So I wake up this morning following a very long day of traveling--you heard about that yesterday--and, anyway, I wake up to find myself in Venice!!!
Of course it was only 2:30 a.m., but who am I to complain? A few hours later, having given up trying to return to Dreamland--besides, could Dreamland be better than Venice???---I went for a walk. The neighborhood is quiet, but just a small wooden bridge and steps away is a larger canal busy with the morning. Vaporettos full of working folk, garbage boats with cranes to lift and empty big wheelie bins, boats transporting goods--all kinds of boats doing what trucks usually do in the morning in other cities. I walked to the end of that canal to where the lagoon begins, and the lagoon was full of traffic too.
Plus it was a beautiful morning!
And what makes a morning beautiful? The sky! So here is a Venetian sky! I'll see these soon in paintings by Venetian Masters; you almost expect God or angels to peek through, or to see Mary, the Queen of Heaven surrounded by seraphs or something!
a man inside was fashioning gondola oars! You can see a few diagonally near the back wall, and in the foreground, kind of blurry, is a gondola oarlock! Cleverly designed, aren't they, allowing the gondolier to move that oar every which way! 
Following breakfast we three, Bob, Denise, and I, went wandering. Bob's sharp eyes noticed this shop tucked just off the main path:
Walking and gawking, we made our way to the Rialto Bridge, quite the bustling place! 
Directed by Bob, who had some kind of vision of how to reach our destination, we slipped into Piazza San Marco from the side, from the narrow sidewalks with buildings and shoppers crowding us, we arrived to that truly magnificent space! My goodness, what a grand sight! I stood dumbly taking it in until four young women asked to have their picture taken together, so I asked them--
Sadly, a photo can't capture the majesty of the place! And then--Florian's, the classic cafe on the piazza. Hilariously expensive, but we'd planned for it, 
and, as Rick Steves advised, we sat and listened to the orchestra for about an hour and a half, and no one was rushing us even then; it was lovely! A beautiful day, dear friends, and a longtime imagining become a memory. Plenty of time to breathe and be in the moment. Can you see the orchestra in their black coats and white shirts behind other customers? 
What a delicious interlude!
Moving on: St. Mark's is covered in scaffolding from the front, but here's a still breath-taking view from the side:
Isn't it magnificent?!!!
En route to catch the vaporetto home, gondolas waiting:
I didn't take a single picture on the vaporetto ride all the way down the Grand Canal; I just wanted to breathe it in, and I did. You'll see more another day.
And finally, the view from my room this afternoon--
I am in awe of the beauty of this place. I hope my words and photographs give you some sense of it. Thank you for traveling with me.
Jackie, you wrote that "Directed by Bob, who had some kind of vision of how to reach our destination, we slipped into Piazza San Marco from the side ..." That boy ain't got no kind of vision, but he knowed one truth 'bout Venice: All alleys lead to San Marco.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to get lost is to fall into a canal.