May 8th - 9th

May 8, 2008

Today was a day of ups and downs. We started out by getting vaporetto tickets and heading up(?) the Grand Canal to Rialto Bridge. It’s a really cool bridge with a lot of vendors along the middle of it. Lots of crowds, and a bit of everything was for sale including New York Yankees clothing, which Jacob got a kick out of. We missed the famous fish market though. It’s more of a morning thing and we didn’t get there until closer to lunch time.

The vaporettos are an experience. I haven’t been on too many subways but they put subways to shame on the “overcrowded and smelly” scale. Then you throw in the fact that you’re on water and fighting the waves and you literally crash into every stop! They should come with a warning label. They gave Carina a migraine. Luckily we were right near our stop so we were able to bring her home, med her up and leave her to sleep it off.

After that we went down to Campo San Salute but for some reason didn’t get around to going inside. We walked back past the Peggy Gugenheim museum and all the little back alley ways and shops. We stopped at a little lunch place not too far from our apartment. Jacob, Beck and Delaney had…. Big surprise…. Pizza! Actually, Jacob had one with aged prosciutto and raddichio. He is trying lots of things, they’re just attached to a pizza. LOL

John had tortellini con proscuitto and I had eggplant parmesan. After lunch Beck went down for a nap and Delaney and I went for a tour of the Accademia. Talk about painting OVERLOAD! I would seriously have to go online and research what is there to tell you what all we saw other than “a lot of Madonna and childs” as D would tell you. It’s hard to explain to an 8yo the reason there’s more than one painting of them, why they look different, or “no, we really don’t know if god has a white beard and long hair that’s just what 17th century men looked like.” LOL

Seriously though, after about room 3 we lost track of which paintings and artists we had seen. I remember Tintoretto but most of the names are gone. I had seen photos of a lot of the works in books though. Books don’t give you any idea of the scale of most of the works though. They are beyond huge. It certainly gives you an idea for the wealth of the people who commissioned them since there was no Hobby Lobby to run out and get modern paints and supplies.

Tomorrow we’re going to try to hit several more places before we head out on Saturday. We’ll see how much we can get in. It’s just impossible to get everything I wanted to see done. Venice is WAY too much to take in during one short visit WITH KIDS!

May 9, 2008

Well, no internet connection again today so I guess I will just add to this word file and post to the blog when I can. HOPEFULLY we’ll have reliable service in Florence. We could go to one of the many internet café’s around here but it’s €5 per half hour so we haven’t gotten that desperate yet.

Today we went back to San Marco in the morning. We’d missed some things including the Doge’s palace the other day due to exhaustion. Yeah, we missed it again today. The line was incredible. For that matter, the line to the Basilica which took us 2 minutes to walk through was snaked back and forth everywhere plus there were tour group lines and baggage check lines. Lesson learned. When we come back, we will definitely do San Marco in the afternoon. At 1pm there was no one in line or inside comparatively speaking.

We did get tagged today by a vaporetto strike. We were leaving San Marco and heading back to check out another section of town. Fortunately San Marco was easy walking distance from our apartment and it was on the last hour of our 24 hour ticket, not the first. I did like how they waited until the locals got to work and then went on strike until 1:30 when it was time for the locals to go to lunch. LOL

The girls, Beck and I walked back and had lunch while John and Jacob took some more pictures. While Beck took a nap the girls and I did some shopping along Via Toleta, the walkway next to Canale Toleta, where we’re staying.

After naptime we walked over to Frari church. Very cool Tinteretto paintings, a Donatello carving and the huge inner workings of an old clock along with the graves of a bunch of dignitaries. Other than the fact that we all came out hacking from all the mustiness, it was very cool. The scale of these churches is just unbelievable.

For dinner it was back to Campo Santa Margherita for an outdoor café. Beck and Delaney had hotdogs. LOL John had a shrimp sandwich, Jacob a shrimp salad, Carina- Tortellini and I had risotto with seafood. Beck ate his hotdog and about 1/3 of my dinner too. The rest of the family would happily eat pizza every meal but I’m TRYING to insist that we get something else in or at least eat somewhere that I can eat something else at least once per day. The pizza is wonderful but I didn’t come halfway around the world to live on pizza.

We stopped and picked up some treats at a bakery too today. I picked up these cookies for John and I that had a slightly lemony taste. They were dipped in chocolate and filled with nutella. Yummy!

Now we’re doing laundry and packing up to head to Florence tomorrow. The plan is to make a run through Bologna tomorrow. (NO Oscar Mayer Jokes please. I’ve heard all the questions I can handle from Delaney, along with: Are we going back to Indianapolis to pick up the car? And How did they get our car over here? Oh yeah, and Can I buy that?)