Visiting Venice

Anyway I reached Venice, a nice Italian lady was at the reception and after the formalities I checked in the room, it was 1 pm then.


A quick shower and I was ready to explore the ancient city of Venice, I took a bus from my hotel and reached the center of Venice, Piazzale Roma,





The place was crowded with tourist and it was so good to see people around and to experience the real summer, so different from Finland. But the good feeling didn’t last too long, when the heat of the Sun started becoming unbearable, I looked around saw a kiosk and got a can of coke to chill me.

I had the list of places with me to visit but I didn’t have the luxury of Lonely planet or Frommer’s book, so I had to get a map. I looked around and saw a tourist office and to my surprise they were selling the maps there and that too a good 2, 5 Euro for map of Venice. I took one, asked the guy to locate me on the map and I fixed my co-ordinates. I walked a few steps and came to the Canal Grande, I saw the Vaporetti’s, I had seen them lot of times in movies and telly but to see them myself was a different feeling. Without a second thought I bought ticket and hopped into one, didn’t bother to ask where it was going for all I was interested in was the ride.

I saw many boats on the canal, it was so different, taxis on boat, police on boat, the boat of postal department, the delivery guy on the boat, everything was being done through boat and there were no big streets, those flashy cars and huge Lorries.

I wanted to reach Piazza San Marco, the heart of Venice (atleast for the tourist), but since I didn’t know the place, I reached the casino place of Venice, the Lido island. From the Lido island I could see the Piazza San Marco, this is the picture of San Marco from there.


After this I took a ferry and reached Piazza San Marco, this is the biggest space in Venice much different to the criss cross of streets, alleys and canals. This is also one of the busiest place in town.
See below the maze of tourist



Below are all pictures of this Piazza





Top view of this place( will tell you later where I got this top view from)



Basilica of San Marco,

One of the most beautiful cathedrals which I have ever seen, this Basilica was constructed in the 9th century.


One more view of the Basilica



side view of this



Top view of the Basilica



Palazzo Ducale

This was the old residence of one time ruler of Venice the Dogos. It has wonderful arcades and light facade. It was very difficult to capture the whole palace in one frame.



The top view of this palace


The white building next to Dogos palace is the jail where Casanova and Galileo Galilei spent part of their lives



After this I had to check out the map once again

I witnessed the traffic jam in Venice , yes in the Canal Grande, here is the picture



The Gondolas are the one of the essential things if you want to spend some quality romantic time in Venice, but mind you, they are expensive,



Ponte di Rialto

This is one of the most popular and famous bridge of Venice. The artist for this bridge was Antonio da Ponte selected after the proposals by likes of Michelangelo, Sansovino and Palladio.

Here is the bridge



This is the view of the Canal Grande from this bridge, this used to be the harbour of Venice till the earlier part of 15th century.



Opposite to Piazza San Marco is the Chiesa della Salute



The construction of this church began in 1631.


There are two important museums which are very near to this place, they are ‘Accademia’, and the ‘Raccolta Peggy Guggenheim’.


Situated in the Adriatic sea, infront of San Marco is the island of San Giorgio. Here is the picture of it among the blue sea water



The white church that you can see in the photograph above is the Church of Saint George. This church is the work of Palladio. Here is the view of inside of the church,


This island is not that busy and only three other tourist were there when I reached around 2 pm, inside the church were only me and pastor. The pastor came to me, we talked and he was kind enough to give me the tour of the whole church.
Here is the famous painting of ‘Tintoretto’(last supper)




More picture inside the lonely church. I did a small prayer in the church and lighted a candle. There were lot of other beautiful paintings in this church

This is me standing outside the church and in the background you can see the San Marco Basilica. Since I was alone, I took this picture by setting the timer on my camera and putting it on a wall, obviously the setting was not correct so the frame grazed my head.



This is one more view of the island with a little less zoom, such a peaceful sight, an island standing alone in the sea



Here is one more church, which is situated at Ferrovio, next to Santa Lucia train station. This church is known as Campo S Stefano



In the Piazza San Marco is the bell tower. The clock in this tower marks the hours, the season, the moon phases and Zodiac. There is a lift which takes you to the top of bell tower after buying a ticket of 6 Euros. I went to the top and from there I took most of the top views.

The moment I reached the bell started to ring for 1 pm I guess and the sound was deafening.



Here are few other pictures that I took from the Bell tower.



The Adriatic sea



The sea
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Here are few more random pictures I took in Venice





















The famous masks of Venice




This was the end of my two day visit of the beautiful city of Venice and on the evening of 16th I took the train to reach Florence.