July 3rd- Venice

Anna was very happy that we found time this morning to use the hotel pool. It was very deep, so Emma didn’t try to go in. It was also being shared with some old Germans in speedos. There’s a busload of German speakers in the hotel here. It seems that Garda is a resort town for the Germans (and probably Austrians and Swiss) who come here for a southern vacation. The signs in the hotel are in Italian, German and English.

We had to get some stuff after breakfast at the hotel this morning. We found a gas station with an ATM next door, and followed a sign to a “Supermarket.” It soon became clear that there is at least one person in Italy who has no idea what a “Supermarket” is. The sign took us down a very narrow one-way residential street and into someone’s driveway. They may have been selling fruit or something out of their garage, but we weren’t going to find a Tops or a Wegmans there.

So we headed on to Venice, about an hour and a half drive from here. We could have driven onto the island of Venice and parked the car there, but Julie wanted to park on the mainland and ride the train in. We’re not sure why. We expect that she was more interested in the challenges of riding Italian trains then the challenges of parking in the little Italian parking spaces. We saved a little money in parking, but used the savings to buy train tickets.

We rode across the causeway and lagoon to the station in Venice and waited in line for vaporetto tickets. The vaporetto is the bus-like boat that can take passengers up and down the Grand Canal. It really is bus-like, unfortunately, and while we appreciated the (relatively) inexpensive ride to the main attractions, the view was very much like looking out of bus windows. Still, it was made more interesting by the Rick Steves tour we had with us. We had downloaded the tour onto our mp3 players, and he has starts and stops in his narration that sync up with the stops that the vaporetto makes. It’s about a 45 minute ride, and he points out many of the interesting details in the buildings that line the canal. The architecture is so characteristic of this city, and it’s immediately recognizable as Venetian. We chugged under the Rialto Bridge, and got off the vaporetto at St. Mark’s Square. (Even though we planned for enough earphones and mp3 players, the girls weren’t that interested in listening to the tour. As a result, we didn’t use the other tours that he has for other parts of Venice today.)

The day was very hot and hazy. The stone tiles that pave St. Mark’s Square make the heat even worse. It was early afternoon already, and we wisely decided to get some food. “Sandwich Row” is a nickname Rick Steves uses for a nearby street because of its many little affordable (relatively) restaurants. We found it and ate while watching 1980s videos on the TV , in a shop that otherwise would have been very atmospheric. The Italians seem to love American music, judging from what we find on the radio, and their favorites seem to be from the 1980s. We were watching Wham, Tears for Fears, Michael Jackson and Boy George.

After lunch, the touring began. We went to the world famous St. Mark’s square. Our families would recognize this as the place that the Italy area of Epcot is based on. It was also used to design the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. We can now say that we’ve seen the original and can be confident in all the criticisms we can make of the copies. Epcot, for example, is much smaller - naturally- but it also reverses a couple of the details. The Doge’s Palace is on the wrong side of the square and the bell tower isn’t in the right place. We had to keep Emma from chasing the pigeons, but we couldn’t stop the pigeons from chasing us. One flew right into Julie, and they almost seemed to be laughing as they flew over head.

The church of St. Mark’s is right on the square. We waited in line to go in, but when we got to the door the guard made Scott take the day bag we wearing carrying to the bag check. That wasn’t unexpected, but he couldn’t figure out where the bag check was. There were many other confused looking fathers who were lugging backpacks around the same area, and no one seemed to be successful. Scott decided to wait outside and let the girls see the inside. The façade of the church itself is pretty amazing with lots of gold leaf mosaics and statues. Julie says the inside of St. Mark’s is dark and grayish, and not as bright as the Duomo in Milan (which was pretty dark itself). There were also a lot of security guards around.

After that tour, we went into the Doge’s Palace together. Part of the very large building is used to display historical columns and capitals from the building’s restored exterior. Part of it was used for modern art exhibits that rotate. There is a large central court yard with marble statues. The main attraction is the “Doge’s Apartment” which also includes the important meeting rooms of the Venetian government. The rooms are designed to impress and awe the visitors that may have been called there. Many of the walls are decorated with massive paintings by Renaissance masters. There is no doubt that Scott would have loved more time to drink in the content of the paintings, as the were filled with the mix of allegory and metaphor and history and references that he finds fascinating. The little girls were happier to go through each room rather quickly. The room we liked best may have been the one with two gigantic globes in the middle and maps of the world that the Venetian’s knew on murals all around the room.

We also went over the famous “Bridge of Sighs” where the Venetian government sent its prisoners to life in dark dungeons. However, the outside of the Bridge of Sighs looked a bit odd today. That side of the Doge’s palace and the connecting prison was covered with scaffolding, and the scaffolding, in turn, was covered with a gigantic advertisement. The bridge appeared to be suspended in the middle of this ad, connecting one side of a billboard to the other. It may be better then seeing scaffolding, but it certainly looked out of place.

After one more time around St. Mark’s square, we decided to walk back to the train station on the far side of the island. Rick Steves always says that walking away from the main tourist sections of Venice is a great adventure. “Get as lost as you can,” he says. “Just keep telling yourself, I’m on an island and I can’t get off.” Unfortunately, that’s what Gilligan said too. We did have a hard time finding our way through the maze of back streets and squares. But it certainly was a different view of Venice. It was hot, and we really didn’t want to be lost. We wanted to be heading towards the train station.

Still, we got a chance to enjoy some gellatto. It has “3 times the sugar of American ice cream.” We may have never believed it before, but after watching Anna and Emma eat some there is no doubt in our minds that it is true. They ran, danced, jumped, skipped and giggled all the way back to the train station while Mom and Dad (especially) were starting to drag. We also got a chance to use the “Dov’è… “ trick again when a kind local woman saw us staring blankly at our map.

We got to the train, had a quick bite at McDonald’s, got our car and made our way back to Garda, an hour and a half away. We arrived back at the hotel about sundown. Emma was so hot that she said that she was going to splash water on her face when she got back to the hotel. Daddy said that there was a special little sink that was just her size for her to do that. Anna laughed hard at that because she already knew what the bidet was really for.