Venice, Italy – Day 2 – April 7

Today our goal was just to wander aimlessly and pop into whatever looks interesting along the way. Eating gelato and having pizza…….

We got a bit of extra sleep this morning and we took off on the People Mover to Piazzale Roma where we caught a vaporetto to Piazza San Marco and then went in search of the #2 Vaporetto to get to San Giorgio Maggiore Island. 

It turned out to be 3 bridges past St. Marks and we boarded for the short ride across the canal.

 shots from the vaporetto

 There really isn’t much to see or do on this tiny island, but we had passed it many times on our way to other places, so decided it was time to check it out. We bought our tickets for an elevator ride up the bell tower for beautiful views of the entire lagoon and St. Mark’s Square. It’s a good vantage point to get better photos of Piazza San Marco. The bells rang while we were up there…..pretty, but loud! The San Giorgio Church was beautiful as well. We didn’t get a great shot of the Last Supper by Tintoretto. It was blocked off by a rope and a wall and honestly, we didn’t really pay much attention to it. It’s not the one by Leonardo da Vinci.

 the Last Supper by Tintoretto

 elevator to the top

 views in all directions

 lovely garden maze

 Piazza san Marco

After visiting the church, we found a café and Greg got a coffee and I got a coke and a cookie. It was a lovely sunny day to sit next to the marina and just relax and watch the people. There were some beautiful manicured maze type gardens in the courtyard of the church, but there seemed to be a lot of renovating being done and they were all blocked off. We could see them from the bell tower and would have loved to have gone and gotten a closer look.

 relaxing at cafe

 beautiful marina on the island with San Marco in the background

 walking around the island

Then, we got the vaporetto back to Venice and went in search of lunch. We always go to this one place a bit off St Mark’s Square and it’s always good and it did not disappoint this time either. We split a pizza and I had a Belini (Prosecco and peach juice) and Greg got wine.

 Bridge of Sighs

 Bell Tower

 restaurant

We then went in search of a “hidden gem”, the Acqua Alta Bookshop. (translates to Library of High Water) The peculiar, yet beautiful, bookstore is a mess of probably “organized chaos”, with books scattered across gondola boats, bathtubs and just wall to wall and floor to ceiling “stuff”, with several rooms off the main one.

Often called the craziest bookshop in the world, if you go far enough into the store, you’ll see where it gets the name “High Water Bookshop”. Out back is a terrace with stacks of books that have been flooded and they created a stairway that you can climb up for a beautiful view of a canal. (yes, we did climb up and yes, wait until you see the photos)

 the walk to the book store

 we found the book store!

 resident cats

 full sized gondola

 bath tub

 the back patio

 stairway made of old wet books

 looking down into the courtyard

 views in both directions from the top of the stairs

 another side patio

3D photo

When the local waterways rise to fill the well-known store, it can rise inches off the floor, which would destroy any other collection. The store's whimsically helter-skelter space is seen in their "fire escape" which is simply a door leading directly out into a canal. To really complete the look, the store has become home to more than one stray cat which are also able to escape the rising tides by hanging out atop the stacks. The 2 cats we saw out front sunning in a chair and on a stack of books were well fed and FAT! What a quirky and unique store. Worth seeking out for sure.

We then went in search of gelato, but since we were back in away from the main touristy areas it took a bit of time to wander out and find some. Of course, we succeeded. Then, we wandered out to the Rialto Bridge for some shopping and photo ops.

 drying pasta

 gelato

 Rialto Bridge

We had never wandered the Jewish Ghetto and so we went in search of that area. Finally, we came to the main square there. We also passed a pastry shop that smelled delightful so we popped in for a couple of chocolate filled pastries. YUM! We had just remarked that we hadn’t seen a tourist in quite some time, when we turned a corner and ran into Lorraine & Chuck on a walking tour of the Jewish Ghetto. They were on the segment from Dubai to Venice so they had disembarked that morning.

 delivering chairs by gondola

 getting on the vaporetto

 walk to the Jewish Ghetto

 a fur coat hanging outside?

We figured it was time to finish wandering back towards the People Mover and on the way we had planned to stop at the Gelato shop at the train station where we had scoped it out the night before. It was rated number one and was the best we had eaten in the past two days.

We hung out in the room and watched the sail away before going upstairs for a quick bite before the show. I had started to feel not well about mid-afternoon, so it was nice to just relax on the balcony. Actually, Greg was on the balcony and it was too cold out for me, so I watched from the loveseat with the balcony door closed.

There was no show tonight for some reason and they showed a movie, which we skipped. When we got back to the room we noticed we had a message on the phone from Karen & Steve. We had totally forgotten they had invited us to a sail away party in their suite. I wasn’t feeling great and was pretty tired from so many port days in a row and we had one more to go before getting one sea day to rest.

We have video of the sail in, but that will take some more time to add..... (it's long - 10 minutes and it needs to be shorter to upload)

Tomorrow we tour Sibenik, Croatia.

Since this is the end of another segment from Dubai to Venice we have traveled another 4,532 Nautical Miles.