Day 2: Venice on Tour

In the morning we had a walking tour of Venice.  It started at St Mark’s Square in the midst of thousands of tourists and 15,000 pigeons. A dominate feature of the square is the Bell tower with a statue of the Angel Gabriel on top.  Gabriel is the weather person for all of Venice.  He predicts the weather according to the direction the statue is facing.  If you live in Venice, you only have to look for the angel Gabriel to know the weather.  Gabriel was pointed to the South and it was raining…that is all I know.

St Mark’s church was really interesting.  The story goes that originally a Venetian stole the bones of the Apostle St Mark and brought them to Venice.  As soon as the bones got to Venice they started building the church…1000 years ago.  St Mark’s bones are buried inside the high alter.  It is a very beautiful church. It is also called The “Gold Church” as there is a huge amount of gold leaf everywhere in the church.  The gold dramatically reflects light and it is something to see.

We learned that Venice was founded in the 4^th century as the Roman Empire was crumbling.  It was founded because it was a safe haven.  It was built on marsh land with sandbars everywhere.  You had to know the specific path for your boat or you would get hung up on a sandbar.  The enemy had problems attacking the city because no one told them where the sandbars were located.

The tour ended at the Rialto Bridge…the oldest of all 400 bridges.   

We had lunch at a nice restaurant that had at least 100 bras nailed to the ceiling.  We asked what the story was and none of the employees seemed to know how it started except that you had to be at least a 34B…3 shots of whiskey probably would have helped.

The afternoon was a boat tour of the city.  At the end of the day, my Fitbit said we walked 4.6 miles.

Gabriel, the Weather Man

The lunch stop

St Mark's Church