We slept in a little bit this morning, we did not have to meet any scheduled train departure, or other time dependent activity. We just made it to the breakfast, they only serve between 8-10 AM. Breakfast is served on the same floor as the room, so it is easy to get to. The breakfast menu is more limited than we had in Levanto, the choices are cereal, some sliced ham and cheese, rolls, yogurt and croissants. Nothing is prepared to order, it is just a basic self serve buffet.
Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frarie
Our plan for the day is to visit about five different churches around Venice, starting with the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frarie, which is one of the largest in the city, and is close to our hotel. Of course, we got a little bit lost getting there, the map of the city we have does not show a lot of the smaller street names. Once there, we paid the admission price and went in. Like most of the churches in Venice, they do not allow any type of photography inside at all, I guess to help preserve the art work from camera flashes by people who either can’t, or don’t know how to turn off the flash on their camera. There were some pretty side chapel altars and artwork inside the church.
Looking Across the Grand Canal into St. Mark’s Square
We then headed around the corner to a building called Scuola San Rocco, supposedly famous for some paintings by Tintoretto. We decided not to go inside, and so we headed to the Vaporetto stop to catch the water bus to go to see the Santa Maria della Salute Church. When we got there, we found it was not going to reopen for the afternoon until 2:00 PM, so we went out to the tip of the island for pictures looking back across the Grand Canal to St. Mark’s Square. There was a statue out on the very tip of the island that was of a young boy holding a frog. We will have to look up on the internet to find out what the significance of that statue is, but it was guarded 24 hours a day by the police.
After the pictures, we headed to find some lunch, eating at a sandwich shop near the Vaporetto stop we needed to take across the waterway over to the Guidecca Area of Venice We saw a discount grocery and decided to check out their wine prices. It is amazing that you can go into a store and purchase bottles of wine for Euro 1.79, sometimes even lower. Of course it is not the best wine we have ever had, but it was decent for the price. We stopped off at a church called Chiesa delle Redentore, but it did not look very impressive inside, and the cost to enter was Euro 3.00 apiece. We did not want to go broke paying to go into all of these smaller churches, so we did not enter.
Venice from the Bell Tower at the Church of San Giorgio
We headed back to the Vaporetto, and headed to the Church of San Giorgio. It was free to enter, and they allowed no-flash photography, There was a bell tower that was accessible by elevator, and, yes, you guessed it, Euro 3.00 apiece. We did pay and ride to the top of the bell tower so that we could get some good pictures across the water of St. Mark’s Square. After coming back down from the bell tower, we toured the inside of the church. There were some nice paintings inside, but the church was rather plain inside.
Altar in the Chiesa della Salute
Next, it was another Vaporetto ride back to the Chiesa della Salute (chiesa meaning “church”) which had been closed earlier when we were in that area. It was free to enter and you could take no-flash photos, which is how I think all churches should be. It was fairly decorative inside, at least the main altar was very ornate.
Then we were off to do some shopping in the open air market area near the Rialto Bridge before heading back to the room to get ready for dinner.
Tonight, we just wandered around to a few restaurants near the hotel, we had forgotten to get another recommendation from the hotel staff before they left for the evening. That makes it a little tougher to find a place that is not too touristy, with touristy prices to match. We settled on a place that had tortellini on the menu, something Stephanie wanted to eat again in Italy ever since we were in Rome 2 years ago. It was funny, the place was actually run by some people from India. The food was good, but it was not as good of a dining experience as we had the first night. When it is late, and you are tired and hungry, sometimes you just have to settle for something that you hope is good, which was what happened tonight. We will make sure and ask about some more dining options from our hotel staff for `tomorrow.
After dinner, we wandered around and went over to St. Marks Square to listen to some more orchestra music. This time, we had our own bottle of wine, so we sat on some of the stacked structures that are used as elevated walkways during flooding periods in Venice, drank wine, and enjoyed the music. We talked with a group of four young people form California, they had just gotten to Venice yesterday, and were in Italy for about 10 days. It was their fist time here, so we were trying to give them a few pointers.
Since it was getting late, about 11:00 PM, we headed back to the room. Tomorrow, we are visiting the fresh seafood and vegetable market nearby, and then heading over to Murano to look at the glass artwork.