Today we had tickets already purchased for a tour of San Marco Basilica and of the Doge’s Palace. So after we were up and at ‘em (which wasn’t very early, but a much-needed sleep was obtained), we headed over to meet up with our guide for the tour of the Basilica.
St. Mark is the patron saint of Venice. His remains (buried in the church) actually came from Egypt, but there’s so much ransacking and war going on in the history of Europe and Western Asia that makes this whole thing very complicated. The church looks very much like a Byzantine church (Turkish) and is in the Greek Orthodox style in many ways as well. Anyway, here are some pictures:
This is inside:
And these 2 are from outside at the top of the church looking over the Piazza (the main square and the 2nd one is toward the sea). Kind of like me being the Pope on the balcony.
We went out to grab some lunch around 1:30 or so. Have I said how warm it is here? Hot and humid. I even bought a hat today (I don’t do hats unless I’m bumming around, but…). If there’s one restaurant around, there are 100 of them. A tourist city for sure.
After lunch, we did our tour of the Doge’s Palace. The Doge was the guy who ran everything in Venice when Venice was a separate Republic, kind of like a King. Venice didn’t become part of Italy until 1866. Even the Basilica, which is more or less attached to the palace, was, for a period of time, just for the Doge alone. And the palace housed all the groups running the republic - the Senate, the Congress, and various other divisions of those groups. Here are a couple of shots from inside these chambers - absolutely beautiful art. And that is gold-gilded frames and decorations.
The artwork on the ceilings and walls is just incredible. This is just a bit of it.
And of course the last item on the list was a tour of the dungeons (because the palace also housed all prisoners in the basement) and a walk over the Bridge of Sighs. These are a couple shots of the basement. I’m sure it’s a lot cleaner now that it used to be.
This picture is FROM the Bridge of Sighs looking toward the lagoon.
And this photo shows the Bridge of Sighs (enclosed). Couldn’t let prisoners jump over the edge! The story, essentially, is they would take prisoners to their death on the other side and the prisoners would sigh when crossing the canal because they wouldn’t see the beauty of the water any more.
We went back to our room for a break from the heat for a while. Then we met up with Eleanor and Paul for dinner, actuallly, they came to our hotel. For those who don’t know - Eleanor is playing in our orchestra here in Italy and on top of that, she was an old school friend of mine - grew up a couple of concessions over from me in Uhthoff. We went to elementary and high school together and we played in the high school band together.
So we found a nice little Trattoria not too far from our place and had a great meal and lots of conversation for a couple of hours…well…and a bottle of wine and some limoncello, and espresso, and more limoncello, on the house. I think they liked us at the restaurant. Anyway, a wonderful evening.
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