Palazzo Ducale and the Museums of Venice

Our next stop was Palazzo Ducale or Doge’s palace. We met the lost Kannadiga couple again on our way to the palace. We were glad to see them safely back (no guilty feeling anymore) and the auntie already had a costume change. Apparently, a Belgian guy who works for Mittal Steel helped them because his boss was Indian and got them onto another public transport boat. They sounded relieved and shared their travel plans with us – they are leaving to Florence tomorrow as well. Paaren!

The Doge’s palace was the seat of the government of the Venetian Republic. This was a part of our Museum pass that gives access to the four museums of St. Mark’s square, namely, Palazzo Ducale, Museo Correr, Museo Archeologico Nazionale and Biblioteca Marciana. We got the museum pass from this website for €16.50 per person - http://vivaticket.it/index.php?nvpg[sell]&cmd=tabellaPrezzi&pcode=2454585&tcode=tl011376, for students up to 25 years of age, it is available for €10.50.

Atlas and Hercules at the palace

The Doge was the thala of the Venetian Republic and was elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy, which means he was stinking rich even before he became Doge. The Doge’s apartments in the palace were apparently sometimes smaller than the Doge’s actual house so he was allowed to bring furniture and stuff from his place to keep in the apartments. 

The Doge system was abolished when the last Doge was abdicated when Napolean Bonaparte invaded and ended the Venetian Republic. The palace is huge and some of the important rooms like The Great Council have intricate paintings and gold stucco in the ceilings. I was gaping at those ceilings with mouth open. The palace itself requires about 3-4 hours if you want to see it in detail. But we didn’t have that luxury, so we went to the Museo Correr(Correr Museum) building that also houses the Archaeological Museum and National Library of St. Mark’s(Museo Archeologico Nazionale and Biblioteca Marciana). This was gigantic in comparison and the sheer size of the exhibits was so overwhelming. There were a lot of Roman sculptures, some of them with no heads and broken arms. Two things were very striking – the armoury with olden day weapons and the prison that was in complete contrast with the rest of the palace. The armoury’s weapon display itself is enough to scare the enemy out. 

The armoury

 

The prison

The museums and the palace have free toilets so if you have paid money to visit the museums, might as well use the free toilets instead of looking/paying for them outside.

We left around 1815 and started walking back to Piazza Roma. We again followed the signboards and after a gelato boost, we walked back through the now-familiar Rialto Bridge and reached the bus station in no time. We stopped for great views at the bridge though and clicked some pictures while we were at it. Varalaaru mukkiyam amaichare. The oldest and most beautiful bridge in the Grand Canal, the Rialto is very lively and filled with tourists. It is pretty crowded as well so watch out for pickpockets. 

We got back to the hotel and wasted no time in ordering our pizza (just one today). Tomorrow, we will leave to Florence. Train leaves at 0837 so it’s time for bed! Ciao!

Expenses:

·      Museum Pass - €16.50 per person (link given above)

·      Dinner - €11.00

·      Round trip tickets from Mestre’s Via Bergamo bus stop to Piazza Roma -  €5.20 for two

Basilica San Marco, Venice

It was a Sunday and the St. Mark’s Basilica was open only from 2-5 pm so we reluctantly decided to skip lunch and join the queue. The queue is huge but if you have stood in Vaikunda Ekadesi queues in the wee hours of the morning or stood in queues in any Indian temple for that matter, this queue would be something of a joke for you.

The queue on a rainy day, as seen from the clock tower

Basilica San Marco - my queue view :P

After about 15 minutes of standing in the queue, we were asked to keep our bags in the luggage counter and come back (through another entrance without the queue thankfully). Well, even if you had a HUGE handbag, they let you in but backpacks are a strict no-no. The luggage counter was situated in a narrow lane (no surprises there) overseeing the queue. We also saw “no photos” and “no skimpy clothes”(no shorts and no sleeveless clothing) signs so we kept our cameras inside as well.

The Italo-Byzantine architecture of the basilica is stunning. The ceilings are sky high and have paintings everywhere. The Church of Gold, as it has been nicknamed for its wealth, St. Mark’s Basilica was originally the cathedral of the Doge of the Venetian Republic. It is adjacent and connected to the Doge’s Palace.

