Monday, 23 October, High-speed train, serenaded gondola ride, Basilica di San Marco, Splendid Venice

Written 18 March 2024

Farewell to our Florence hotel this morning. Here are a couple of the display cases just off the lobby, advertizing more Spirulina products—beverages, crispy puffed veggie triangles, facial masks, two kinds of pasta, etc. Pond scum appears to be the latest thing.

Our packed bags had to be ready by 7:20 am, but we had until 8:50 am to have breakfast and meet in the lobby. The bags were all loaded onto a truck and sent straight to our hotel in Venice, whereas we walked five minutes to rendezvous with the small fleet of vans that ferried us to the train station, right on schedule.

Here's a last shot of the hotel's dooryard, featuring the famous tower. Fancy restaurant behind the windows just above the café umbrellas, second-tier restaurant directly below, hidden by the umbrellas.

Parked in front as we formed up outside was this cute little laundry truck, no doubt delivering the days supply of bedsheets and restaurant napkins.

The stereotype is true. Italian trains do not run on time. At the station (left), the first thing I noticed was that the high-speed train to Venice was running 5 minutes late; as I watched, it changed to 10 minutes. Glancing up and down the row of platforms, I could see that all the trains were running between 5 and 15 minutes late. As it turns out, that high-speed train to Venice wasn’t ours, which was scheduled to leave 19 minutes later. When it showed up on the board, it was running (count ‘em) 70 minutes late! As Anna said, “We promised you authentic experiences, right? Well here’s one now!”

We stood around, and milled around, and found a few benches where we could sit around. Took turns visiting the restrooms. Your standard public restroom in Italy charges 1 euro, as did this one, and we didn’t get much for the money—fewer than half the stalls and only half the sinks were in working order. Good Dyson airblade hand dryers, though.

Once we got on the train, though, everything went smoothly (except that the delay grew to 90 minutes by the time we reached Venice). Here we are in a first-class car with roomy seats, tray-tables, etc., and stewardesses even came through with a cart dispensing coffee, tea, soft drinks, peanuts, and cookies (excellent butter cookies; Venetian is about the only Italian cuisine that uses much butter).

We passed some vineyards and many empty plowed fields, but not a lot seemed to be going on, agriculturally, along the way.

Venice sits in the middle of a large lagoon, which is separated from the open Adriatic Sea by a line of barrier islands, like Pamlico Sound in North Carolina or the Laguna Madre in Texas. The city is connected to mainland Italy by a long causeway that carries the railroad, a road for cars, and all the piping that brings in fresh water and carries away waste water, so that none of the latter goes into the waters of the lagoon.

Until recently (when we saw a PBS television documentary on the subject), I had thought that Venice was originally built on dry land and that either it had sunk or the lagoon had risen until it was partly inundated and that people now occupied what had been upper floors of the buildings. Turns out that is not the case. Venice is the youngest city in Italy—the only one founded after the fall of Rome (just 16 centuries old rather than the 27 centuries of other cities). Refugees from the fall of the empire settled on marshy sand bars in the lagoon, the only place they felt safe from the invaders from the north. They discovered that, if you drove closely spaced pilings into the marshy ground, you could use them to support a stable platform—not because the pilings rested on anything solid below the marsh but because spacing them closely together squeezed the water out of the soft ground, solidifying it. Accordingly, they went to the mainland and cut down every stick of timber for a hundred miles around and used it to build platforms out in the marsh that would support buildings, even really big stone buildings. On top of those, they piled gravel and bricks, gravel and bricks, and finally tile. The displaced water gathered in channels between the clusters of platforms, and the result was scores of artificial islands separated by canals.

The residents prospered because could supply salt, fish, and sand, and they got very good at building boats. When the Lombards came down from the north and threatend them, all the little islands banded together for defense, and they elected a doge, translated duke (the word doge is derived from the Latin "dux," leader, the same word from which "duke" is derived).

