Our hotel was located on the Gran Canal, right across from the Santa Maria de la Salud church. It was also the nicest hotel we stayed at during the trip. Our room was large and had a huge flat screen TV which turned on as we entered the room. The bathroom was the most bizarre because the shower and mirror/sink formed an L-shape, meaning you could see yourself while you showered (one of the best weight-loss tools).
We had one full day in Venice. We visited the Doge’s palace, where we saw the former government rooms and the jail and bridge of sighs and we took a tour of Saint Mark’s Basilica. At the Doge’s palace, the ceilings were made of gold leaf and frescoes. One room had an enormous ceiling which was held up by chains above the room. Because Venice was built on small islands, the ground is not very sturdy. It was difficult for engineers to construct the Doge’s palace because they wanted to make it opulent, but it had to be structurally sound as well. St. Mark’s was really pretty inside. Built in the gold-rich Byzantine style, it’s numerous domes wer covered with gold mosaics. We also hopped another water taxi and went to Murano, an island famous for its glassmakers.
After separating from the group, mom and I walked across the gigantic Rialto Bridge and took a traghetto (gondola) across the Grand Canal. The ride didn’t even last 30 seconds, but it was fun. We got to ride a gondola and didn’t have to pay €70 (and mom didn’t get seasick!!). We then wound our way through the street markets and maze of bridges to get to the Jewish ghetto. The word ghetto actually originated in Venice. The island where the ghetto is located used to be a foundry (a factory producing metal castings) and in Italian, the word for a foundry is ghetto. There, we visited some baroque synagogues which was weird for me because I’m so used to Priego’s baroque churches. To see the artist style in a synagogue just seemed out of place and overly opulent for Judaism.
On our way to and from the ghetto we explored some store in Venice. We went to a food store and noticed that they had horsemeat for sale. The also sold pre-made Butonni ravioli, so I felt right at home (A&P in Old Tappan carries them) because I grew up eating them. We noticed that deserts and foods had changed a bit and many places carried green cookies with pistachios in them.
Christmas Eve we went to midnight mass at St. Mark’s. We sat in the first row, over to one side of the church (so we couldn’t actually see anything). People flocked the church and filled the aisles. We left early (a little before 1 a.m.) and stopped at the local church near our hotel, which was having a nice, much smaller service. At St. Mark’s we had booklets translating the service into English, German and French. Different readings were done in these languages as well as in Italian and Latin. At the parish church they sung Silent Night in Italian, which was much more powerful than the entire service at St. Mark’s.
The ceiling at St. Mark's.
Christmas morning we woke up and took another water taxi out of Venice. Again, I sat outside to take photographs.
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