05-06 Rainy Walks in Venice

Today we will be exploring the streets of Venice using two guided walks by Rick Steves. He's already done the research for us and he points out interesting things about places you might not visit on your own in Venice...or things you might not see - like a traffic jam of gondolas.

We start our rainy day in St. Mark's Square with a little Italian breakfast of croissants and muffins. Our unspoken agreement is that I gently lead us in the direction of our walk and we both stop and shop whenever we see a store we like. Karen likes them all, especially the ones that sparkle.

Karen has a digital camera and I have a movie camera and we capture what we want to remember. Along the back streets to the Rialto Bridge we walked and shopped and picture tooked.

It was about lunch time so we opted for a cafeteria type place and we ended up with mushy lasagna and dry pork roast. Fortunately the roasted potatoes tasted great.

On the Rialto Bridge they have shops just like Florence does on their Ponte Vecchio bridge. Karen bought a charm of the Rialto Bridge here.

The rain continued but we start a second walk of Rick's from the Rialto Bridge to Frari Church. The further from the bridge you got the less touristy were the shops. We would walk and shop and then the street would open into a plaza with a church in it and people would be sitting outside near fountains or at an outdoor café having a gelato or coffee.

We found postcards to send off to our friends and a calendar of priests that no one will get.

We passed couples getting wedding pictures taken, beautiful hand-drawn artwork, and places for Karen to test yet another baker on his cannoli making skills.

The sun has finally come out and we are near the Frari Church but decide to head back toward the bridge on a different route - as usual. There are only three bridges to the Venice Island but they do have these free taxi boats the size of a gondola. Two guys paddle across and everyone stands in the boat like George Washington crossing the Delaware.

We went to a place listed on the map for this crossing but they weren't running so we walked along the river to the Rialto Bridge. We meandered home and rested for an hour and then we went back out to find another pizza, that we split. This gives you an idea of how interested Karen was in tasting another bland pizza.

After dinner we continued walking and found some street performers in plazas and one guy practicing for a quartet performance later in the evening.

As we walked across the Accademia Bridge we spied another "city" cruising through Venice. It is an impressive sight when a ship that size moves through these narrow waterways.