Day 5

We awoke around 7 am and headed down to the hotel’s breakfast. We were wondering what it would be like in comparison to the one in Germany. To my surprise it was somewhat similar, although a bit lighter on meats and cheeses, but they still had them along with numerous breads, cereals, fruits, jams, eggs etc…. and of course it came with cappuccino or café… we went with the cappuccino and were not disappointed.

Headed off to Venice, went across a few bridges and ended up on the main street that went along the main canal and headed towards San Marcos square, which was somewhat our main destination, but we were really just aimlessly walking.

Anyone who has ever been here knows that Venice is basically one big tourist attraction, I had the feeling of being in Disneyland, but with churches and architecture instead of rides. Venice even has the characters, the masked men and women that pose on the streets for change, we stopped at the first ones we saw and snapped a picture with the kids and my wife, pretty cool and they were very nice. Another goal of the day was to pick up masks for everyone, we told the kids they could pick out the one that they wanted most and we were going to do the same. We went from shop to shop looking at the glass trinkets and masks that were seemingly everywhere and I mean this quite literally, almost every shop had some of both and there are a million shops in Venice. If the shop did not have masks or glass, then it was chalk full of some delectable delight, from Gelato to chocolate and an endless assortment of baked goods. The US could really learn from this type of fresh and quality food choices that we just do not seem to have. Even in the local grocery store they had an amazing selection of all high quality foods and we are all loving the selections we have around every corner.

The thing that really amazed me about Venice is how easy it is to get lost, I mean one turn and all of the sudden you are in some deserted alley way and the streets are haphazard and go in all directions. There were some signs to navigate by, especially to the rialto bridge and San Marcos, but beyond that I found it pretty tough. Even with a map it was difficult as many of the names on the buildings for the streets would not match. The one constant is you could easily tell if you were off the beaten path by the utter lack of shops, the main streets they are ubiquitous… having said this, we were probably only “lost” a few times and only for 10 minutes or so, but I never felt comfortable that I really knew how to traverse the city, just knew enough to stay on the main paths and such, which worked out for us.

We stopped for lunch and had a great pizza (prosciutto, mushrooms, yellow peppers) , a small cheese pizza round and a small half sandwich, it was great sitting out in the main street watching the people pass and just enjoying the great weather which was clear and sunny. We continued down the winding streets stopping and looking for masks and trinkets as we went and having a good time. Venice is really fun, it is completely touristy, but it is so different and so delectable it was a real treat and somewhat a surprise to us all.

We eventually came to the Rialto bridge, amazing bridge that goes over the grand canal. It is a huge bridge with 3 different rows of shops along it, we crossed and walked for a bit and very quickly found ourselves lost, it took a bit but we realized that we had already crossed the grand canal and we were on the correct side to find San Marcos square, so we double backed and followed the masses. You very quickly realize you are going the correct way as the shops turn from trinket shops to Gucci, Ferrari and the likes… soon we could see the light, literally the end of the rather small road we came has an opening at the end that opened to the immense square.

The square is amazing, I think it is heightened by the fact that the rest of Venice there is NO open space at all and then all of the sudden you emerge into this gigantic open area with buildings that just take your breath away. We decided to go into San Marcos church and went up the stairs to the horses, as the sign says. The stairs were really cool, it was like ascending in a dungeon and you could feel the impressions of the millions of people who had made this trip over the past years as the stone literally had foot marks worn in it. The kids were a bit scared, but with the help of a modern railing that has been more recently installed, it was not too bad. At the top we realized why so few were going this way, there was a fee and a mini-museum upstairs, 6 Euros later we were in and looking at some amazing sites.

I recommend anyone going in the church to go up the stairs and pay the money, because the view is amazing. You get to look over into the entire church from above and be that much closer to the amazing mosaics that cover all the walls and ceilings. The little museum is pretty cool as well, this is where the horse mystery ends, as the original 4 horses that are outside the building reside, they replaced them with replicas outside. The best of this whole stop is you get to go outside on the balcony where the 4 horses are, there is a great sitting area along the wall and you have a bird’s eye view of the entire square. We basked in the sun up here and took a much needed break for half an hour or so, it was great. After this time we went down and toured the square, lots of high end shops, not exactly in our price range this trip, but we did manage to have 5 euro hot chocolates and cappuccinos and we were off to find our way back to the hotel.

Right off on our way back we ended up down an alley that did not look familiar at all, we ended up doing a giant circle going by the huge open air fish market that was shutting down for the day. We dashed thru the bloody fish gut cobblestones and came back to where we began. This time we made a discreet effort to follow the masses and keep to the busy streets, what took us almost 6 hours to navigate on the way there, probably only took about 45 minutes on the way back, we only stopped to pick up our masks that we had been searching for all day and we were back at the Santa Chiara before we knew it.

Once back at the hotel, we took a break to relax, the kids were pretty much done for the day and we relaxed before going out to dinner. This again consisted of some quality bier brought from Munich for myself and some juice and other odd treats for the kids. We ended up just going down the main canal about 400 meters to the second restaurant we came across, a real quaint little place where we all had various pastas, mine carbonara and it was fantastic. We also had some Chianti, it was great, especially for the price paid. We headed back to the hotel and crashed good and hard.