Thursday, September 10, 2009

Day 6 Venice

St.Mark's Basilica


St.Marks Square




Today is our third anniversary and what more special than to celebrate it in Venice.Our day started with a 4.5 hour train journey from Rome to Venice. We arrived at the Santa Lucia station and got in a long queue to check-in our suitcases. Sure cannot drag these along on the narrow streets and bridges of Venice. Then we get into another queue to get tickets to a vaporetto(water-bus). We take line1 which does a 45 min trip down the Grand canal (the main canal of Venice). Venice, once the most wealthiest city of Europe is completely built on water.It was built on the riches of the expanding Roman empire.

Gondolas





As we cruise in our end seats of the vaporetto, we get an awesome view of this water city., where every building touches the water, giving us the impression that they merely float on it.Imagine your door-steps directly dropping down to a canal. After crossing about 16 stops, each of which had at least one historical building on site, we disembark on the stop to St.Mark's Square. By this time, the Grand canal has opened up into a beautiful lagoon. The landscape here is beautiful, with blue waters in the background, marginally decorated by colorful buildings and numerous gondolas, water taxis and water buses studded on it like stars. Anyone with a little artistic mind, will just want to sit down and paint it.





St Marks Square - St Mark's square hosts the St.Marks cathedral, Dodge's palace and the clock tower. Oops I forgot to mention the pigeons, thousands of them. There is a gelato shop here again and since my craving for gelatos has not yet ended, we stop by one and get 2 new flavors. Devouring it all the way, we then play with the pigeons for at least half an hour. Jeevan gets all excited in feeding the pigeons. The pigeons find their loyal home and never leave his shoulder. When we didn't have any more biscuits to feed, we leave the pigeons alone and get a short trip of the St.Mark's Basilica. This is another impressive monument with all its gold marbled ceilings. It has hundreds of thousands of marbles(of the size of a contact lens) paved on a roof top about the size of 2 football fields(courtesy Rick Steves). It was an amazing piece of architecture. With no energy left to climb another monument,we skip the Dodge's palace and the Clock tower. Heard that the clock tower holds the world's first digital clock. It is refreshed every 5 minutes. We then opt to walk all the way back to the train station. This 2.5 hour walk takes through narrow streets of Venice. The streets are lined with all kinds of shops ranging from souvenirs to sweets. I especially liked all the masks from Milan. They come in a wide range of colors and designs.



After reaching the Rialto bridge, we stop at a small open restaurant there and order a pizza and cappuccino. The pizza turned out to be not so good. Rome had the best pizzas.

After loosing our way more than a couple of times, we zip away through the streets and back to the train station. There our overnight train to Paris awaits us. Jeevan makes a final stunt, by disappearing at the last minute to get another gelato. hmm. What is with Italy and gelatos. We ate atleast a dozen in just 2 days. Off the whistle goes, and with that we bid bye to Italy.

2 comments: