Chapter 17 - Venice, Venice and More Venice

Our Venice in a Day+

When we were planning our trip, we were challenged by our flights. Any of you who have tried to use miles for tickets will understand that the seats are few and far between. So, you grab what you can and then have to plan the "in between". In our case, it looked like we were about a day short for doing everything we wanted to without any "crammed" days. So, we decided to do the "squeeze" in Venice.

Grand Canal by Boat

We started the day with a water tour of the Grand Canal. Seeing Venice by boat gives a great perspective on the city.  We were lucky with the weather.  Most of the storm had passed. Occasionally throughout the day we would have showers while the sun was shining; unfortunately no rainbows.  

All the old buildings facing the canal from the 12^th -16^th century all built on islands—they are really amazing, similar, yet very individual.

The details on the buildings and bridges were striking through the zoom lens.

Then the boat came out near St. Mark's square and the famous tourist sites, like Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute church, shown here in the background.

And the Doge's Palace.

Even in May, the area is a jam of boats and tourists.

From there we were to head to the island of Murano. In doing so, we had the chance to sail down one of the smaller canals, a kind of city side street showing the non-tourist side of Venice as we headed to open waters.

Murano and Mind-Boggling Glass

With Elaine's lifelong love of glass and our mutual small home collection, we weren't going to be in Venice and not go to the island of Murano, world famous for glass. We had asked our tour arranger for a private tour at a great contemporary glass maker. And they came through...

On the way, our boat passed one of the oddities of Venice, the separate island used as the city's cemetery.

This is the "main street" of Murano, lined with glass shops and studios.

This was the studio we visited by appointment.

You walk right in past dazzling displays of their work. We had come to the right place!

Then you are seated in front of the glass blowers in a work area...

They were making large pieces and chandeliers costing over $250K for the 1% and for hotels, etc.(samples in this pic). We watched them make a vase.

Then you get taken through their other work areas, ranging from shipping to the raw glass.

We saw elaborate work in production, like this hunting scene for a Russian oligarch

and this sculpture with movable "petals".

This sign on the wall rang true.

We then went through several showrooms, showing items to buy (or have custom made).

The items ranged from the hilarious...

to the over the top glass pool table, 

 including those made for commercial businesses.

Perhaps, the most mind-blowing was this chess set - not in our price range!

We were more interested in something more sublime, like these:

We could not resist the temptation and bought a beautiful glass bowl that was shipped home. Here we are with the artist who made it! The bowl now has a place of honor in our dining room.

St Mark's


We sailed back to the main island, entering again via quiet side canals 

with lovely buildings whose details beckoned to our camera.

After landing, we went to the number one tourist stop in Venice, St.Mark’s square and the Basilica. It was truly an amazing site. On one hand it was outrageously filled with tourists and hawkers and crowds everywhere - in early May - what would July be like? 

The buildings here are extra elaborate. 

Columns stand in the square breaking up the space.

On the other hand is the incredibly beautiful Byzantine church. The outside is certainly impressive, but no real preparation for the inside. 

No pictures are allowed there and the aura and peacefulness is constantly disturbed by the guards trying to enforce this. Compared to the Sistine Chapel, they had a much rougher time.

The decorations in multicolored marble and gold mosaics is almost indescribable.  Even if you are not into religious art you cannot help to be inspired by the artistry. These photos are from the Web.

We said goodbye to our guide and then were on our own for the rest of the day and Venice. We had lunch in a small pizzeria, Da Mamo. We had tuna carpaccio followed by a mushroom pizza—the perfect break. The pizza was so good we forgot to get a pic, but here is the carpuccio! 

After that, we walked over to a wonderful yarn shop where we found Italian yarn not available in the US and a paper shop to buy Venetian cut paper cards. Along the way came a postcard shot to hard to resist.

We then took a vaporetto (water bus) over to St. George’s island - 2 minute trip - to see a small new private glass museum, Le Stanze del Vetro. We had no idea what to expect.

Before we got to the museum, we saw a large church and decided to check it out. It was the 16th Century Benedictine building designed by Palladio which included a an elevator to the roof for views back to Venice.

The inside is lovely, but simple compared to, say, St. Marks!

Interestingly, there are two stark, contemporary sculptures in the building.

The roof view was spectacular and really revealed how Venice is just a bunch of islands.

Just below the church is a garden with what appeared to be a maze. We just couldn't fit in the time to check that out - darn!

We finished with a birdseye view of the St. Mark's square area.

The museum turned out to b a special treat, hosting a glass exhibit of Austrian glass by 20th Century architects—Joseph Hoffman and friends, some of our favorite creative people.  It was a small gem of an exhibit in a beautiful new museum dedicated to modern glassmaking. These were some of our favorite items:

 

Outside, they also had another special exhibit by a Japanese glass maker—a glass tea house in a garden inspired by Mondrian with very sharp lines. The cherry on top for this treat.

Then it was back to the main island at dusk via St. Mark's square, much quieter now than in earlier. It is hard to stop finding pictures, first coming into the docks and a forest of masts.

And then the quiet colors of the boats alongside.

At St. Mark's, we captured some shots we just couldn't get earlier due to the crowds.

On the way to dinner, we got an answer to one of the things that puzzled us about Venice, "If you don't own a palace, how do you have a garden?"

Although it was a very long day, we finished it off with an exceptional dinner at what may be the best fish restaurant in Venice—Osteria alle Testiere  It is a very small, very personal restaurant with only 8 tables which had to be booked far in advance. We had a small table in the corner seated next to two couples from London who knew the owner. It was fun talking with them and with the owner.  

We started with scallops in their shells with a wonderful citrus sauce. 

This was followed by spaghetti with very small, sweet clams. 

The biggest star was the main,  turbot in a light sauce with fennel, caraway, star anise and some citrus—a very special yet light taste combination. 

We drank a delicious bottle of Friulano by Vignaicio de Duline. It was a fruit forward white wine with surprising depth (and made a nice picture).

The perfect finish for the meal was a pistachio cake with pistachio ice cream - sorry, no pic - too delish!

It was a short walk to the Rialto bridge where we took the vaporetto to the hotel. That was a little bit of the trick since the ticket machine was not working.  We became turnstile jumpers to get on . A bonus - from the boat, we got some great views of Venice by night.  

A very full day ...but what a way to end our short stay in Venice.