Renovation is currently underway at the basilica :/

The exquisite gold ground mosaics, the serene atmosphere and the high ceilings, the crypt…it was like being transported a few centuries behind. I would have loved to spend more time there, basking in the silence, but a bunch of fidgety tourists were clicking away right next to us. We were annoyed that they were clicking pictures standing next to the signs that prohibit exactly that, but we were actually even more annoyed that we had obediently left our cameras behind :P

The silence and serenity of the basilica still rings in my ears though. We are now off to see the Doge's palace and the museums. Be right back!

Expenses:

My super yummy mouth-watering lunch

·      Venetian Mask Fridge magnet - €1.00

·      Pizza slices from a roadside joint for a late lunch - €6.00

·      Gelatos and Water - €5.00

Murano, Burano and Torcello

We woke up late today as well. We hurriedly had breakfast and rushed to catch the bus. From Piazza Roma, we started walking as fast as our legs could take us and today, we followed the numerous signboards instead of Google Maps. The signboards took us through the streets that the locals use, so it was not deserted like the route that we took yesterday. We reached just about in time for our tour. Travel the way the locals do and you will be fine!

If you are going to Venice, you MUST book this tour – http://www.viator.com/tours/Venice/Murano-Burano-and-Torcello-Half-Day-Sightseeing-Tour/d522-2495ABTOUR2. It costs €20 and it’s complete paisa vasool. The tour starts from Alilaguna Pier, which is right opposite The Royal Gardens near the Piazza San Marco. But if you would like to visit every island in a relaxed manner, you can take the vaporetto to each of the islands. All of them are connected.

We were about 30 people on a shared motorboat and the boat was half empty so we had a good private seat for ourselves at the back. Yay to that. And we did not have any other Indians on board – the first time that has happened on this trip. Double yay to that.

The Italians seem to have a flare for languages, or they are just very accommodating to tourists. You can see sign boards in about four languages (Italian, English, French, German and sometimes even Japanese to please the Japanese tourists who turn up in large numbers across Europe. Ditto for the Chinese) and even in our boat ride, the guide used Italian, English and French. She pointed out some of the lesser-inhabited islands that house old cathedrals of the 12^th century and a mental hospital turned to a monastery, the “cemetery island” of Venice where all the dead are buried and other such islands with fascinating back-stories. We were informed that we had about 45 minutes in each of the islands where we were going to stop.

MURANO

Murano is famous for its glass blowing work. All the Venetian glass blowers moved to Murano in the late 1200s due to a risk of fire.  Even today in Venice, you can find lots of shops selling craft and jewellery made out of Murano glass. There are shops that also advertise “Made in Italy. We do not sell Chinese fake items”. We were shown a demonstration of glass blowing by one of the master craftsmen in Murano’s factories. I have already seen a similar demonstration by a Japanese artist two years ago so I wasn’t too fascinated, but there were oohs and aahs in the crowd. After that, we were lured into a showroom with a lot of Murano glass blowing work on display. We kept contemplating on what to buy and ended up wasting time (got a bowl at the end for €15. Most expensive souvenir purchase till date). We missed visiting the Santa Maria church of the 12^th century and one more church although I have already forgotten its name.

Tip to future travellers: Do not get stuck in the showroom. Go out and explore.

Murano's glass blowing artist under work

He made one of those horses, in under five minutes

Cheena could not stop clicking pictures

BURANO

Our next stop was Burano. This island is popular for its traditional brightly coloured houses that paint a picture. It is renowned for its lace work. Learning from our mistake in Murano, we quickly walked out of the lace shop and walked through the streets of Burano with its colourful houses and a beautiful church. The church mass was underway when we went in so we just stood by, prayed and walked out. There was a beautiful statue of Jesus on the cross, which we clicked though. We relaxed by a café and had famous Burano biscuits and a gelato cone (of course!). I broke a fridge magnet while I was looking in one of the shops and was ready to buy it, but the guy sweetly gave me a fresh piece. Vedha happy annachi. We met a middle aged Indian couple here. They were probably South Indians. Adhaana…you can’t go too far without seeing namma people.

