Day 29 - Venice, a riot, and a ride on a gondola

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Day 29 in Venice began brilliantly as we had slept really well on the wonderful beds at the Plaza - we woke up feeling much better than the day before and I spent a bit of time in the lobby using the free internet while Danny snoozed a bit longer.
Breakfast finished at 10, and I totally lost track of the time and it wasn't until Danny came down to see where I was at about 9:55 that we realised we had better hurry if we wanted to catch breakfast. We just squeezed in before they shut the doors to stop more people coming in, and we ate a nice breakfast before going to catch another train over to the island of Venice.

Instead of walking all the way back to St Mark's Square, we just caught a ferry there, and lined up to go into St Mark's Church. They were actually having a service in there and so we felt quite guilty since the path for tourists to walk around went all around the back, one of the sides, and along the front of the section set up for the service to be held in. I don't know how those people manage to concentrate on what the Priest is saying. I have a hard enough time in church when there aren't people moving around and taking photos and talking about things. I'm still not used to them using churches as both a place of worship and a tourist spot... it is a very strange concept to me.
It was a beautiful church though, there were gold tiles all over the ceiling, and there were huge mosaics everywhere.
We paid a bit extra to go into the back and see something else, but we didn't actually know what it was when we paid for it (the sign was in Italian) and it was just a giant gold "thing" in a case. We didn't know what it was, but we looked at it for a while (it was very pretty, we just didn't know what it was for, or what it meant!) and then went back out.

The square was quite crowded, so we headed up one of the alleys to shop on our way to another church, which we had read had a really good external decoration with different times of marble.
As we walked, I was perpetually distracted by shops, but we eventually made it there, and had a quick peek inside, as it was quite small, and then set off to find some lunch.

We found a cool restaurant where the seating was on a sort of jetty/wharf thing over the water. So we sat out there and ate, and it was very nice! While we were sitting there we saw a nice looking boat pull up, and lots of people started to pile out. The first few were quite well dressed, and had cameras. They stood waiting for someone inside of the boat to get out, and so we were very interested to see who this important person would be! It turned out to be a bride, on her way to her wedding. We found this very amusing, since they then had to walk to whichever church their wedding was in, but it was very cool seeing this kind of difference in how they do things in Venice.

After lunch we decided to go back to the hotel for a while as we knew we would be out late that night. So we headed back towards the mainland, and did a bit more shopping on the way. While we were shopping, a riot/protest of some kind came past us, so we just stood in a shop until they were gone. The riot police were even walking in front of them to control whatever they were doing. It was pretty cool.

We also saw a man and a woman (with the police talking to them) who were soaking wet and standing next to a canal! It looked like the woman had fallen in, and her husband had gone in to get her out - she was a lot wetter than he was, and even her handbag was wet. Even though we know it must have been cold and horrible, we still thought it was hilarious!

We relaxed for a while at the hotel, and then headed back out to go and have a ride on a gondola!
It was so much fun - it was really relaxing, and Danny got some really cool photos (I'll show you later, or post them on here or facebook eventually). We went as it was starting to get dark, so we got to see the change from day to night while we lazily floated around the canals of Venice. The guy who took us out had been doing it for something like 15 years, and was the fifth generation of his family to be in the gondola business. He had started learning when he was five! He was very good at it, and seemed to come so close to things, but never hit anything.
It was a very fun experience, and we thoroughly enjoyed it - I even took video of it (despite it getting a bit dark) to share with everyone when we get back!

After our ride, we went out to dinner, and then walked to the Rialto Bridge as we hadn't stopped on it the last time we walked over it. It looked very nice at night time, especially since all of the markets had packed up and weren't covering every inch of it anymore.

By this stage we were well and truely tired, so we got a water taxi back instead of waiting for the ferry. It was very cool - it had blue lights in it and felt like a water limo. We love Venice so much, and had so much fun just exploring its streets and seeing it from the water.

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Comments

[mum]

Manford looks scared!
Manford looked like he really wanted a life jacket sitting all by himself on that seat! Your photo's look lovely but I have to say Venice has too much water for me. Glad you got to have a ride on a gondola, it looks so romantic! Can't wait to see you, love you mum and Ron.

[Wez]

Rumour?
Rumour has it Venice wont be around in 50 years cause of the sinkingness. Know if this is true?