Day 1 - Venice, Italy
Benvento a Italia! So we arrive in Venice after a nice long flight from Chicago to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Venice, then wait to head out to take a water taxi to Venice Island from the mainland. As soon as we got outside I was amazed at how warm it was!! I mean I'm talking 90 degree weather (at least that's what it felt like)! It was awesome! The water taxi to the island was really fun as well! But despite it being so nice out, it was still a bit foggy so not the best scenic photos... sorry.
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| Second building of hotel |
Once we arrived on the island our tour guide (who met us at the airport) showed us to our hotel, which is split into two buidlings.....not..next..to..each..other...ya. Along the canal is the main building with the restaurant complete with a terrace overlooking the Canale Di San Marco, and the main check in desk. The second building holds all the rooms, as well as a very small reception desk in case we need anything. Because the two buildings truly are a few blocks apart.
Our rooms weren't quite ready yet so Mark, the man in charge of this trip, decided to give us a quick tour to and around St. Mark's square. This square is HUGE! and very nice. It's got a few tourist traps located inside of it. But if you can ignore it, the views and the architecture is remarkable!!
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| St. Mark's Square |
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| Procuratie Vecchie |
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| Procuratie Nuove |
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| St. Mark's Square |
Shaunna, Matt, and I split of from the group and made a loop behind the Doge Palace just to do a little more sightseeing. The first area we saw after walking east of the Square was a nice boardwalk along the canal.
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| Boardwalk |
This had a few more little shops for souvenirs, but they were reasonably priced on a few items at least. Then while crossing one of the many bridges, we looked down a canal and saw the Bridge of Sighs. This connects the Doge Palace to the prison. (I will give some background later on this). We continued on our loop, stopping a few times to take more photos until we ended up back in the square again. We had "wasted" enough time that our rooms were ready. We got our keys, repacked our bags for the day and headed out in search of our excursion.
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| Bridge of Sighs |
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| Grand Canal |
Locating the excursion took a little time, and more than we had allotted for. Our excursion was a Venetian Rowing Lesson! Shaunna found it while looking for Gondola rides on Trip Advisor and someone mentioned it in a comment. Row Venice "takes place in a quiet part of the city where we can help you learn to row the Venetian way in peaceful surroundings." They warned us that it may be difficult to find since it was off the beaten path...and of course we got lost and misguided by locals a few times. The website gave us a church that was a famous enough landmark to ask the locals for directions to, because our boat was in a private marina that most locals would not recognize and even the marina attendants would not be aware of lessons. Along the way we noticed some landmarks we had planned on finding the next day for example I had read up on some interesting bridges in the area like the one we stumbled on. This bridge was called "Bridge with no Parapet" in my tour book. It's because it's one of the two remaining bridges with no side protection.
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| Bridge with no Parapet |
Nobody seemed to be able to point us in the right general direction, one store's associates actually thought we were looking for directions to McDonalds! So embarrassing! Finally we found a gentleman that actually brought us to the church, Madonna dell' Orto. Which by the way is beautiful. We arrived just in time at the marina for our lesson. We were fortunate to have an amazing instructor. Elena was roughly our age, Venetian, and a very experienced rower (she is the daughter of 2 Venetian rowing champions). She first taught us about the vernacular and terms of the boat and parts, and took us on the boat one by one to teach us the proper way to row (Voga = to row, or rowing). Elena knew everything we needed to know about traditional Venetian cultura acquea, or water culture. She taught us how to do the basic stroke which is called A Prua meaning at the prow. These boats (batele) are rowed using 2 rowers.
