Italy Day 5 - June 30th - Venice

We crossed the lagoon on the causeway to the dock to pick up our boat then took a sojourn along the Giudecca Canal past the gorgeous Venetian canal side houses.  We left the  boat at and walked to Piazza San Marco with its beautiful and spectacular palace, tower and basilica and its swarms of pigeons.  We visited glass factory and watched a glass blowing demonstration before Judy bought a pendant and earrings. That ended the formal tour for the morning, so we went walking round the little streets to the Rialto bridge with Gabe and Peg.  We shared a gondola, which we hired just below the bridge, for a short tour through some little narrow canals. We punted past Marco Polo's house and Casanova's mansion.  We then went back to San Marco for an excellent guided tour of the Basilica and the Doge's Palace including a walk through the Bridge of Sighs to the prisons.  The palace was magnificent, the prisons were pretty dismal.  The bridge has two corridors, one was to take you from the courts in the palace to the prison, you only traversed the second corridor if you were being bought to your execution.   Later in the afternoon we boarded our boat and headed off to Burano island for a huge seafood lunch in a cafe in the brightly painted village.  After lunch we walked along the canals and bought a lace table runner at one of the lace shops.  We encountered a bridal party walking along the canals and the contrast between the  couples outfits and the saturated colours of the canal side houses was spectacular. Back to our hotel in Mestre and a modest dinner, at McDonalds, before packing up for an early start.

Most of the images on our site are thumbnails, if you click on the thumb nail, a larger version of the photo will generally be displayed.  To return to browsing, just press the <Back> button.