Day 9 - Venice - the joys of following ones feet
Trip Start
Jul 21, 2008
1
9
30
Trip End
Aug 18, 2008
Venice, Italy
Monday, July 28, 2008
Vaporetto across to San Marco and go to the top of the bell tower. Awesome view. Start walking towards Rialto but then just start wandering aimlessly caught up in the beauty of it all - too easy to do! We buy grape tomatoes, basil, buffalo mozzarella and fresh bread along the way. Find an internet café and look up my old Travelpod page to find the name of the church from Indiana Jones. Campo San Barnaba. Take photos of street signs to triangulate our current position using Google Maps. Decide the best way to get there is back via San Marco. Have bread, cheese, tomatoes and basil for lunch in a small park, followed by fresh peaches. On the walk to San Barnaba we cross the Grand Canal, buy some homemade liquorice, get a gelati and receive a phonecall from Chris & Leo. There's a guy playing wine glasses in the background while we talk on Dan's phone.
Find the church, but it's been turned into a tacky Da Vinci museum
Venice from the Campanile
. Keep walking blindly, discover we're lost, and locate ourselves somewhere near Piazzale Roma. Decide to walk the rest of the way there, then take a vaporetto all the way back down the Grand Canal. We make a stop along the way though, getting off the ferry at the Rialto Bridge. Find a shop that sells exquisite homemade pens and letter openers made from Venetian glass, and leather-bound notebooks and marbled paper. Buy a pen for Brian & Cecilia, and a letter opener for myself.Get some fresh berries from a nearby market. Take the vaporetto the rest of the way back to San Marco. Decide to blow the expense and have coffee at one of the café's lining the piazza. $16 for a cappuccino plus $10 orchestra charge. Seems like 400 year old café's can get away with charging whatever they like!
Take a vaporetto to the small cathedral island (Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore) near Isola Giudecca. Sunset at the yacht harbour. Can't get to the amphitheatre, so vaporetto back to San Marco and wander til we find a decently-priced restaurant. Try the local Venetian specialty: cuttlefish in a mushroom and ink sauce with polenta. Black going in, black coming out (spoiler!). Return to hostel and sit on edge of canal eating sachertorte and panaforte. So good. My feet are filthy. They have dirt, canal water, mulberry juice stains and pigeon feathers all over them.