Now, pedestrian bridges join the islands, and many are not at "ground" level—many join buildings at second- or third-floor level. Some (but definitely not all) of the canals have sidewalks along them, and small pedestrian streets and alleys run among the buildings clustered on each island. No motor vehicles are allowed.

I loved the place, much more than I thought I would. I expected it to be dank, moldy, and crumbling, but it's not, and people definitely still occupy the original ground floors of the buildings.

From the beginning, the city welcomed all comers, of any color, culture, or religion, and because there was no landed gentry (duh, no land), the only source of wealth was trade. As a result, the place was always far more egalitarian than the rest of Italy. Anna pointed out that you don't see anyone's first or last name emblazoned everywhere; there's no "cult of personality." And it did prosper. One guide claimed that Venice had 200 families wealthier than the Medicis.

It got to be big in building huge ships, using assembly lines long before Henry Ford did. It controlled tolls all over the Mediterranean. When we visited Crete a few years ago, I remember seeing Venetian architecture left over from when Venice ruled the island.

Venice was a presidential republic, starting in the 11th century; the longest in human history.

Our train crossed the causeway, and we disembarked into the railway station on the western edge of the city. The road that crosses the causeway is diverted to the right and ends in a parking lot on a couple of rectangular artificial islands built next to the station for the purpose. You can park your car there or drive onto a ferry that will take you around the city proper to the Lido, the long skinny barrier island that separates the lagoon from the sea, where some limited car traffic is allowed. That's where the golf course and the Venice film festival are as well.

At the left is the view we faced as we emerged from the train station and walked straight ahead to the bank of the grand canal. Despite the motorboats and TV antennas, it felt just like walking into a Canaletto! The green dome straight across the canal is the Church of San Simeon Picolo ("picolo" means "small"; there must be a church of San Simeon the Greater somewhere else in the city).

Written 22 March 2024

In the right-hand photo is the spot where you catch the "vaporettos," the boats that serve as city buses (the array of routes is bewildering!). One is moored there now, partially hidden behind the ticket-dispensing machines and the guy sitting on a railing leaning on a trash can. I don't know why striped tape is strung across both embarkation ramps.

To our right as we faced the water, the canal took a sharp right around the station before merging into the lagoon. To our left, it described a long S-curve through the middle of the city, emerging into the lagoon in front of St. Mark's Square, which is where we were headed next.

But we were taking taxis rather than buses, which in Venice take the form of 6- to 10-passenger motor launches, like the one shown here at the left. So we walked to the water's edge and piled into a small fleet of them.

In the right hand photo, David and I are already inside the cabin, and others of our party are ducking through the low doorway to join us.

So that's buses and taxis. I get the impression that gondolas are more or less equivalent to the horse-drawn carriages in New York—mostly used for sightseeing rather than as a means of getting anywhere, although I'm sure some are actually used as transportation.

Uber does not function in Venice, because there aren't enough small private boats to stock its fleet.

The water taxis took us to the landing at St. Mark’s Square, but not via the Grand Canal. First, that wouldn't have been the most direct route, and second, the Grand Canal is the only canal large enough for the wind to raise a swell and generate rough water. The ride is much smoother and easier on the smaller waterways.

We passed some lovely buildings on the way. The taxi's windows were dirty and rain-spattered, but where I could I got photos through the partially open roof. The photo at the left is of the Ca'Rezzonico ("Rezzonico House"), which is a museum of 18th century painting. According to the sign, it was featuring an exhibition of miniatures painted on ivory.

I don't know what the pink house at the right is. It was surely once a private residence and may still be, but from the café umbrellas on the terrace, I'm guessing a restaurant and/or hotel.

Occasionally, a gap between buildings harbored a garden.

I don't know what the house at the left is, either, but I'm guessing private residence. Note the two "cars" in the driveway and the little deck on the roof with additional potted plants.

At the right, decorated with mosaics, is the Palazzo Barbarigo, now a 4-star boutique hotel.

