To Paris and Beyond: 05-05 Kings (Palace) and (Grand) Kanals

We feel alive and ready for all that Venice has to offer us. We'll try to "do it all" in the next 6 days. Our hotel room in the picture consists of the two large windows and the one small one on the second floor. To the right of our building is the landmark called the Scala Contarini del Bovolo.

We head for the Travel Information office first and get a Venice Pass ($40e each) for the week that will get us into most of the museums we want to see and will also let us bypass the lines of people wanting to pay for their tickets to get in. If we don't have to buy the ticket we skip that line and instead head straight for the entrance to the museum where the nice lady will scan our passes and allow us in.

The line for St Mark's Basilica is very long and it's free to get in so our passes won't get us past THIS line so we go to the Correr Museum first. They don't allow pictures at a lot of the museums because of the artwork in them. So, here's a picture of the outside of the Doge's Palace with a gondolier explaining where they will take the family and for how much.

The Correr Museum anchors one end of St Mark's Square opposite St Mark's Basilica. We look at the architecture of the building inside and mostly ignore the artwork.

At the other end of the Square is a huge building called the Doges Palace. This was the seat of power in Venice for over 1,000 years. It also was home to judges and where convicts would hear their sentence before walking over the Bridge of Sighs to the prison. Their loved ones would watch them go from another bridge and sigh. Isn't this all so dramatic? Here is what the prisoner would see.

And then he would see his prison cell.

It is one of the most photographed buildings in the world. It is so "Italian" that Walt Disney World recreated the look and feel of the Palace and the Bell Tower in their Italy Pavilion at EPCOT to represent Italy to America.

We signed up for a tour of the building that included the areas most people don't see when they are here (except the 20 people every few hours who sign up for the tour...every day...all year long). It WAS more interesting than walking around looking at art (which we did anyway after the tour). They have this huge room that is supported from above like a suspension bridge. There are no supports IN the room. We got to go up into the attic to see these supports. And no, I can't show them to you...it's a secret. Here's a picture of the room itself.

Casanova (yes, THAT one) was from Venice. We learned that Casanova wasn't just a lover after all. He was a convict. He was convicted of being a lover...of another men's wives. He got caught and spent time in the prison here in the palace. We also learned he escaped with the help of a Priest (follow the money!).

The Palace WAS extremely beautiful inside with gold leafing on many ceilings, richly ornate woodworking for the judges, and a room with old world maps over the walls.

Inside, the courtyard of the Palace looked surprisingly like the outside. This is unusual because normally the outsides of buildings would look grand for show but the insides would look plain. That is St. Peter's Basilica (church) connected to the end of the Doges Palace.

We bought a couple of Italian sandwiches for lunch and sat down on the steps in the Square while we finished them.

For the next couple of hours we rode vaporettos back and forth along the Grand Canal photographing buildings, other canals, gleaming-wood taxis, and gondolas.