A cloudy start was greeted with quite some relief as we set out for a day in Venice. Built on 1,000’s of wooden poles set in clay and silica in the sea, the foundations to all the buildings of Venice are now an engineering challenge. Everything needed to be flexible to allow for movement – today Venice is sinking and threatened.
Our tour started with the magnificent Palace of the Doges – oil paintings by da Ponto and Tintoretto. A contrast to the dungeons reached by crossing the Bridge of Sighs. Then into St Mark’s Basilica – with dazzling mosaics on the walls and ceilings, decorations and beautiful marble mosaic floors – uneven as it sinks.
We had a long wander around the narrow alleyways of San Marco piazza – visiting numerous shops (glass and masks were everywhere), and viewing a myriad of buildings lining the matrix of canals and alleys. Very hot by now so grateful for every shadow and a delightful courtyard we found just on the outskirts of the main action. An oasis at the back of the Metropole – “Roger’s Hotel” for 2009. By early afternoon with a high tide, water was coming up through the drains in the piazza
The afternoon included another water taxi ride to Burano island- known for it’s exquisite lace making and brightly coloured houses (each house is painted a different colour – no two houses next to each other can be the same colour). We enjoyed a magnificent late lunch/dinner before taking the water taxi again across the Venice lagoon once again to our hotel on the mainland.
Comments
Comment by penny on 2008-09-04 15:18:39 -0700
Hope you made a booking for us at “Rogers hotel”!
