Venice Day 1

Our first full day in Venice we spent touring the Doge Palace and St Mark's Cathedral. The Doge Palace was where the Doge lived. The Doge was a mayor-like person from the upper class, elected for life (so they liked to choose old men). There also was a ~300 person Senate made up of upper class. The purpose of the Doge and the Senate was to keep some kind of balance among the classes. The palace has many ornate rooms with tons of paintings and other art. We took a special tour that took us to parts outside the regular rooms. This included the jails and offices, and many great stories. We visited the cell where Casanova was held and ultimately escaped from.

St Mark's is a church, cathedral, and basilica. The inside is covered with mosaics of cut rock and glass that reflect the light and seem to glitter giving it a very rich and ornate look of the Byzantine era. The mosaics are of Bible stories and we're used to teach the people about them. The floor is made of various marbles in patterns similar to a carpet. There was also a small museum that included bronze horses that were made in the 1300's and have been "captured " by many rulers and moved around. They are now housed in the museums with replicas of them on the terrace of the church.

After our tours, we took a snack break with cicchetti (tapas) and wine at nearby Bar Au Do Leoni. There we meet two girls, Gionni (22) from Portugal and Cynthia (31) from Ottawa, Canada. They met in Barcelona where they lived for a few years. Gionni is a flight attendant and Cynthia was on a short holiday to Italy celebrating a job promotion. They met up in Venice. We talked for about an hour and a half.
From there we took a rest in our room.

In the evening we headed to the canal and took a boat (it took us a little while to find the right dock) across the canal to the tower at San Giorgio. The tower is temporarily closed for renovation but we got a great view of the square and shoreline from across the way. Our intention was to eat on that side of the canal but those places were closing soon so we came back and walked away from the touristy St Mark's square. We ate at La Nuova Perla, suggested by Chat gpt. The restaurant was on the main waterfront with a side canal. We got a seat outside next to a couple from Virginia. They told us what they ordered and that it was the specialty of the area so we ordered it also. It was Pasta Cacio e Pepe - cheese and pepper. The spaghetti is cooked and then poured into a large circle of cheese. The hot spaghetti melts the cheese from the cheese wheel and property is added and mixed together. (See video). It was very good. We also had Tiramisu and coffee but we forgot to order Americano coffee and got the little European coffee. We had a nice liesurely stroll back to our room.

The weather has been very hot and humid during the day, but the mornings and evenings have had cool breezes.Read more