Day 8: Legends of St. Mark the Evangelist
The day dawned fresh and sunny, and by the time we had taken the bus into old Venice and ridden the #1 vaporetto to St. Mark’s Square, I was feeling in need of a sweater or jacket. I had woken with a sore throat and didn’t want to get chilled. A perfect opportunity to buy a merino wool scarf from the many tourist racks that line the waterfront (my one souvenir).
There are gondolas lining the waterfront of the Grand Canal, as well as parked at smaller canals throughout the city Phil informed me that the gondola is traditionally built off-center, to accommodate the gondolier’s’ weight as he stands on the back left-hand side. You can see how these are listing to the side.
The gondoliers must wear striped shirts to be easily recognized. Here is a gondola traffic jam on one of the more popular canals.
After strolling the wharf, we decided to take one of Rick Steves’ self-guided walking tours from St. Mark’s Square to the Rialto Bridge. It’s short, not more than an hour, but it got us away from the bustle and crowds at the Square.
As we walked, we realized what a warren of mazes old Venice is: higgledy-piggledy lanes and alleys (all pedestrian—no cars or bikes) that sometimes open up into a light, airy square, or sometimes ending at someone’s formidable front door or a private courtyard with flowers. I can see why some of the workers we talked to feel that the city is claustrophobic, with high walls hemming them in until they escape onto the open water of the Grand Canal.
We stopped for tea and coffee at one of the hundreds of sidewalk cafes lining even the narrowest of alleys, then found one of Venice’s hidden treasures: a shell-like staircase that goes up the outside of a home, not the inside—in order to maximize living space.
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The views from the top were magnificent. You can see how packed the homes are, all the way to the canals. Not an inch of wasted space—and holding up all these weighty buildings are hundreds of thousands of log piles, sunk into the marshy ground beneath. The wooden poles do not decay as long as they are covered with water, so the Venetians watch the water levels in the city very closely.
After an hour of wandering through the maze, we reached the Rialto, one of Venice’s most famous bridges. It is usually packed with tourists and contains some of the city’s finest jewelry shops.
We ate our lunch on the other side of the bridge, feeding the pigeons with bread crumbs and bits of apple. The water level was at high tide—you can see it’s over the sidewalks in places.
Walking was hot work, and we stopped for a beer at a lovely little bistro—again, on one of those little byways that are almost impossible to find again.
The ice-cold beer hit the spot. Refreshed, we headed back to St. Mark’s Square for our 3:00 tour of the basilica, which was magnificent.
The gold used in the mosaics shines in the iridescent light, and everywhere you look there are marvels. The body of St. Mark the Evangelist is supposedly in the front beneath the high altar, rescued by two Venetian businessmen from the Muslim mobs in Egypt who were going to destroy the church in which he was buried. They carted away his bones in a pig barrel, knowing that the Muslims would not touch that unclean animal. The basilica was built in the 1500s to honor his relics. I think he would have been embarrassed.
The ancient tiled floors of the basilica are fascinating in their mish-mash of designs:
Tired of walking and standing, walking and standing, we headed out to find a place for an early dinner. We are almost always the first ones ordering dinner, because we like to get back to the hotel by dark (7 pm.) and get to bed at a decent hour. This time we chose a charming trattoria on a relatively busy lane, and enjoyed a three-course meal for 15 euros each. Of course, the waiter brought us a liter of red wine, and we ordered bottled water as well, so that shot the price up considerably.
This turned into one of the nicest dinner experiences in Venice. A couple from Sweden sat down on one side of us, and a couple from the Lake District (UK) on the other, and we had wonderful back-and-forth conversations about travel, politics, and family. Both couples were going on a Mediterranean cruise the following day, so this was their last night. It took a looooonnnnnggg time to finish that liter of wine, so we were there until quite late (for us!), chatting and laughing till 8:00. We exchanged e-mail addresses with the UK couple, and promised to stay at their luxury resort in the Lake District someday.
The walk back to the ferries showed us another side of Venice by moonlight:
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