Venice, Italy

We paid for all of our flights for this trip with points, and Kevin found a better deal to fly home from Venice, Italy rather than Ljubljana. We took a shared van from Ljubljana city center to Marco Polo Airport. It was only supposed to take about 2.5 hours but thanks to traffic and road closures it was more like a four-hour journey. Add in the time taking a vaporetto boat from the airport to the hotel and we were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived. But the decadent luxury of our hotel (also a credit card point benefit) made up for it. The Grand Hotel Palazzo de Dogi is actually nowhere near the the Doge Palace -- it is in the quiet Sestiere Cannaregio district at the northern shore of the island of Venice. The palace was built in the 1600s for the Rizzo-Patarol family and was home to the city's first botanical garden.

It's a beautiful property in a peaceful residential neighborhood. Within a two-minute walk you can get to the Chiesa della Madonna dell'Orto. This is the neighborhood where the painter Tintoretto lived most of his life - the church commissioned several large-scale masterpieces from him and he maintained a strong connection to the Chiesa until his death in 1594. He is buried here in a family tomb.

We loved exploring this beautiful neighborhood. It felt worlds away from the throngs of tourists that swarm around the St. Mark's area.

We loved trying the restaurants in Cannaregio. Our favorite was called Oficina Ormesini and it served something called cicchetti which are light bites to compliment a drink, basically Venetian tapas. It looks simple -- toppings on a slice of bread -- but they used so much creativity to come up with delicious flavor combinations. I would come back to Venice just to eat here again (we ate here twice)!

We also had a memorable meal on the terrace at the Ristorante al Cinema Italia. From our table we could watch the residents below doing their evening stroll (passeggiata).

Why is it called the Ristorante al Cinema Italia? Because next door is a 1915-era Art Nouveau movie theater. Or at least it used to be. The theater inside was decommissioned in the 1990s and has been cleverly repurposed into the grandest grocery store I've ever encountered.

It was easy to get lost or turned around walking around this city, though. Sometimes we crossed a small bridge and wound up in a dead end. The narrow alleyways didn't help -- they often blocked a cellphone signal, making online navigation useless. There are still some places in the world that are best served by paper maps! 

We did manage to make our way on foot to St. Mark's Square (Piazza San Marco) on Monday morning. It was a pleasant half hour walk, and the piazza was not as crowded with people or pigeons as we'd expected. Of course it was before 9am so maybe the big tour groups were still eating breakfast. But where were the massive flocks of pigeons? Well the city put a stop to that in 2008 with a feeding ban and a ban on stalls selling seeds or corn in the area. It makes for a less iconic (but definitely more hygienic!) photo op. 

We booked a guided tour of the Basilica of San Marco which helped us to get a sense of the sheer opulence of this church. The Venetian Republic put its wealth on display when decorating the exterior and interior. Originally the exterior walls were red brick, but as Venice became more prosperous they could afford to recover the brick with sheets of pure marble. Gold-leaf mosaic tiles inside cover more than 8000 square meters of wall space -- a fortune just in the "wallpaper" alone. For the Venetian Republic, the Basilica was more than a church; it was a showcase for the prosperity and power of La Serenissima -- the "most serene republic".

We had self-guided tickets to visit the Palazzo Ducale (Palace of the Duke) but our St. Mark's tour guide invited us to just join the rest of her group who had booked a combo guided tour. This was great because we got so much more out of our palace visit than we would have with just the basic audioguide. Our tour guide, Denise, was born and raised here in Venice; she was an expressive storyteller and brought the history alive for us. 

The first question Denise answered for us was: "what the heck is a Doge, anyway?". The word Doge is often translated as "Duke" but that's not entirely accurate. During the maritime republic, the wealthy merchant families in Venice chose a representative form of government (the republic) but decided they needed a figurehead to stand in place as a head of state. Rather than have a king or an emperor, they chose to elect a leader from amongst themselves. The man (always a man!) had to be independently wealthy, older than 70, and would serve in the role for life. When a Doge died, the office was not hereditary; the families would gather and elect a new Doge. Doing things this way allowed the power to rest with the oligarchs in the Senate and various Councils and limited the power of the Doge and also the power of any one family to seize control of the government. It was a clever system. 

