Adriatic Treasures: Croatia to Venice
Mike and Judy Henderson
September 13-29, 2019
I'm going to leave the map at the start of each page so you can see where we are.
9/26/2019 (Thursday) We leave for Venice today and our tour ends tomorrow. We left the hotel fairly early.
We had only one more passport control point to cross - into Slovenia. Slovenia is part of the European Union so there are no passport checks between Slovenia and Italy. Here's the border crossing between Croatia and Slovenia.
After crossing into Italy we stopped along the way at a gas station for a restroom break. It had an espresso bar.
Eventually, we reached the outskirts of Venice.
Soon we were on the causeway between the mainland and the main island of Venice.
Our Tauck representative met us at the bus and organized us into two groups - one for each water taxi. We learned later that she lives in Venice, and was born there.
Here we are boarding the water taxi to the hotel.
The public transportation in Venice are the vaporettos. They're very convenient but usually very crowded. And just a side note: In Venice, the fire department, the paramedics and the police will come to you by boat through a canal. They come to the closest dock point to your location and proceed the rest of the way through the alleyways of Venice. For the fire department, they usually have to pump water from the canal and lay hoses from their boat to the fire.
The boat with our baggage was alongside us for a while. I think I recognize our bags on the boat.
In the US, dogs stick their heads out the window to feel the wind. Here, they get up on any high point on the boat.
Coming into the main area of Venice you can see the tower in San Marco Square, the Doge's Palace and the Metropole Hotel, if you know where to look.
A closer view of San Marco Square.
Coming into the Metropole Hotel.
We arrived!
It was too early to get into our rooms but the hotel provided light snacks and drinks for us in the lobby.
Some of us went on a Tauck-arranged tour of the Doge's Palace. Here we are with the guide.
One of the canals we crossed over on the way to the palace.
The famous "Bridge of Sighs" between the Doge's Palace and the prison
The courtyard of the Doge's Palace.
The guide describing the courtyard area to our group.
We went upstairs into the palace. The palace is very richly decorated. Here's a picture of the ceiling above the stairs.
It would take too many pictures and too much time to show you most of the rooms of the palace. I'll only include a few here to give you an idea of how grand the place is.
Artwork in one of the rooms.
Some of our group in front of that artwork to give scale.
Another room and artwork
An interesting 24 hour clock. You can't tell from the photo but it's huge and is built into a wall.
A ceiling design - just part of the ceiling.
Another piece of artwork, with the Doge in the painting..
Some artwork and part of a ceiling.
The last room we went into was the Chamber of the Great Council.
The back wall of the Chamber.
A view of the courtyard from the chamber.
We next went to the Bridge of Sighs to cross over to the prison. This photo shows the bridge from the Doge's Palace. You can see the bars on the windows of the prison.
A view out of the stone lattice on the bridge, looking toward the Giudecca Canal (the big canal that the cruise ships use).
That was essentially the end of the tour of the Doge's Palace. We went back to the hotel and were able to get into our rooms. That evening was the Farewell Dinner in the hotel.
Here's Judy with Matt.
Some of the group at social time before dinner.
Bonnie, Wendy and Rich.
A table at dinner.
The table where Judy and I sat.
And that was the end of the tour. We're staying in Venice for two more days, so we headed to bed looking forward to no alarm wake-up.