Sunday, December 7, 2008
So, on this day, we got up relatively early despite still being on GMT, and took the waterbus from the Lido over to the main island. I also apparently confused the platform that we wait for the boat on with the actual boat. We were standing on it, and I figured it was just sort of waiting there before it moved, and then Nick said, "hurry up Nika, there's a boat coming." My response, in an annoyed voice: "What do you mean? We're ON the boat!" It took a while to live that one down. Once we were on, I was excited that I might finally see something from the boat, since the night before we had been unable to see anything in the dark. But it was so foggy that we had no more visibility than we had had the night before.
The Lido and the main island are very close to each other, so the boat took only about 10 minutes from the Lido to the closest stop on Venice. We went a bit further than that, to Saint Mark's Square, the most well-known destination in Venice that is notoriously low-lying, and had been flooded up to 5 feet the week before we got there.
It was completely dry when we got there, but there were still platforms sitting out that had been put up to create raised walkways during the flood.
From there, we wandered around the Square for a bit, seeing the outside of the Basilica and the Doge's Palace, as well as the Campanile, the bell tower that had apparently completely collapsed in 1902, which made me a little bit nervous. Apparently, Venice has a lot of problems with sinking, because for a long time it had pumped water out from underground, causing the islands in the marshy lagoon to sink quite a bit. They're not allowed to do that anymore, but there are still a lot of other Campaniles in Venice that aren't exactly perpendicular to the ground. So anyways, we started off by wandering around the Square and around a lot of the surrounding streets.
It was pretty cold, so occasionally we wandered into a store to keep warm. A lot of the stores sold glass that was blown on the nearby island Murano. Some of it was very elaborate and very expensive. There were also a ton of stores and booths selling Carnival Masks, which were really cool, and as cheap as 10 euros. But in practice I knew that it would be a struggle to get one back to the US without squishing it in the end, so I refrained.
We wandered around and over canals, and saw a lot of the gondolas, which were way nicer and more elaborate than punts. Most of the gondolas were covered up, not being used, probably because it was so cold. Gondola rides are pretty expensive, too -- about 100 euros for an hour -- so Nick and I decided against freezing ourselves in one of them.
Later research revealed some cool facts about gondolas: they can only be black (since at one point in history the rulers decided that they didn't want all sorts of crazy colors going around), the pointy metal thing on the front has 6 points (to represent the 6 historic districts of Venice), and they are built on a curve (so that the gondolier only has to row on one side, and that makes it go straight). The last one was pretty interesting to me, because I noticed that the pole was mounted on one side, and I know that if you attempt to do that in a punt you just go around in circles.
From there, we made our way back to St. Mark's, and decided to take the waterbus up and down the Grand Canal so that we could see all the cool historic buildings on either side of the river. This was particularly fun, because our guidebook pointed out which buildings were famous for what, up and down the canal. So I really enjoyed that. We figured out which houses were from which era (there were a lot that were 700, 800, 900 years old). We discussed how they were constructed (they stand on entirely submerged logs). We also ate lunch, little sandwiches that we (meaning Nick) made from stuff we got at a grocery store right near our hotel on the Lido.
When we reached the northwestern part of the canal, we got off and walked around for a little bit, also noting where the train station was (since we would be taking a train to Florence, and then to Rome, in a couple days). We wandered out to some of the backstreets in that area, which was really fun. We found the ancient Jewish ghetto (the first one in the world, which was later opened up by Napoleon), and wandered through some of the Campos (small squares that do not rise to the level of Piazzas like Saint Mark's is), and stepped into a few churches that were open and free. There was one that had a free exhibit, in Italian, about violin construction, and had several old instruments on display, including a Violoncello Piccolo, which particularly amused Nick and I. We even found some German-style Christmas markets. Also, while we were up near the uncrowded, nice Ghetto area, it finally started to get sunnier and warmer.
From there, we headed back down the Grand Canal to look at buildings on the other side. We got off at the famous Rialto Bridge, one of only three that cross the Grand Canal (there are many more over the smaller, subsidiary canals). We wandered around that, and then onto the part of the island that's soutwest of the Grand Canal, finding a cool clock and some particularly narrow streets to walk through. At one point a cat came running unexpectedly around a corner and I shrieked.
After that, it was starting to get dark and cold, but first we had to hop off and look at the area around the Arsenal. We also found another crooked Campanile.
At this point, it was getting particularly dark, but we headed back to Saint Mark's Square to try to find the Bridge of Sighs. We found it, but it was sort of surrounded by scaffolding which was covered in a brightly-lit ad, so it was kind of hard to see properly. Still fun, though.
At this point, I was too tired/cold to stay much more on the main island, so we headed back to the hotel to warm up and figure out what to do for dinner. I had the hotel room particularly hot, which pleased me (but not Nick). We decided to just find someplace to eat on the Lido, since I didn't want another cold boat ride back to the main island, and was lazy. We found a pizza place that was open and very close to the hotel, and ate there. Then, we got gelato on the way back to the hotel, which was good for me and Nick's sweet tooths (teeth?). So that was actually quite a successful and good day. Ta da!
I've made a map here of some of the places mentioned above, and if you view the larger one you can see where the Lido is:
View Larger Map
Finally, just a note: The underlined words in different colors are hyperlinks to other websites with more information about the word in question. Nick, of all people, expressed some confusion about this ("Those are links?!").
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