Finally! This is the last post of our Mediterranean Cruise trip in Sept 2012. I am sitting here on March 6th there is 10 inches of snow on the ground and the trip memory details are fading fast. I still need to post something about Fall and Winter, but maybe that can be short and efficient.
We had spent our last night on the ship and started the early morning putting the final touches on packing our luggage and getting it to the place where we would disembark the ship. We left the luggage in a specific location at the dock and hoped that we would see it at the hotel where we would be staying later that evening. Once we were free of the luggage we headed out to get a cup of coffee or ice cream.
I haven't mentioned ice cream much on the trip but it certainly was available in shops like the one below and I think we had our fair share. Most of the time the ice cream there was made fresh and was very tasty.
We had a pretty decent walk to get to the place where we could catch a water bus to get to the heart of the city.
After a quick coffee we headed off to the open air market via the Grand Canal.
At the end of the post is a picture of the church below taken from the bridge after we had dinner at an outdoor canal side restaurant.
The Hotel where we stayed is the Continental below and in the shot above as well. Our room was on the second floor, one room back from the canal over looking the open park and with a view of the canal to the west, but it was dark by the time we got to here.
As we headed down the canal there were lots of interesting buildings and a nice church with a dome.
There were also lots of interesting building features like the skull above. There were plenty of boats of all kind, laundry boats, beer boats and many other unique boats. The two below in the US would have been delivery box truck. We saw the aquatic version of pickup trucks, taxis, sport cars, garbage trucks etc. everything comes and goes by water.
Buildings also had a wide variety, shape, style, color and use. Some properties seemed to be willing to dedicate some of their water front to gardens and small parks others came right to the edge of the canal and hardly had a place for a boat to tie up.
Some buildings like the museum above and the hotel below took advantage of the water front highlighted the main facade of the building.
All along the Grand Canal were small canal access points some quite narrow and some rather grand.
Some buildings looked like they had been built as private residences, with landscaped gardens. This would have been an interesting place to live.
Some building had grand designs and details that indicated that someone had a lot of money for construction at some point. Pretty expensive stone work and to think that most of it had to be done from scaffolding above the canal.
Above a parking area for gondolas and below several delivery boats, one with a crane to off load products.
Below a private boat heading down a side canal (street).
We got dropped off at this area just outside the market place. I liked the look and feel of this portico right along the canal. In the photo above you can see some products have been off loaded and are waiting for someone to take them to the one of the buildings across the walk. We had missed the early morning crush of vendors coming across this area and they were already set up in their booths.
The open air market was quite impressive. There were basically two separate areas. The first was a fruit and vegetable market. As you can see in the following several shots there was quite a variety and very good quality products and very colorful as well.
A couple of offerings were a bit unusual, prickly pear cactus fruit above and several kinds of mushrooms below.
Below and a bit difficult to make out from the photo is a garbage boat. The green area is where things were dumped from the cart (with wheels) upper left hoisted from the dock by the red crane arm upper right. My traveling companions were not as interested in this scene, so I had to hurry along without fully documenting the entire process.
Next we went to a different area of the market where the commodities were very different and even less appealing to my traveling companions. Fish!
Shell fish, filleted fish, fish steaks, fish chunks
Small fish, pink, silver, black, slimy smelly fish.
I especially liked the way the octopus were displayed. Squid, scallops, crabs all available.
Above some nice flounder and the scallops below look delicious.
This had to be one of the ugliest fish that I saw.
Have you had enough fish pictures yet? Okay off to more sites.
This nice old church is actually a museum now. Many of the religious artifacts remained.
These two pictures are for my praise band buddies. The photo below is of a 16 stringed instrument.
After the quick fruit, fish and fiddle tour we headed out into the open again. The sky was absolutely clear and strikingly blue. After winding our way through the markets we ended up at another nice old bridge over the Grand Canal.
Definitely a great photo op.
Next we came upon a section of shops that sold masks.
We had seen theater masks in several other places, but this seemed to be an area where there were several shops all together all selling masks. The one below was kind of interesting. Although there were four eyes on the three faced mask you can see in the three copies below that I cropped to focus on each face that angry eyes could just as easily work as sad or happy.
The light fixture above and the building corner detail below are examples of construction budgets where money is no object.
The view above is from the bridge below which was taken from beyond the boats in the view above.
As usual there were churches with lots of details. We didn't have time to go into any of them, which I suspect were equally fancy on the inside.
We basically wandered along winding canals and across bridges more or less on our way to St Mark's plaza and to the Doge's palace
The stone panel in the photo below is in the middle of the bridge in the photo above. If I did the math right the date on the bridge is 1776. Obviously there was a lot going on in Venice and other places in those days.
The bridge was another opportunity for a photo. 200 years after the bridge was built we had our first born daughter who was taking our picture.
Above another example of a porter "walking" his four wheeled cart up the stairs.
More shots of canals, towers and plazas.
The tower above to the right side of the front of this church can also be seen from the side of the church which had there unusual curved walls.
Jon was ready for us to keep moving. Did you notice the bird above Jon's head head?
Here another bridge photo op
We stood by this bridge for a couple of minutes and watched quite a few boat of a variety of kinds pass by, everything from a big delivery (truck) type to the compact economy model to the limo.
I think of this boat as being roughly equivalent to the contractors pickup truck.
Many of the bridges led into private dwellings rather than to another side walk. Many of those bridges were decorated with wrought Iron railings.
Is that some famous movie star?
Bridges also provided nice views up and down the canals.
I took the shot above to illustrate the interesting carved wood ore lock. Every gondola had one of these. The steering is done in this position, pulling is done by putting the ore on the other side the notch at the top is to row forward. In between there were subtle other pushing, pulling and steering points.
