Cicchetti and Vaparetto

Today we bought an all day pass for the water bus, or Vaporetto. It’s a great way to get around in a city with water roads. We have (we…ha…I should only credit Brian here) been getting everywhere using google maps. It’s usually about a 15-20 minute walk to where we want to go plus or minus the amount of time it takes for google to give the wrong information and to reset the map. This pass was going to help us get around a bit more efficiently and our feet would thank us.

I bet you can guess how we started our day today? 

Yep? A delicious brioche and a cappuccino! A nice Italian man told us today which pastry was his favorite so we ordered that. Today was a quick stand and eat so we could go buy our Vaparetto tickets and take a little trip before our Doge’s Palace Secret Itinerary tour. 

We were doing great on time this morning. We toured St Mark’s Basilica which’s was all kinds of beautiful. 

After we toured the church, we made a quick stop (on the boat) over to a cool little bookstore we had heard of. I loved it. They have a resident cat, but it was no where to be seen. 

The bookstore trip made us hungry for a small bite so Brian led us in the direction of a place where we could get some ciccheti. They are little toasts with delicious toppings. 

They were very good. My favorite was the pumpkin one with the flowers. We ate them quick and then made our way back to Doge’s Palace. Now here comes the Godsill part of this tour. We followed the directions on the email they sent to get to our meeting spot. No one was there. We were set to meet them at 1:00. The museum employee looked at our ticket and said to be patient, we are in the right place. Still no one. 1:00 passed. We asked again and he then looked at our ticket and said we were at the wrong spot. Now, 1:10 we rushed across the crowded square toward the palace and found an entrance. No one was there. We asked the employee at the door and I have no idea why this happened, but they told us the tour already went in and then he got a radio and escorted us through employee elevators and back doors to where we could wait for the tour group to pass us so we could join. I was so surprised they didn’t just tell us too bad so sad. We were a little lost as we missed a little bit of the introduction, but it was an interesting tour. The girls would have hated it. Ha. I have thought that several times on this trip. 

View from the Bridge of Sighs that prisoners saw as they went down into the cells. We went down there. So freaky.

The room for questioning prisoners. The rope was tied to their wrists behind their backs and then hoisted up causing great pain to help get prisoners  to talk. 

The tour took about an hour and since we had purchased full day Vapretto tickets, we decided to head over to Murano by boat to check out the Murano glass and see what that island looked like. I have been thinking of buying a Murano glass pendant so we thought we should look on Murano. It was a bit of a trek on water just figuring out boat to boat to boat transfers. It took us maybe 45 to get there. The weather was changing and the storm clouds were looming. We landed over there at about 5:00 and we noticed a couple things. First, all the stores seemed to have the same things we saw in Venice. Next, lots of stores were closed. Last, it seemed like the town was preparing for a storm. We lasted about 30 min there and decided we should get back before the storm. 

The rain seemed to hold off until we got back to our place. We got some rain and a little bit of thunder. Umbrellas are a little more difficult to use in the narrow corridors of Venice. It didn’t stop us though. We threw some clean clothes on and left shortly after returning to have some dinner and maybe a little late night browsing. 

Dinner was really good. I wanted to eat something regional and though I never eat fish, I tried the clams. My pasta was really good. My stomach is a little unhappy that it’s digesting something unfamiliar but it was fun to taste something other than spaghetti or pizza for a change. We wanted to finish our Venice visit with some tiramisu but the shop was closed! One for trip to Suso for stracciatella gelato again I guess!

Overall, We really enjoyed a couple days in Venice and we are ready to move on to Milan. I think if I was into couture and luxury hotels, ai would want to stay longer. I am very happy to have been able to visit, stay in Laura’s apartment, not see the ghost of her mother (she used to live in it), and experience this one of a kind area. These are the last of the photos of the beautiful things we saw.

Thanks for coming along on our trip. We have one more stop and one more apartment to stay in. I am sitting here on a train again feeling really grateful and happy. That being said, I miss home. I love to travel and I love  to return back to my beautiful family (and Frank the velociraptor)and the home we’ve made.