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.
9/27/2019 (Friday) The tour is over and we're on our own now. The first thing we did was sleep late. We got up and got ready just in time to make the breakfast in the hotel:-).
Next door to the Metropole is the Santa Maria Della Pietą, also known as Chiesa Della Pietą, or Vivaldi's Church. Here's a photo of the church as it normally looks (picture from the web).
But here's what it looked like when we were there. They're doing restoration on the facade and the front is covered with scaffolding. Then, they sold the space to a coffee company for advertising, using a mural to hide to scaffolding.
Anyway, the church was a chapel for a Foundling Hospital (really an orphanage for girls) called Ospedale della Pietą. Antonio Vivaldi taught there starting in 1703 and continued off-and-on until 1740.
It was known for it's all-female musical groups and people came from all over for the performances.
There was a performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons scheduled for this evening so we purchased tickets.
Here's the inside of the church.
Judy purchasing the tickets.
We went back to the hotel but just as we entered the room, Judy received a text from an old friend - she and her husband were in Venice, and were sitting at table on the terrace of Caffč Florian in San Marco Square! Here's another link. That was just a short walk so we hurried over and found Nancy and Tony.
We weren't there for more than a few minutes when we saw Diane and Al getting ready to sit down at another table. Judy went over to them and they came to say hello, but then went back to their table.
No visit to Venice is complete without a photo of Campanile di San Marco so I took one from our table.
After coffee, Nancy proposed walking to see Scala Contarini del Bovolo, famed for it's spiral staircase.
Venice is hard to navigate. The narrow alleyways make it difficult to receive GPS signals properly so Google maps often doesn't give you an accurate location.
We were fortunate to encounter three policemen who gave us directions.
We finally found Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, off on a side street.
We bought tickets to go up the staircase. Judy and Nancy on their way up.
There's a good view of Venician rooftops from the top, including Saint Mark's Campanile.
The view down from the top.
We walked towards San Marco Square but Nancy and Tony wanted to get back to their apartment so we said goodbye on the canal bridge over Rio di Palazzo, also known as Rio della Canonica. How do I know it's Rio di Palazzo? That's the Bridge of Sighs in the background.
I wanted to visit the Jewish Ghetto in Venice so we took a number 1 Vaporetto, just a bit down from the hotel. It goes up the Grand Canal and has a stop near the Ghetto. As a side note, the term Ghetto originated in Venice, probably a variation of the Venetian word ghčto, meaning "foundry" which was in the area.
Here's the #1 Vaporetto arriving at our stop. It was pretty crowded and got even more crowded.
View of San Marco Square from the Vaporetto.
There are only four bridges over the Grand Canal: Pont dell'Accademia, Pont di Rialto, Pont degli Scalzi, and Pont della Costituzione. We passed under the first two - the other two are further along the grand canal.
Here's Pont dell'Accademia.
A view of the Grand Canal just past the bridge.
One of the Venetian ambulances. Note the radar mounted on the back deck. They can't mount it any higher and still get under some of the bridges. But it looks like it can be swung up when needed.
The Rialto Bridge. I walked over this bridge the first time I came to Venice, many years ago. When Judy and I were walking back from the Ghetto we passed by the Rialto bridge but didn't go across.
We eventually reached the Marcuola stop and got off the Vaporetto.
We walked to the area of the Guglie Bridge which is very close to the ghetto. We didn't cross it because the ghetto is on the side we approached from.
Here's the entrance to the ghetto. It's probably not the only entrance.
A map of the ghetto.
We walked down to the big square you can see on the map but there wasn't much going on.
There was a museum and synagogue off the square but they charged to enter so we decided against it. When we left the ghetto we stopped at a small restaurant near by.
We ordered two beers and they asked us "large or small?" We said large and that's what they brought us - two 1 liter draft beers. Way too much to drink. I suppose they catch many tourists that way.
After lunch we walked back to San Marco Square and I took this picture of Saint Mark's Basilica, with the late afternoon sun making the facade glow.
That evening we had tickets for the Vivaldi concert at 8:30pm. It was open seating so I went early, at 7:30, to stand in line. But I was the only one in line. These pictures were shot with a different camera, one that is almost silent.
Some of the group was rehearsing.
When they allowed us in, we got two seats in the very front. That made photography a bit difficult - it was hard to get everyone into the pictures.
Playing.
I tended to focus on the cellist. He was the very picture of concentration, and seemed to be the target of a challenge by the violin soloist at one point. Challenge met successfully, because at the end of the piece the violinist lunged forward with a handshake.
Almost a year ago, we bought tickets to The Barber of Seville opera at La Fenice (The Phoenix) and we both thought the performance was for tomorrow night. After we went to bed, I got worried and got up to check the tickets. The tickets were for tonight and we had missed the performance. But we partially recovered and that's a story for the next web page.
[Added note: La Fenice (The Phoenix) burned down in 1996. There's a good book about the fire and the rebuilding of La Fenice - The City of Falling Angels.]