The colourful houses of Burano

The shop where I broke the magnet :P

The beautiful Venetian masks and my face

TORCELLO

Our final stop Torcello was the fanciest of all. This little island once held the largest population of the Republic of Venice. With umpteen private boats and a LOT of tourists, it was pretty lively. We hear that Brangelina holidayed there too. We just walked by a canal with scenic bridges that ended in a cathedral and a museum. We had less time so we couldn’t get in, but we took pictures outside and enjoyed the view. I wanted to go to the loo, but the fee was €1.50 and the husband’s mathematical brain quickly said, “you can’t pay over 100 rupees for peeing”, so I silently walked away (too much info I know). The husband found a pomegranate tree and was really excited. He loves them so much that he can have pomegranates for all three meals in a day. While we were waiting for the boat, we met that Indian couple again. Being Indian, they had come back late and their boat had left without them. They asked us if they could join our boat, but our strict aapicer guide didn’t let them in. We went on to our boat and as we sailed past, we could see them standing helplessly wondering what to do. They were Kannadigas by the way and the husband was feeling guilty about not being able to help them. As we say in Japanese, “shouganai” or can’t be helped. 

Cheena and the pomegranate tree

Perfect bridge for a picture, but there was a big queue as you can see

We wondered how old the sculptures behind me could be...

It was an hour’s ride back to the pier. The waters have signboards on them with speed limits specified. This boat ride was definitely more enjoyable and also friendlier on the wallet than the expensive 25-minute gondola ride from yesterday. We got back on land, and quickly got into the queue at St. Mark’s Basilica after a short argument on lunch.

Venice as seen from the waters

Expenses:

One of the private boats that goes to the islands

·      The Tour to the islands of Murano, Burano and Tortello, booked via www.viator.com - €20 per person (full link given above)

·      Coffee and Ice-creams at Burano – €7.50

·      Fridge magnet and postcard at Burano - €3.25

·      Murano Glass Bowl - €15.00

Gondola Ride - Check!

After the clock tower tour that set the pace for the day, we walked to the meeting point of our gondola ride. The gondolas are the fancy boats of Venice, made famous in namma ooru by the movie Manmadhan Ambu (climax almost shot entirely in Venice) and the song edho edho ondru from Enakku 20 Unaku 18. The gondoliers wear black and white striped t-shirts and some of the fancier gondolas also have live musicians in them performing for the riders. Our pick-up point was in front of the tourist office near The Royal Gardens(Giardinetti Reali), which was just a park filled with noisy tourists. The road leading to the gardens is strewn with predominantly Bangladeshi hawkers who sell Venetian masks, fridge magnets and the like. If you spoke Hindi or Bengali, they are sometimes nice enough to give you a little discount. But I am sure if you bargain hard enough, you can get discounts irrespective of the language you speak. Some of them don't budge at all though.

Ours was a shared gondola ride for six people and we had booked it through www.getyourguide.com. We had paid for a 25 minutes ride WITH a live English guide. The guide was the only reason we chose this tour but our gondola did not include any guide, nor did the gondolier act as one. We could have booked rides from other websites, which included a live performance in the gondola, kind of felt disappointed to have missed out on that, and not getting what we had paid for. Nevertheless, the gondola ride was pleasant – it was reminiscent of the backwater rides in our very own Kerala, except that the gondola sailed through narrow streets and tiny bridges. A tip for travellers going on a shared gondola ride – if you sit right in front of the gondolier facing the other end of the gondola, you could get pictures taken of you with the gondolier in the background and that makes it look like you went on a fancy private gondola ride.

See what I meant about the picture!

The gondola ride is an over-hyped over-expensive phenomenon in Venice – once you get through the initial excitement, all you will see is algae laden walls that are about a century old with the paint peeling off the walls. I would choose the backwaters of Aleppey any day over this. The Vaporettos at €7 per person is a much better bargain – they are as good a river cruise as the gondolas, just that you won’t be able to touch the waters from a Vaporetto. And by the way, in the gondolas you can’t move around too much since the balance of the weights is important. So if you are looking to cuddle up too close to your partner, hard luck!

The 25-minute gondola ride was over before we realized. But we were tourists after all, and the gondola HAD to be checked off our list, like all others’. 

The husband and I couldn’t enjoy the walk back as well. We had to rush back again to catch the penultimate bus from Piazza Roma. We didn’t want to be left waiting for the last bus on the first night in a new city, but we managed to enjoy a gelato though. As expected, there are a lot of Gelatterias strewn across the square and the streets. We walked back hurriedly, this time with more confidence and we reached the bus stop and took the bus back to the hotel. The hotel did not have a restaurant, but we got directions from the hotel receptionist for nearby restaurants to dine in, but we were too skeptical to walk through the dark alleyways so after a short walk and our tired legs begging us to go back, we got back to the hotel and ordered for a pizza delivery. Without learning from our lunch mistake, we ordered two pizzas and ended up wasting quite a bit. Nevertheless, with our tummies now full, we are off to sleep with full excitement for tomorrow, which begins with a trip to the islands of Murano, Burano and Tortello. Ciao! 

Expenses:

·      Venetian Mask and Postcard - €1.90

·      Fridge Magnet - €3.00

·      Water - €2.00 (best to fill water in your own bottles)

·      Dinner – Pizza Margherita and Pizza Marinara - €19.00

·      Gelattos(a small cone) - €3.00 for two

TORRE DELL'OROLOGIO – The Venetian Clock Tower

We reached well ahead of time for the tour of the Torre Dell’orologio, the Clock Tower of Venice, thanks to Google Map’s excellent guidance (not so excellent, as we realized later) and walked straight to the Correr Museum where we were supposed to meet the guide for the clock tower visit. guide was there on time and with a small group of 9 people, we formed a line and waddled through the crowds to a seemingly hidden entrance to the clock tower. They can take only a maximum of 12 people every hour due to the narrow staircases and limited space available inside the clock tower, so we considered ourselves lucky to be there.

Clock tower behind me

The hidden entrance

The Venetian clock tower is the second most famous clock tower (Big Ben being the first of course) and built in the 1700s, it is still functioning perfectly. The clock-watcher’s family apparently lived inside the clock tower for generations until about 16 years ago when the post was abolished and engineers took over the maintenance. I’m sure it would have been a nightmare living inside that tower when every five minutes, there was a BOOM.

The clock has two faces – the back face that shows just the time in hours and the front face showing the time in hours, the month, the day and the zodiac. Just below this, there is a digital clock, which was added later comprising of two panels one each on the left and the right. The left panel shows the hours in roman numerals and the right panel showing the minutes in Arabic numerals (this changes only once every five minutes since both the panels have a similar 12 step mechanism only). It was fascinating to see the centuries-old clock’s working mechanism from the inside. 

Inside the clock tower

These guys go on a procession every year

View of the Piazza San Marco from atop the clock tower

There are two bronze statues of Do Mori (two moors – they are actually men wearing no pants) who strike the bell on the hour – the elder moor with a beard strikes the bell 2 minutes before the hour indicating the time gone and the younger moor strikes it 2 minutes after the hour indicating the future. There are so many of these bells and gongs going across Venice at odd

The moor's bum

times like this, although I don’t know the stories behind the other ones. The guide was pretty entertaining, informative and obsessed with the naked moors that she mentioned them almost 10 times during the tour. She was also the most excited to see them when we reached the top.

I am guessing the clock tower tour is not so popular, since they are available only 2 hours everyday in English. Italian and French guided tours are also available at certain hours during the day. But I highly recommend this tour, if not for anything else, the view of the Piazza San Marco from atop the tower is worth every penny!

Expenses:

The clock tower tour tickets can be purchased from www.vivaticket.it for €12.50 but comes at a reduced price of €7.50 if you have already purchased the Museum Pass (more about the pass later).

Buonguorno from Venice!

