Italy Day 5: All Around Venice

Day 5 started with a trip to the baker and fresh fruit/veggie place down the street. It only cost us 4 euro to get 3 rather large baked goods - croissant, strudel, cream filled donut - and two peaches. We were stoked. Welcome to the non-tourist laden part of town. Next it was time to head across the Guidecca Canal and into the main part of Venice again. Our morning was filled with a walking tour of the Doge's Palace, St. Peter's Square, St. Peter's itself (Again, no pictures allowed. The whole roof is covered in gold. Needless to say it was very impressive and also very shiny.), and the western (I think? There really is no sense of direction there and I would have been utterly lost without my direction savvy husband by my side.) side of Venice.

Side note: it rained on and off all day. When you are in Venice pick your shoes wisely. The particular pair of flip flops that I was wearing had ZERO traction. I came dangerously close to falling many, many times. I'm surprised that my legs weren't sore the next day from trying to catch myself so many times.

This is a picture of the Bridge of Sighs. We were told repeatedly that this is not a bridge you want to cross. It was only used for transporting prisoners, so that is understandable.

The front of St. Peter's

And the bell tower. One of many in Venice.

And then we met the pigeons of St. Peter's. You haven't really met a pigeon until you have met a St. Peter's Square pigeon. These birds have no reservations. Seriously. If they think you are holding food they will pounce. It must be a survival tactic to jump at whatever chance for food there is in a sea of so many hungry mouths.

We weren't the only ones that looked like this.

Surprisingly, they were very gentle. Their little feet didn't hurt at all on landing or take off and you could hardly feel them picking up the food with their beaks.

They aren't very cleanly though. This is the mess of crumbs and melted chocolate they left on our hands.

The Doge's Palace is in the background of this picture and Hunter is rocking the aviators.

Later, we went on a boat tour of the Grand Canal. It was really cool to see everything from the water, as it was originally meant to be seen since Venice used to be completely inaccessible without a boat. It gives a whole new perspective. The houses are far more decorated on the side facing the water and only people of great importance were allowed to build houses along the Grand Canal. I can't even imagine how expensive it would be to live along it today. Yikes.

This is a picture of Santa Maria della Salute from the water.

There are many a gondola along the Grand Canal, which makes sense since that is the very touristy thing to do in Venice (we'll get to that in the next post).

See how much prettier everything is from the water view?

The Rialto Bridge. It was once the life blood and main trading center of the city. It was also the only original crossing of the grand canal. There are now three others - all of which have been built in the last 150 years or so.

Pictures from on top of the Rialto Bridge...

I don't even know how many other little bridges dot the city. I did learn this though: when the train station into Venice was built, they had to do a lot of modification to the city so that it was accessible by foot. They filled in many a canal and built 430 (or somewhere around there) bridges to supplement what was already in existence. It is also important to know that in the original days of Venice the bridges connected houses, which were generally rivals of some sort. They would often hold competitions to see who was the "stronger" family. Young men would fight a top a bridge (none of which had side railings originally) and see who could throw the other off first. In essence, who was king of the mountain. They were eventually stopped because they became to violent. Interesting.

This may be one of my favorite pictures of us from this trip.

See how this bell tower is leaning? Well, as it turns out, most buildings in Venice are leaning in one way or another. The sediment underneath is and has been shifting and constantly changing for all this time so none of the buildings have very solid foundations.

This is a street. It is a smaller one, but streets this size (and smaller) are not uncommon.

I thought it was funny that Venice also has a Daily Universe. BYU must have an Italian branch.

And final picture of this post: If you want to live in Venice, you must own a dog. There were soooo many dogs! You really can't go anywhere without at least having one or two dogs in sight. Ameya would freak being so close to water all the time.