Verona is lovely city, with a population of about 250,000, or that of Saskatoon, for those who know that city. It is on the Adige River and is one of three cities in Italy that has an ancient Roman amphitheatre where concerts are still a major attraction.
Verona is also the setting for the Shakespeare play Romeo & Juliet. Much is known about Shakespeare's life, but there are seven years for which there is not a complete accounting. Many of the citizens of Verona believe that Shakespeare came to Verona during that period, because his descriptions in plays like Romeo and Juliet are so accurate.
This is the balcony from which the character Juliet utters that famous line - "Romeo, oh Romeo, where art thou, Romeo". Just a story but cute nonetheless.
Now in the square beneath the balcony is a statue of Juliet. It is apparently a tradition to caress Juliet in an affectionate way.
Mike, one of our tour mates, takes his turn! The bemused look on his face gives away nothing as to what is on his mind. A penny for your thoughts, Mike!
After leaving Verona, we were off to the Magical City on wooden pillars, Venice! Venice is another world - largely a "Waterworld". In fact, there are times when St. Mark's square can be covered by up to 80 cm of water (almost 3 feet), so perhaps closer to Waterworld than one may think!
I mentioned wooden piles, so a bit of history is in order. Venice was not a Roman city. (From Wikipedia) It is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto. It is situated across a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by 400 bridges.
In the 5th century, the people of the area were escaping the Visigoths and the Huns (the "Barbarians"), and retreated to the islands in the lagoon. These islands are largely made from silt and clay, so they could not support much weight. But the people learned to sink large wooden logs into the silt and clay vertically, creating pilings on which a more substantial structure could be built. And so began the City of Venice as we see it today. Each structure is sitting atop dozens or hundreds of wooden piles made of Ash. Because they are in clay, they do not get any oxygen and do not rot much. In fact they essentially petrify, becoming a very solid structure on which to build. And so you have the large structures that you see today.
Venice was an independent republic until the time of Napoleon and was never a papal state. This was important as they prided themselves as international merchants and much of their trade was with Turkey and other Islamic countries for things like silk and spices. This fact sometimes irritated the Papal state, but there was little that they could do about it, because of the fact that they were a powerful independent republic!
One building of note is the Basilica of St. Mark. Here is a tale of the story as told on the website Walks of Italy: (https://www.walksofitaly.com/blog/venice/6-fascinating-facts-about-st-marks-basilica).
The basilica began with a swashbuckling tale of kidnapping. St. Mark’s has pretty interesting origins…
The first St. Mark’s Basilica was built on this spot in the 9th century to house very sacred relics—relics that had been stolen! In 828, merchants from Venice stole the body of St. Mark the Evangelist, one of the four Evangelists, from Alexandria, Egypt. According to the legend, they snuck them past the (Muslim) guards by hiding them under layers of pork in barrels!
While at sea, a storm almost drowned the grave robbers and their precious cargo, it’s said that St. Mark himself appeared to the captain and told him to lower the sails. The ship was saved, and the merchants said they owed their safety to the miracle.
The entire story is pictured on the 13th-century mosaic above the left door as you enter the basilica.
All of the canals follow the natural flow of the water that existed around each of the islands, so few if any, of the canals are straight. Needless to say, the chief way to get around is by boat.
Today it is largely done by powered boat, but the original method of transport was the Gondola.
This flat bottomed boat is steered by gondoliers as you see here. Only a few of them actually sing anymore, but when they belt out Volare it rings up and down the narrow steets - as did our teams superior rendition! just imagine it!
Today, their purpose is largely touristic. Years ago there were thousands of gondalas but today there are only about 500 left in service.
On Thursday evening, we were treated to a refreshment or desert of choice while we listened to a quartet play some beautiful music on the famous St. Mark's Square. Why only a "treat" - well some spots charge up to 12.00 Euros for a coffee ($18 Cdn) and no refills!
They were so good we bought the CD!
So good in fact that Sonya and I were able to get up for a few dances. They not only played for us, they played with us, as you will see in the following video.
The next morning, we went to a glass factory to see how the famed Murano glass is made. The glass is made from a composite of materials - silica, lime and soda. It is heated in an oven at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit! It comes out as a molten blob of glass, which is then formed into whatever the maestro glass blower wants to make.
In this case, he is shaping the blob into a horse. Now, I know you need some imagination to see that right now, so look at the bottom of the blob and you see the horse's head.
Now here you can see that this looks a lot like the Ferrari prancing horse, doesn't it. The glass is now strong enough to stand on its own. However, it is anything but cool to the touch!
This is what happened to the piece of paper that the blower put on the top of the statue. Now, if you remember from chemistry class paper will combust at Fahrenheit 451. This paper burst into flames the moment it dropped onto that statue. In fact, the glass has to go into a cooling oven for several days to cool.
Afterwards we were taken through the factory warehouse, where the factory guide provided us with all of the "deals" he had for us. Based on the bags leaving the facility with our group, they did pretty well that day!
Now to be a bit fair to these guys, Venice is an expensive place to live, because everything has to come and go by boat! Everything! As an example of expensive, the homes on The Grand Canal go for an average 30,000 Euros per square meter, and an average home there is 300 square meters (3,000 square feet). Now, only the rich and famous can afford 9 Million Euros, so these are generally bought by foreigners. This goes a long way to explain why the local Venetian population has dropped to 55,000 inhabitants, down quite a ways from the 200,000 in the sixteenth century.