Written 23 March 2024

And here we are, near where the water taxi dropped us off, at the end of St. Mark's Square that is open to the grand canal. The building on the right is the Doge's palace, and the one beyond it with all the arches is St. Mark's Cathedral, in side view. The square is actually L-shaped, and the larger part of it is around the corner to the left, in front of the actual façade of the cathedral.

Beyond the cathedral, you can see an archway below a large blue clock. The photo at the right shows a closer view of it. Above the clock are the Virgin Mary and child, the winged lion of Venice, and at the top, a large bell with two mechanical jacks that ring the hours. The clock shows 24 hours, in Roman numerals, as well as the signs of the zodiac. It's the oldest clock in the world that's still working.

Above street level, the two halves of the hotel were joined by this pedestrian bridge, viewed here from the alleyway between them.

Our rooms weren't ready, so we walked directly into the included buffet lunch Anna had arranged for us (and which had already been delayed by an hour and a half). We started with a tiny caprese salad and two cold shrimp on a bed of salad greens.

Next came baked ziti and a sort of eggplant lasagne.

Dessert was individual tiramisus made in conical glasses.

David had been feeling so crummy the last night in Florence that he asked Anna to arrange a doctor’s visit for him today. After lunch, he skipped the afternoon's activities to take a nap.

Because our rooms still weren't ready, Anna then led the rest of us back to St. Mark's Square (the Piazza San Marco—it's the only "piazza" in the city; all the others are "campos"), then a block or two to the left along the waterfront to Gondole Danieli, the gondola station in front of the Hotel Danieli, for our promised "serenaded gondola ride."

On the way, we spotted these structures stacked here and there, one set upside down with its feet in the air, piled on top of the next. These are the raised walkways that are set up for pedestrians when the piazza floods. An "aqua alta" (high water) was expected, so they were brought out and held at the ready. Flooding in the city is much less of a problem than it was, because every break in the barrier islands is now fitted with giant movable barriers than can be shifted into place when an especially high tide or storm surge is expected, effectively keeping the high water out of the lagoon. But rain has proved more difficult to fence out, and it had been raining off and on for days.

Asked whether our gondoliers were going to sing, Anna replied that they cannot legally do so; only members of the musicians’ union can perform publicly. So she had hired a guitarist and a soprano, who rode in the first of our half-dozen gondolas (by chance, the one I rode in) and played and sang the whole way, mostly songs about gondolas, as far as I could tell, plus Volare of course.

Written 24 March 2024

At the right here is a good view of the stern of another gondola. You can clearly see that it's not symmetrical. The clever craftsmen have perfected the design over the centuries, so that all gondolas are now built with a subtle curvature and slightly lopsided shape that makes them easy (at least for someone who knows how) to propel them in a straight line even while working the single oar on just one side—each is fitted with just one oarlock.

Once we were underway, the soprano cautiously got to her feet in the bow and held forth to the tune of the guitar, trusting the gondolier to keep close enough to the centers of the bridges to keep her from being clonked in the back of the head. Eventually, she had to sit down for a while because the bridges in some areas were so low.

Here's our gondolier, mugging for the camera. The photo is a little dark, but you might be able to make out the single oarlock in the lower left corner of the image.

Our route wove in and out of many small canals, many of them lined on both sides with sheer walls of buildings. Going around sharp corners, the gondolier often had to use one foot to push off from a wall to get around or to fend off another gondola coming the other way. But they knew what they were doing—no bumping or scraping.

Our gondolier was bare-headed (except for the sunglasses pushed up onto his head) and wore a blue striped shirt, probably indicating which gondola company he worked for. Others wore red stripes or distinctive hats.

I don't think this is the landing of our hotel, but it had one just like it, right next to the footbridge spanning the canal where our little crooked alley ended, so guests could come and go by boat as well as walking from the Piazza San Marco.

At the right here is an example of a (rather small) campo, the Campo San Severo. A couple of little restaurants had set up tables on it.