Although it is called a palace, the Palazzo Ducale was more like the White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court rolled into one building -- it was the main seat of all the government. Yes, the Doge lived here but the palace's many rooms and offices were also used by the courts, councils and lawmaking bodies. 

The palace was also connected to the Prigioni Nuove (new prisons) next door. For very serious crimes, the accused would come to the palace and be tried by the High Court (the Quarantia or Council of Forty). If found guilty, he or she would walk through a passageway over an enclosed bridge to the prison to serve their sentence. The bridge earned the nickname Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs) because there are small latticed windows in the stonework through which the condemned could catch one last glimpse of the free life outside and sigh in resignation as they were led off to the dark prison cells.

In case you were wondering, this is the view of the lagoon from the Bridge of Sighs. Ahhhh!

There's another very famous bridge in Venice - the Rialto Bridge. The Grand Canal runs directly through the heart of Venice and this large channel effectively splits the city into two main islands. Only four bridges span the Grand Canal and the Rialto is the oldest one. In 1181 a floating bridge was built on the site, followed by a wooden one in 1255. Construction on the stone bridge took three years and was completed in 1591. Until 1854 the Rialto Bridge was the only way to get across the Grand Canal on foot; otherwise you had to take a boat.

Boats are still a huge part of daily life in this city -- there are no cars or motorbikes allowed in the historic center, and they would be useless here anyway with all the stairs and bridges. In our short three days here we saw how boats are the foundation of every aspect of municipal service logistics. Porters use specialized stair-friendly handcarts to collect garbage and then it is lifted onto the garbage barge by crane. During emergencies, police boats throw up big wakes zooming down canals with lights on and sirens blaring. Modern motorized boats provide ambulance services, deliver goods, ferry passengers and all the things we generally use cars and trucks for. And gondoliers are really a part of everyday life, too -- there are a handful of gondolas that still do ferry locals across the Grand Canal in spots where there isn't a bridge. Our hotel was right across from a school that offered traditional gondola rowing lessons (I'm assuming for tourists). One night we sat outside and watched as the instructor tried vainly to tell the student how to execute the turn without hitting anything. It was highly entertaining. Gondoliering is truly a skill!

Another Venetian specialty skill is the art of glassblowing. On Tuesday we took the vaporetto to the island of Murano to check out the workshops and watch some of the artisans in action.

We stopped in at the Museo del Vetro (Glass Museum) to understand more about the history of glass in Venice. Glassmaking has been a part of the Venetian economy since the 5th century, but in 1291 the city moved all glassworks to the island of Murano as a fire prevention measure and to preserve the secrets of glassmaking. Glassmakers who worked here were not allowed to leave the island and could not -- under penalty of death -- share their glassmaking techniques with outsiders. This is, in part, how Venice grew so wealthy; they knew how to make high-quality extremely clear glass as well as how to use minerals to give it jewel-toned colors and patterns.

Many of the Murano workshops sell their pieces direct to customers at storefront boutiques that line the canals here, and you can also watch the glass being made in the attached studios. High-end masterworks sell for several thousand dollars. 

Since we were already out and about, we took another vaporetto from Murano to the island of Burano, much further out in the lagoon. This island is known for lacemaking and for painting its houses in a vibrant rainbow of colors. We thought we'd come here and escape the tourist crowds, but we weren't the only ones with that idea -- Burano is an Instagrammer's dream.

We enjoyed walking around and found a canal-side cafe serving lunch (more cicchetti!) and appropriately bright spritzes. The long vaporetto ride back to Venice was standing room only but it was worth it to have seen this captivating village.

Back in Venice, we really had no agenda for our last day. We hopped on a vaporetto to the city center then just walked around soaking up the atmosphere.

Kevin came to Venice on a solo trip in 1996; I stayed one night here (!!!) on a whirlwind Europe trip with my friend Jamie in the summer of 1999. A lot has changed in the decades since those trips, and with all the news reports about Venice being "overrun by tourists" I wasn't sure what to expect this time. But our three days here were romantic and delightful, we found ways to avoid most of the crowds, and I am so glad to have returned and spent a little more time enjoying the sights of this magnificent city!