypt. It was smuggled past the Muslim customs officials in a vat of port fat. I find myself wondering why they expected to be blessed and protected after the theft. 

St. Mark's is a mishmash of gothic, Byzantine and Romanesque styles. The Doge's Palace is to the right. We'd been warned to mind our wallets because it's a favorite haunt of pickpockets.

After fighting the crowds for a while, we reboarded a vaporetti and disembarked to find a quieter side street. What we found instead was a gelaterria so I got that gelato after all!

After being jostled by crowds and getting off at the wrong Vaporetti stand once, we decided to call it a day and headed back to the Pacific Princess. The Grand Canal was something to see. All the houses are ornate and passing under the Rialto Bridge was a thrill. 

Back to the vaporetti for a trip down the Grand Canal.

We were assured that Venice is no longer sinking. Contrary to popular opinion, the sinking wasn’t caused by global warming and rising seas. It was because several artesian wells were dug in Venice and pumping out the water is what caused the 500 year old foundations to give.

But I have to wonder who thought building a city on wooden pilings and man-made islands was a good idea in the first place…

Our day ended with a concert by the Vienna Chamber Orchestra on board our home away from home, the lovely Pacific Princess!