Even Amazon delivers here.
You can recognize Amazon boxes as the ones with the smile on the bottom.
Even new caskets come in and out by boat.
They even had to invent a different way of dealing with their garage. Here a crane is lifting the waste bins into a barge, and the bottom opens when it hits the containers in the barge. Very inventive!
Now, they have to be inventive to get their stuff in and out, as some of their canals are quite narrow:
The narrower canals are one way traffic for powered boats, but two way for oared boats. Now, I would love to see this guy trying a u-turn in a canal!
As you can see in the background, much of the city is vertical, and there are very few elevators. An average housewife would have to climb 200 steps several times a day. So they got inventive and attached ropes between households and passed butter, books, eggs, and so forth so as to reduce the number of trips to the local grocer or corner store!
I mentioned 400 bridges. Some of them are pretty low too! The gondolier had to duck to get under these two! The tides cause the water to rise and fall and it can take up to 6 hours to pass - potentially delaying transport for hospital emergencies. Pretty significant consequences.
On Friday evening, our group went to Burano for our last meal together. Some wanted to call it the last supper, but I reminded them that that event was on a Thursday!
As you can see, Pisa is not the only place with a leaning tower, even if it is the most well known! Remember that the entire area is built on wooden piles? Well, the entire area is apparently sinking into the sea, or in this case the lagoon.
Our local guide, Anna, was unperturbed however, as it has been happening for centuries, with an average rate of 1 mm per year. She is quite confident she will not be around to see it sink into oblivion!
The homes on Burano are quite colourful indeed. Legend has it that the women wanted them to be painted brightly so that if the men were too drunk to remember their house number, they would hopefully remember the colour!
Here then are our travel mates at the dinner:
We bade them good bye and safe travels that evening.
As if to prove the point made earlier about colours, when we left the restaurant it was dark. But, as you can see, the colours of the homes is still readily easy to discern. Hmm, there maybe something to that!
Here are a couple more evening scenes of Burano on our walk back to the boat.
The next morning we headed off to the markets with two of our travel mates that stayed over in Venice.
Large supermarkets are almost non existent in Venice but awesome daily fish and vegetable markets are a feast for the eyes. With so many veg, Sonya wonders what they do with them since the restaurant menus are anything but vegan friendly.
Those peppers almost pop out of the picture!
Too bad there is no such thing as Smell-a-vision, or you would be able to take in the wonderful aroma of this sage and rosemary.
How about those prawns!
And for those that don't appreciate fish and seafood, perhaps Smell-a-vision is not such a good idea!
Anna, our local guide had insisted that you could not get lost in Venice, if you tried. This is perhaps true, because the signs do point the way to various squares and bridges.
However, knowing where to go does not necessarily mean that you know where you are. Here George and I are looking at the map of the Rick Steve's walk to determine exactly where we got off course! We concluded that the ladies got us off course when they stopped to shop! As it turns out, we were only out by about one block ... Unfortunately that block was off the map! We did however find our way back onto the route without assistance!
Along the way, we saw various aspects of local daily life.
Like these retired gents having a glass of wine at 10 a.m. in the morning. Anna explained the rules: 1 friend one drink each, 2 friends 2 drinks, 3 friends 3 drinks... these gents are well on their way. Hmm, perhaps life here is better than one initially thought!
Now, many may recall that Venice is also home to the carnival festival leading up to the day before lent. The carnival is traditionally carried out with very elaborate masks.
The masks were donned so that people could do things that they would not normally do without the anonymity of the mask. This apparently extended to priests and nuns as well. According to some lore, when a large family had several daughters, the first daughter had an elaborate wedding, the second daughter had a moderate wedding, the third and subsequent daughters went to the convent to become a nun! In those days, daughters obeyed their parents and dutifully went to the convent. However, during carnival, they were able to carry on with other aspects of their life not otherwise available by using the anonymity of the mask. Happy carnival indeed!
After lunch, we took a tour of the Doge's palace. Doge is a variation on the word Duke, and this man ran the administration of the city and the Republic during his term. The Doge was elected for life, but they always elected a very old man - perhaps a good political strategy we should rethink.
The palace was not only a palace, but also housed the jail until the 17th century.
Here you see inside a cell, where there is a simple bed and bucket. Now, what you don't see is that, until the new prison was built, this place became so overcrowded, that there could be up to 10 people in one cell. Yikes!
Our guide, Gloria, preferred to get out on tour early, "Before the Barbarians arrive", in her words. Italians loosely refer to anyone not from Italy as Barbarians, originally a reference to the invasions during Roman times.
Now, Venice has a special problem with Barbarians indeed! Each year the city receives 20 Million visitors! And remember, those not arriving by boat or by bus have to have their luggage transported to and from the hotels by boat!
While we were here, there were numerous large cruise ships that came in and out of Venice. Here you see one of these leaving the lagoon, being towed by a tug, with one at the back to ensure that the boat does not stray from the appointed path. At one point there were five large cruise ships in harbor, together with a couple of riverboats. St. Mark's square was pandemonium on Saturday!
As we prepare to leave Venice, we leave you with a shot from the top floor of our hotel.
We bid arrivederci, Venizia.
We take the fast train to Florence, and we will be back at you from there!
Ciao ciao,
SnP