After our perfectly charming gondola ride, once we were all assembled on the dock, Anna ointed out the equestrian statue of Victor Emanual, first king of Italy, a little farther along the waterfront from where we got the gondolas. Beyond that is a church that had a girl's orphanage, and at one times, the orphanage's girls' choir master was Vivaldi.

Then she led us into the neighboring Hotel Danieli, just to show us the amazing lobby and its atrium.

Here's the façade of the Danieli, facing on the Grand Canal near where it merges back into the lagoon (at the other end from the airport).

The right-hand photo shows the bell tower of the cathedral, on the Piazza San Marco, as we passed it on our walk back to the hotel, where we finally got to check in.

A couple of other big church domes are visible across the water from the small leg of the piazza. Across the grand canal and part of the lagoon, where the canal merges into it, is the 16th century San Giorgio Maggiore, designed by Palladio (for whom palladian architecture is named).

To the right as you face the canal, and across it, is the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute, one of seven "plague churches" built in gratitude for the city's survival of the bubonic plague of 1630. It is said to stand on 1 million piles!

Here are a couple of shots of the façade of St. Mark's, which is at right angles to the canal, facing onto the larger leg of the L-shaped piazza. Note all the columns, of which more anon.

On the smaller leg of the piazza, facing the canal, are two tall columns, between which you walk when disembarking there. One is topped by the ubiquitous Venetian winged lion. The other supports the hapless and embarrassingly obscure St. Theodore (left-hand photo), spearing a dragon (well, a crocodile).

St. Theodore was the original patron saint of Venice but was replaced ca. 828 AD by the much better known St. Mark the Evangelist—a patron the city could be proud of. The story goes that, about 150 years after the islands united, a couple of Venetian merchants went off to Alexandria to do business, and once there, stole Mark's body (replacing it with relics of the nearby Saint Claudia) and smuggled it out of the city in a barrel of pork (which the muslim inspectors wouldn't touch). They brought it home to Venice, where the doge immediately ordered a church built to house it, and poor Theodore was supplanted.

Back at the hotel and all checked in, I took time to get some photos from high windows. At the right here is a view along a small canal. A gondola is actually passing under the small bridge, but it's hard to see in the shadows. You can make out the shadow of its stern on the bright part of the water.

Here's a view down into the hotel's central courtyard, where the dining room is located. You can see the square dining tables set with bright white tablecloths and flanked by dark red velvet chairs. When it rains, glass window panels slide across to close the ceiling.

At the right, I was overlooking a neighboring terrace, a floor above ground level, which was undergoing some renovation. There's actually a tiny yellow front-end loader there, probably pushed and operated from behind by a standing person, like a lawn mower. The gray and yellow object you can see the edge of, bottom center of the photo, is a boat with an outboard motor.

At 6:15 pm, David and Anna left for the doctor's office. The doctor would only see him at the end of the work day, because, if David tested positive for COVID, the doctor would have had to close the office for the rest of the day, disrupting everybody else's appointments. When they finished, Anna then took David to a pharmacy where he could fill his prescription.

The news was relatively good; David did not have COVID, but he did have early bronchitis. The doctor put him on antibiotics and said that he wasn't contagious and should feel a lot better by the next day.

They got back in time for David to join me for a light supper in the hotel so as to be ready to meet Anna and the group at 8:50 pm for our private, after-hours guided tour of St. Mark’s basilica. David elected to skip the tour and go straight to bed.

The starter was a couple of large prawns, fished from the lagoon, with sesame dressing on a bed of spinach.

Next came a salad of tomatoes, croutons, and half a burrata. I've encountered nothing on this trip to change my opinion that Italians put too much vinegar on salads.

My main course, which I didn't get a photo of, was calf's liver Venetian style, which I was anxious to try in situ, as it were. Alas, it wasn't such a much—overcooked and chewy, even a little grainy. It came out better when I tried making it myself a few years ago.

For dessert, I think I just had gelato.