We finally bid good-bye to London today and took a RyanAir flight from London -  Stansted airport to Venice Treviso airport. Despite being an early morning flight, the airport was fully crowded. Across the world, looks like people prefer low-cost airlines. Talking of which, RyanAir is doing a great job at flying people low cost. But I would suggest you to go through this link before you fly RyanAir - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair#Customer_service  As for us, it was a comfortable flight and having woken up at 0300 to catch the flight, we spent the entire duration sleeping that when we finally woke up, we were already landing.  
 

The Treviso airport can be compared to one of our small airports, for example, Pune – no frills, land and get out. So once we got out, we took the comfortable airport transfer bus to Venezia Mestre railway station. The airport staff at Stansted was handing out passes for this airport transfer. One ticket costs £10, which was pretty decent considering the distance.
 

The lanes of Venice

 After looking like a lost child in a carnival for a while at the Mestre station and enquiring at the ticket office, we finally took a bus to Via Bergamo, where our hotel is. You have to walk forward from the Mestre railway station to the bus stop. There are bus stops on either side of the road so you have to enquire which way to go and the bus numbers to your destination.

Luckily, the hotel was a short walk from our bus stop. Once we checked in, we quickly had a shower and left the hotel to explore the quaint little island city of Venice.

Italy’s transport system is pretty convenient – you can get into the bus and the driver issues tickets in exchange for cash. Alternatively, you can buy tickets even at the local Tobacco shops called Tabacchi in Italian. We got round tickets for the day to Piazza Roma. Day passes are also available for €20 which includes unlimited travel in all sorts of transport – bus, local trains and the vaporetto(the water taxis of Venice). Tickets have to be validated by showing your ticket in front of the circular box that’s available (much like checking into London trains using Oyster card). Buses have about three of these boxes inside and the Vaporetto and trains have them in the wharf and platforms respectively. 
 

We reached Piazza Roma, the town square, which has a bus depot not unlike our Perambur depot. Hungry as we were, we filled our stomachs in a fancy restaurant that served huge pizzas the size of an above-average sized dosa. 
 

Our next stop was to buy the all-important Lyca Mobile SIM card. For the uninitiated, Lyca Mobile is a boon for all travellers. At rates as low as 1 cent/min, it is the best bet to keep in touch with home and the world. In Venice, we could buy a SIM card from the local store – €10 recharge, for calls and 1 GB worth of 3G data valid for a month. We were given a leaflet and a SIM – the card got automatically activated in a few hours. I had to call the customer care for 3G activation instructions though. With a little bit of difficulty understanding Italian English over the phone (yourrrr seeem carrrdu activashon and all that), finally we were connected. Voila! It is a great feeling to have connectivity! We spoke to our families and after all the love exchange, we started the 30-min walk to Piazza San Marco, the bustling square filled with tourists and pigeons. Since we are now pros at walking, thanks to all the walking we had done in the last 10 days, a half an hour walk was going to be a cakewalk. The walk was very memorable. We had book a tour of the Venetian clock tower and we had less than an hour to get there. We followed Google Maps faithfully through narrow lanes, which sprouted from nowhere when all we were expecting were dead ends. It was a maze, but a beautiful charming maze with surprises in every corner and when we finally turned into a seemingly narrow lane we had reached the St. Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco) and it was like a scene out of a fairytale. We both caught ourselves grinning from ear to ear taking in the sights! 

You can see I am happy!

Expenses:

·      Greenwich to London-Stansted - £0.00 (my brother dropped us)

·      RyanAir Flight Tickets from London-Stansted to Venice-Treviso Airport - £133.98 (including baggage allowance of £25 per person)

·      Airport Transfer from Treviso Airport to Mestre/Mainland - €10 each

The birds of Venice - does anybody know the name of the white bird?

·      Lunch - Pizza Margherita, one Vegetarian Calzone and a bottle of water - €34.50 (including a tip of €2) 

·      Bus from Mestre Railway station to Via Bergamo - €5.00 for two

·      Round trip tickets from Mestre’s Via Bergamo bus stop to Piazza Roma -  €5.20 for two

·      Lyca Mobile SIM card - €10 for the SIM card with talktime and 3G data