July and August 2016
Venice
Rick Steves Venice
Scheduled Events:
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Dinner
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Gondola Ride
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Venice Walking Tour
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St. Mark's Basilica Tour
 Centuries of Architectural Innovations |  Inside Notre Dame |
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 Notre Dame Apse |  Wine barrels at Clos de Langres |
 Clos de Langres |  Burgundy Countryside |
It’s not easy getting to a hotel in Venice. Lots of walking and lots of steps. But it’s beautiful! We started off, as usual, with an orientation walk. It’s normally not too hard to get oriented, but Venice is a different beast. It’s all narrow, windy lanes and it’s difficult for even those with a good sense of direction to get around. Our guides made it pretty easy though. Find the nearest piazza – they are very common – and it will have a sign for either St. Mark’s Square, Rialto Bridge, or Accademia Bridge and there will be signs for St. Mark’s from the other two. Our hotel was a few blocks away from St. Mark’s. Instantly, we were able to navigate Venice! Kudos to Sarah our Tour Guide!
Our first evening was spent having a great dinner consisting of fresh seafood and pasta, just as one would expect in Venice.
After dinner, our guides arranged a gondola ride. They reserved a group of gondolas complete with an opera singer and an accordion player. It was really wonderful.
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The next day there was a walking tour, which ended at St. Mark’s Basilica. Michelle and I decided to skip the first part of the tour because we needed daytime photos from a gondola. This hour may have been the most meaningful of the entire tour.
We’re not sure exactly what we missed (we know there was a tour of a mask factory), but we have no regrets. We rejoined our group at the Basilica.
Rialto Bridge, Venice
Doge's Palace, Venice
Bridge of Sighs, Venice
St. Mark's Square, Venice
St. Mark's Square, Venice
St. Mark's Basilica, Venice
St. Mark's Lion, St. Mark's Square, Venice
Doge's Palace and St. Marks' Square, Venice
Grand Canal as seen from the Academia Bridge
Michelle's Venice
"......I wish I could age so gracefully....."
-Michelle
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Doug's Venice
On the bus ride to Venice, Tour Besties Jen, Bart and I discussed getting up early and watching Venice wake up. There were several others who expressed interest and sure enough, at 6:30 on our first morning in Venice, we had seven or eight people in the lobby ready to go. We officially called ourselves the Breakfast Club and started our adventure at a coffee shop. Thank goodness for Bart who is one of those guys with a map in his head and a good sense of direction. He gets oriented in a city faster than anyone I’ve met. Somehow he knew the location of a coffee shop as if he had lived there his entire life. He found a tiny place with a bar and about 40 square feet of space for the customers. One orders her coffee, drinks it there, then pays. After coffee, it was off to the Fish Market, as we thought that would be the most interesting place to observe. On the way, we saw several handcarts loading garbage and others loading laundry from the hotels (they have to ship laundry to the mainland, something I had never considered). We also saw several sweepers - guys with really long brooms - who are responsible for sweeping the streets.
 Fish Market, Venice |  Fish Market, Venice |
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 One of the Breakfast Club's founding members, Bart Gaul |  Caught in the act of taking a Breakfast Club selfie |
 The Breakfast Club members in Venice's Fish Market |  Glass balloons in a storefront display near Venice's Fish Market. |
 Rony is DA MAN when it comes to getting us from point A to point B |  An archway in the Venice Fish Market |
 A view of the Grand Canal from the Fish Market |  A look at the docks in the Fish Market |
 Watching the delivery of goods to the Fish Market |  Getting the fish ready at Venice's Fish Market |
 The Fish Market is more than fish. There are a lot of produce stands, too |  A crane lifts a palate out of a boat. |
 Palates are then put on hand carts to be wheeled to the vendor. |  Sometimes it takes more than one load |
 Remnants from last night's Midnight Club? |  This is how garbage is moved in Venice |
 This is how laundry is moved in Venice. There are no laundry services on the island. |  |
 Getting Rialto clean for the day's crowd. |  Rialto Bridge at 7:00 |
 Rialto Bridge at 13:00 |
The Fish Market was great. It was just the Breakfast Club and the guys who work the docks. They were unloading vegetables and fish (I was surprised to see some of it frozen) and were staging it lovingly in their market stands. It was surprisingly visual and I think I got several quality pictures, but I know Michelle would have gotten better ones. There’s really not too much to write about, because nothing happened. It was more of a sensory experience and my visit to the Fish Market was one of my favorite events of the tour. I contend there is no better way to know a town and understand how it works than to do things like this.