BOX 244: Venice.

I found it hard to pick a photo of Venice to lead into this post covering the visit Anne and I made in the early summer of 2003. Should it be a standard view (aka "classic" or "cliché," depending on your taste) of a famous landmark--St Mark's, the Doge's Palace, the Rialto Bridge--or maybe a panoramic shot of the Grand Canal? I settled on a gondola, with the boatmen and the passengers nicely poised, and, what I like best, a canalside garden all in bloom. When I took the picture, standing on the other side of the Grand Canal, I liked the garden so much that I took two more photos of it with my zoom lens:

These give more of a glimpse of the statuary on the fence and the flowers on the balcony in the upper left. But I'm getting ahead of the chronology of our trip.

We flew into Venice from Barcelona (see my previous post) and took a boat from the airport (you can do that in Venice) directly to the Lido rather than to Venice proper. When Anne had been planning the trip she couldn't find any affordably priced hotel during the week of our stay except on the Lido, the sandbar-island across the Lagoon. Our hotel was a fourth-floor walkup (and no bellboy service), but it was only a couple of blocks (the Lido has car traffic) from the Lagoon-side landing and another couple of blocks in the opposite direction to get to the beach, on the 'classier' side of the island. The Lido turned out to be an excellent location for us, because Venice was having enough of an early-June heat wave to make afternoon sightseeing uncomfortable for Anne--we could take the vaporetto (Venice's public transportation 'buses') back to the Lido, hang out at the beach for the rest of the afternoon, and have dinner at an excellent garden-restaurant next to our hotel.--more reasonably priced and of better quality than some comparable ones in Venice. (I can share some stories of good and bad dining experiences in Venice if you ask.)

I wish I had lots of photos of the Lido to share, since the place was so special to Anne and me. At least my first pic of our Venice stay shows what is probably the street of our hotel on the afternoon we arrived. We are in the company of my old friend Heinz, who had driven down from Zurich with his friend Kurt. (Anne had met Heinz during our 2001 stay in Tuscany; longtime readers of these posts will remember him also from scenes in New York and Switzerland.) Here are Heinz, Anne and Kurt after our arrival on the Lido:

And here's a pic that Kurt took of us:

One of the best moments of the whole trip was toward sunset that evening when we took the vaporetto to Venice. It was Anne's first sight of the city:

I didn't attempt any more photos that evening. The next morning I took one picture from what is probably the Lido vaporetto dock--my only other pic of the island:

That morning I had plenty of light to photograph our arrival at the Piazzetta San Marco. Here is the famous view of the San Giorgio Maggiore church across the Grand Canal :

A bit less famous though certainly imposing is La Zecca (the Mint, completed 1548, now the Marciana Library), right near our dock at the Piazzetta San Marco:

And here is the Piazzetta itself, with a glimpse of the main Piazza San Marco up ahead on the left, with the Doge's Palace on the right and the incomparable St Mark's in the center:

Looking up at the balcony of the Doge's Palace you can see (among other embellishments) the winged Lion of Venice above the gothic arch:

I didn't take any photos of the main façade of St Mark's from the Piazza San Marco, maybe because I had done so during my previous visits in 1969 and 1972; you can look at those posts (BOXES 34-35; BOXES 61-62) or find countless online photos if you need to see it. Actually, I should just reprint a pic I took in '69 with my little Kodak Instamatic:

And one from '72:

In '03 I instead took one closeup:

. . . and pointed my camera up at the bronze horses that stand on the balcony:

Looking at the order of slides in the box I just scanned, I gather that Heinz and Kurt guided us on a walk after we left San Marco. Across the Grand Canal we saw the garden I showed you at the top of this post, and then a barge-cum-vegetable-stand, as seen from a bridge perhaps:

I haven't been able to ID the campo (small square) in which Heinz is pointing up at something:

But thanks to Google Images I can tell you that this side canal is the Rio de Santa Margherita:

Here's a closer view of the bridge in the above photo--the Ponte del Socorso:

Our walk took us over to the wide Giudecca Canal:

My next photo is of a balcony window with a spectacular box of flowers. I like the lion raising its head at the edge of the window:

Either that afternoon or another day we took a vaporetto ride on the Grand Canal. Here we are approaching the Rialto Bridge:

Some facades of the palazzi facing the Grand Canal:

The next photo, seemingly closer to sunset, was probably taken from the Rialto Bridge:

We stayed a full week in Venice, or close to it--we hadn't planned so many days, but we loved it so much that that we extended our stay and shortened the time we spent in Germany in the week to follow. I couldn't tell you exactly when I took the rest of my slide photos of Venice, but I'll present them in the order taken. We went back to the Piazzetta San Marco, and I see that my photos rather similar to the ones from a few days before--I guess I was too dazzled by the beauty of the place to remember what I'd shot already:

This time we took a tour of the Doge's Palace. Anne took a pic of me on the grand loggia:

Here we're looking down at the piazza below:

And I took another shot of San Giorgio Maggiore, this time from the loggia:

Before leaving the courtyard of the Palace I looked back up at part of the Giants' Staircase:

Another day we visited the Ghetto (all 'ghettos' are named after Venice's old Jewish quarter). Here a bridge leading into the district:

And here is the main square of the Ghetto:

It was either there or later that I took another photo of a balcony with flowers:

Maybe it was after our walk from the Ghetto that we took a vaporetto ride on the medium-sized Canareggio Canal:

Here are more flowering shrubs in a little garden facing a canal:

And here I am finishing lunch with an afternoon espresso:

We visited a few different churches during the week, especially ones that contained paintings by famous Venetian artists. Here is the top of the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo:

I took two similar shots of the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli--here's the better one:

One day we took an excursion to the glass-blowers' island of Murano. The houses along the town's canals have a distinctive color scheme.

One Murano building had an especially attractive display of flowers on its balconies:

On yet another ride up the Grand Canal I forgot that I had already photographed our approach to the Rialto Bridge, and took two more pics:

My final photo of Venice is of the School of San Rocco (on the right), which contains some of the great paintings of Tintoretto:

From Venice we flew to Berlin--quite a contrast! I'll show pics of Germany in my next post.