The interior of the cathedral is decorated with 44,000 square meters of 12th century mosaics, and the floors are a quilter’s dream. Once again, we were all alone in there for 45 minutes with an extremely knowledgeable guide.

I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked, because I carried only my bottle sling rather than my purse, remembering only when my camera battery ran low that my spare battery was in the purse back at the hotel. Drat.

The floors caught my eye immediately; they are an elaborate mosaic of small pieces of colored marble and other materials.

And the mosaic domes, half-domes, arches, and vaults are magnificent. Apparently, in 1700 one side of the mosaics fell. They've been replaced, looking more modern and less flat.

Here are more examples.

They led us into the church in semidarkness and let us find seats in the pews before gradually lighting up the ceilings, a section at a time, as the guide explained their features.

Elaborate carved columns hold up the canopy over Mark's altar, bearing many, many figures. The 14 pople on the iconostasis (of which, alas, I didn't get a photo) are the 12 apostles, Mark, and Mary; Mark never met Jesus.

The church is built of enough stone to build a town. It's the fourth church built on this spot offered to St. Mark, but all the marble has been here the whole time. It's built in the form of a Greek cross, with the arms all the same length.

The floors only got more spectaclar the more I looked at them. I recognized many, many motifs I'm sure are used in quilting. I can spot "tumbling blocks" in the center here, and I'm sure that either my sister-in-law Janet or my sister Kay could put names to many of the others.

The gold altarpiece at the right, made in the 11th century by Byzantine and Asian artists and covered with pictures of Jesus, the apostles, angels, biblical scenes, and lots of saints, is the only object successfully hidden away and saved when Napoleon came through. He confiscated all the gold objects in the church to melt down for coins. It's only turned toward the congregation on special occasions, 15 days a year, but we got to walk around behind to look.

I think this dome was the one in the narthex, said to be the only one to portray the face of God.

And the floors just went on and on, some of them positively dizzying!

We also went down into the crypt, but I got no photos there (these floors are still from the main floor). The crypt is not included on other tours and is never open to the public but parishioners say the rosary there on Mondays.

The crypt is not below the water line, but it is the lowest spot in the city (the piazza is the second lowest, which is why it floods before everthing else). The guide said that after an earlier flood, they "tanked" the crypt, which I assume means they sealed it on the outside, like an inside-out swimming pool. But in 2019 the windows imploded from the weight of the water, and the crypt flooded; getting the water out was difficult.

The crypt retains traces of 16th-century frescoes, and it harbors the only graves in the cathedral—bishops and patriarchs. There are none in the cathedral upstairs. A few of the early bishops became popes and are buried elsewhere.

Now about those 500 colums all over the outside of St. Mark's, and as it turns out, a bunch more all over the inside of it. Back in 1202, Pope Innocent III hired Venetian mercenaries (Venice exported mercenaries back then) to fight in the fourth crusade. After a couple of years of fighting, he wouldn't (probably couldn't) pay them. Annoyed and needing the money, they made a detour on the way home and sacked Constantinople instead. They brought home a lot of loot, including every marble column they could lay their hands on. The pope was furious and was not impressed by their pointing out that they didn't keep any of it for themselves but used every bit to decorate the church, to the greater glory of God. He excommunicated the entire city! So they took to electing their own bishops and carried on. (Actually, it was only one of six times the city was excommunicated; I'm sure pope after pope was frustrated at their failure to take it more seriously. As far as I know they're currently on good terms with the Vatican.) The basilica has been described as not so much a church as a collection of stolen Byzantine art.

Around 1453, the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul. And about the same time, Vasco da Gama discovered and opened a new trade route to India, so Venice began a rapid decline. It became a center of debauchery, with a very high population of courtesans. "Carnival in Venice" became legendary. Now, we were told, Carnival is now being revived. I was surprised to learn that the word comes from the Latin roots carni- (meat) and vale (good-by), i.e., the beginning of Lent. I should have figured that out myself!