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| Us and our Batele |
One is at the prow (or the front), which happened to be one of us, and the other is at the stern (or the back) which was Elena. The person at the stern looks like a typical gondolier, standing up on the raised part. The person at the prow stands in the hollowed out middle section but as far forward as they can get. The boat we learned to row in was called a Batelina Coda Di Gambero, or Batelina for short. Batelinas were once one of the most prolific in the city, and now are extremely rare. Row Venice (and their collaborators) operate 3 of the remaining 6 in existence today. They make a great first time rowing boat since they are much more stable and spacious than a gondola. "There is nothing more Venetian than the Voga!" The Voga alla venneta is the unique, standing up, facing forward, native to Venice, rowing style developed to traverse the city and its lagoon soon made famous by the gondoliers. Matt went first, then myself, and Shaunna was taught last. Each rower had an oar (same length) that was kept in a Fórcola, or Venetian knot. When coming up to a boat or a bridge, you could pull it out and store along the side of the boat. We each took turns rowing and got better each time, even with the switching out. We rowed through the canal, once venturing out into open waters, for about 1.5 hours! So worth it! By the time we got back to the marina it was time for us to head back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of our group to head to our welcome dinner, and if we managed to not get lost we would make it just in time....well we came close to making it on time...
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| It fell out... |
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| Fórcola |
When we were safely back on the dock, we thanked our instructor for a wonderful lesson and what might be the best route back to St. Mark's Square. She gave us the best instructions she could, which was take the first bridge - then a left - then three more bridges - then a right - and you should come to a square with this church and then your should head in this direction until you start to see signs for San Marco. It sort of worked; at some point we started recognizing landmarks we saw when trying to locate the marina on the way there. We realized we were cutting it close for time and had maybe 10 minutes, and we still hadn't made it to the square yet. (Our hotel is on the other side of the square from where we were). We picked up our pace, but by the time we reached the square we knew we had ran out of time. So I ran ahead, literally. Yes, I ran across the square to our hotel to see if they were all still there waiting for us, but it was too late. So I went inside to the small reception desk and luckily found a receptionist that was on the phone but looking at our itinerary on the wall. He asked me if I was from Room 709, which I was and he told me they went to the other hotel building. So I thanked him, ran back out and found Shaunna and Matt just coming around the corner so we all ran to the other hotel building. Had we not ran, and I not ran across the square, we would've missed our group completely. They were just loading up the second and third boat taxi's to take us to the restaurant. (However Mark said he had left a note for us at the hotel with our rooms with the restaurant address saying to also grab a boat taxi from the other hotel building and meet them there). They cheered as we arrived and Mark gave us a big hug.
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The boat taxi to the restaurant was unbelievable. They took us all the way down the Grand Canal and we had some great views of the city from the water. Shaunna, Matt, and I had the far back seats of the boat, which are uncovered so we stood for most of the ride. The restaurant was on the far west end near the train station, and by the time we reached it we were starving. The dinner was pre-set, so we didn't get to choose what we wanted for each course, it was just served. The first dish was an appetizer of some meat with cheese, and a small side salad except that it was finger food sized. The second dish was pasta which came two ways: one was cut up penne noodles with a red traditional sauce, the other was gnocchi with a creamy yellowish sauce (I believe, I found out after trying it again that it was gnocchi). The third dish was turkey with a light gravy. And for our final dish we had dessert which was chocolate mousse with a very sweet raspberry sauce. Once we were finished, aka after a few hours, we still had some time to kill before the boat taxi's would arrive to take us back to our hotel, so Katarina (our tour director) suggested we walk the Ponte degli Scalzi (a bridge nearby). It was a more modern shaped bridge and had shorter steps before flattening out at the top. I got some great photos of Venice by night on the canal before we met up at the boat taxi's and headed back towards our hotel.
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By the time we got back onto the boats, it was starting to set in how extremely tired we were. We hadn't slept in maybe 38 hours roughly. So we called it a night and went up to our room and started getting ready for bed, because we had another long day ahead of us.
Our hotel room was unlike any other I've stayed in, at least in Europe... It had an upstairs!! So as soon as you walk in you see Shaunna and my beds. Then there was like a curtain we could pull and divide our area from the rest of the room. To the right was the mini bar area and the bathroom, if you continued straight instead you would walk into this beautiful large closet with built-ins. It was about the size of my closet back home! Inside this closet was a mini spiraling staircase heading upstairs. This is where Matt got to sleep. It was a nice sized upstairs complete with bed and sitting area.
Onto tomorrow's adventure!!!
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| Our beds |
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| My bed |
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| Our room |
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| The stairs leading to second level |
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| Wooden ceilings! |
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| Wooden ceiling |
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| The second level |
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| Back on first floor |
