Italian Fail? We are 12 hours out of Venice and we get the announcement….the public transit workers are on a 24-hour strike on Friday to protest the austerity measures because the Italian economy sucks.
Any other port in Italy and this wouldn’t have been an issue for us; here, in Venice, you either vaparetto or walk. Carnival, I think, did a great job and reserved five private vaparetto’s to transport guests from the boat to St. Mark’s Square. But, the strike really hosed our plans, which included some time in Venice but then a quick hop over to some of the other islands….
The infrastructure for Project Moses….something I really need to Wiki when I get home…..
Unlike other ports, today is a late hop off the ship, 10 am. That means we get a really sweet view of Venice as the Breeze pulls in…..
Part of this sweet view are these huge yachts….ah, the good life!
The first picture of St. Mark’s Square…..really annoying that they have ads on the scaffolding while doing renovations…
More yacht envy…..
The Breeze, from the top deck of the vaparetto. As always, we are in the first hundred people off the boat..
Might be the best picture of Cpher that I’ve taken this trip so far….
You can see our cabin here….there’s the first row of windows on the bottom (deck 1); we are on deck two and are the first balcony you see on the left, two to the left from that gap between the balconies…
So, our first impression of Venice is the cruise in and the cruise back to St. Mark’s. This is the other side…
This picture confuses me….the order makes me think it’s taken on the vaparetto back…but, the perspective seems too high, like Carnival Breeze perspective high. May be just a 2 picture pano…
A more traditional pano shot…
I must stop here and sing the praises of the CityMaps2Go app….you can download fully scalable maps and then be offline while you track your movements in each city (maps, and loading of maps, take up a lot of data and a lot of battery life). This app was a godsend in Florence and got a workout here today…
The leaning tower of Venice?
Just some really pretty flowers and buildings along the canals…
The bell tower peaking out behind the Basilica….messed up here, should have gone into the church when we had the chance and by the time we got back to the square later in the day it was closed….
Probably should have climbed this with the boys, but, did not.
The first picture inside the Doge’s Palace; we had reserved a tour of the secret itineraries …
The tour guide, who did a GREAT job. Will need to Wiki when I get home just to double check the stories about Casanova. This is the face that also served as a mailbox where you could turn in letters accusing others of misdeeds…
Hercules and Atlas….
The golden staircase…
A better picture. The floor down there is really hard to see, but, love the 3-D illusion on that floor and on the middle landing of the stairs…
A view out the window on the 3rd floor; nothing real special about it.
In a small world note, as we were doing the tour we met a family from Ohio, said we were from Michigan near Lansing, and they said their family was from Okemos….we didn’t know them but knew some mutual friends.
Rialto Bridge…
View from the bridge
We walked back from Rialto Bridge to St. Mark’s….wandered back actually, made an attempt to go a different way and certainly didn’t go direct. And wandered by all of this cool architecture…
Iphone died around 5 pm so will have to add pictures from the gondola ride in a post that covers the pictures that Suzanne took….
One of the downsides of no vaparetto excursion is that there was a lot more walking…and around 8 pm that was about it for the boys…headed back to the ship.
The cruise into Venice we stood up on the higher decks on the other side of the ship; leaving, we could sit on our balcony. This is the best of my photos; not sure if Suzanne got anything better or not yet.
Forgot the picture at the end of the night. But it’s pretty simple, a few miles south of Venice in the Adriatic Sea, heading south.