One of the goals of the day's outing was to tour St. Marks Basilica and the Doge's palace. Above is the outside of the church, we will spend some time in the plaza area and then go the Doge's palace.
The details above the doors were in the shade so the color is not as bright as later in the day.
The early morning sun angle did provide some striking shots of the roof line.
The plaza was beginning to fill up with people.
Above is the tower we had seen several times the day before. Below another prominent building on the plaza. This one had an interesting clock on the front of it.
As the sun came around to the front of the building let us see some of the beautiful art work.
The connecting link between the church and the Doge's palace.
The Doge's palace on the right below and St. Mark's Basilica beyond.
Since we had tickets reserved we did not have to stand in this long line and got into the Doge's palace reasonably quick.
The Palace is now a museum. There were several displays of some of the construction materials and details, but after taking a couple of photos we found out that was not allowed.
It was okay to take photos in court yard but not inside the buildings.
You can see that there were some interesting details on the building. The court yard was surrounded by a multi story portico.
Stone work and statues demonstrated a high level of workmanship.
Each wall of the court yard had a different architectural character. Above was the west wall, below the north wall, Below that the east wall, The south wall was similar to the north wall.
Here are several details on and around the formal stair case leading up to the upper colonnade.
The stone work was pretty incredible.
The book matched stone slabs were very well done. I have had projects done using stone masons many of whom were originally from Italy. Now I understand where their roots were.
This section of the church of St. Mark is in the court yard and for the most part was the section that connected the palace to the church.
These guys were standing on the very pinnacles of the spires of the church.
We went up to the second level of the arcade overlooking the court yard. The Palace is more or less a "U" shaped built with the bottom of the "U" facing the Grand Canal. We are in the section to the right or North which was where the government, court and the Doge was headquartered. Across the court yard was the left or south side of the "U" which had grand spaces for formal gatherings. Not all of the levels were on the open to tour and we were not allow to take photos once we were in the palace itself.
Here is a view out to the palace out into the Grand Canal
Security was an issue apparently for some sections of the palace. They kept accused prisoners in the palace until their court date. Once they were found guilty they were walked across the bridge of sighs, seeing the sun light for the last time before going into the dungeon.
The interior of the palace is as fancy as any we have ever seen, painted ceilings, wall murals, patterned, flooring, well detailed trim
I thought that these two guys on either side of the archway looked like they were getting ready for the would champion soft ball game.
At the top of the stairs above is the vaulted ceiling in the photo below.
I have been looking for some place to write a little bit about the Doge's Palace. This perhaps the best place to do that. The Doge's Palace was the resident of the Doge (the ruler of Venice) and also housed the political bodies of the state, including the Great Council (Maggior Consiglio) and the Council of Ten. Within the lavish complex, there were law courts, administrative offices, courtyards, grand stairways, and ballrooms, as well as prisons on the ground floor. Today most of the palace is in some form of a museum. Some spaces were preserved more or less as they would have been others are full of display cases. For example there was one large room full of weapons dating back to the middle ages. They had some rather clever ways to inflict pain and suffering. The Doge while in office was not allowed to leave the palace. He was the symbolic center of Venetian power. He was both a guest and a prisoner. I guess if you had to be confined somewhere this was not all that bad.
Above is looking out over the courtyard and below are a series of photos of the stair ceiling and floor details leading up to the third floor. After these we had to stop taking pictures.
Back out in the Plaza again it was getting to be in the afternoon the sun was now shining on the other side of the tower. We decided to try to get some late lunch. Of course if you pass a Ferrari store you have to take a couple of pictures.
We found a nice restaurant and then spent the rest of the day exploring as much of Venice as we could.
Back out in to the plaza for a few minutes and then down a side street/walk
I thought this pair of duck decoy, made out of glass should be documented.
Canals, and small court yards were everywhere.
Karen is looking up at the statues on top of the church to the right.
I thought these window details were interesting. The vertical bars in the widows are actually rifle barrels and bayonets and the mullion between the two windows is a cannon with a cannon ball above the pair of arches.
There were endless interesting canal images and interesting ways buildings were configured and detailed.
Every so often there would be a back alley looking area set up with elegant tableware ready for the evening crowd of diners.
Here are some more masks.
We ended up back out on St. Mark's Plaza again and this time the sun light really lit up the features of the west face of St. Mark's Basilica.
We did a tour of the inside of the church, but we could not take any photos. As a matter of fact we had to check our camera bags at a building about three blocks away and then they would let us in.
After the church tour we headed off in search of the perfect photo image of Venice.
The guide book had mentioned that there were a few brides that were unique in that they did not have handrails or sides. This is one of them, so we took several pictures here.
As you can see the light level is getting dimmer. We were generally heading to the hotel where we would spend our last night of the vacation.
Every so often we would encounter a shop or two with interesting window displays.
Much Murano Glass.
Some of the walks widen into larger shopping areas and then open even more into a plaza.
It was dark by the time we got to the hotel. We were all tired, we had to gather up our luggage get to our rooms take a quick rest and then head back out for dinner. The rooms we had were simple but adequate for a nights rest.
We found a canal side restaurant and had a nice time recounting the very full day's activities.
After dinner we went for a short walk to the bridge where we had started the day with ice cream and coffee. Here we are standing in the middle of the bridge with the Grand Canal behind us.
Here is the church we had seen that morning drenched in sunlight now glowing with artificial light.
The next morning we had to have our luggage down in the lobby way before daylight, porters came and carried our luggage to a boat parked on the canal. We hurried off with one of the porters to walk the mile or so to where we would get into a large van to be transported over the causeway to the airport on the mainland airport. We made our connections okay and settled in for the long fight home. IT WAS A GREAT VACATION!!!
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