July 30: Grand Canal and more.

The children love it here. Jack says he’d like to live here for a year… He is very taken by the masks, having made one in Drama. Certainly the city is pretty.
This morning we had to go and check on airport connections and tickets and such. The walk there was lovely. It started off overcast, but brightened into a lovely sunny day.
Italian days start slowly. Delivery boats started unloading near 8 a.m. Early coffee does not seem readily available, and plenty of shops were not opened, even after 9 a.m. The famous bridge over the Rialto had big wooden doors shut all over it at 9:30 a.m. (The views from it up the Grand Canal were spectacular, though.)
I was charmed by a paper shop, and had to stop at an even better one further on. Quills and silver fastenings. Ink pots. Marbled books, little and big… gorgeous!

All the shops are so tiny. We looked in at an interesting shoe-shop window, and a woman was actually making shoes at the back of her shop. There was a nice little sweet shop, smelling of coffee. I suddenly thought of J.K. Rowling and Diagon Alley. (I think she spent some time in Italy).


Onwards. We found the bus station, checked times and tickets, got a better map. We decided to get a ‘Vaporetto’ down the Grand Canal. This was great, although we had to stand if we wanted to be in the open air. Here are a couple of pictures taken from on board. Here is the Rialto bridge from underneath. And here is a gondola (in case you didn't know!)
We did not ride in one of these because they were so expensive, but we enjoyed watching them.

In the evening, at the children's insistence, we went out to find a Venezian gelato. It was very nice, too. I had chocolate and pineapple this time - and have decided in Italy, you should stick to juicy fruit flavours. Orange, lemon, pineapple, peach and so forth work best. (Can one get a job as a professional gelato critic?)

Anyway, slurping away, we wandered off to St Mark's square. It is an amazing Byzntine cathedral. There are angels with gold wings at the top. Big, deep arches keep golden-tinged medieval paintings safe under them. There are marble columns and facings arranged in a great variety of colours and textures. It was fascinating. We decided to go into it when it opened the next day. There was also this marvellous clock nearby.












We had a happy wander along the sea-front towards home. Here are Wayne and the children with some sunset-tinged gondolas.

Everything felt very exotic.