Off we go to explore and continue our wanderings from yesterday.
We slowly make our way across town stopping at the Santa Maria del Rosario Basillica. The amount of detail, pictures, sculpture and decorations inside these buildings is truly amazing. You need to look from the floor tiling, up the richly decorated walls, over antique furnishings and finish at the gorgeous ceilings. Sienna and I keep looking at each other saying, "Don't forget to look up!!". There is barely any surface which is not painted, mosaiced, sculpted or decorated. Sometimes it is difficult to know where exactly to look. This particular basilica had Santa Maria's head preserved and on display.
We continue wandering through the alleyways until we reach the Piazza San Marco. A large open space totally surrounded by yet more amazing architecture. We head up the clock tower for a great view over Venice then into Basillica San Marco. Another amazing array of craftwork everywhere you look. We keep reading about how long these buildings take to complete and when you look at the huge amount of detail in every single piece you begin to understand why.
We end our day touring the halls of Doge palace. So much gold decorates the rooms here it is hard to imagine the cost of what we are looking at. We found the weapons quite interesting to look at. Some of the swords were so huge!!
The girls have continued to count dogs and they discovered over 100 today. Which is lovely but.....100 dogs leave a lot of poop!!! Our wanderings have definitely included equal amounts of admiring the architecture and watching the pavement!! It is quite strange to be in a shop when someone walks in with their dog or sits at a table in a restaurant with their dog. We are just not used to seeing that.
We now all have hats to blend in with the tourist crowd and Sienna has a mask. You know how it goes...when in Venice.....oh, maybe that's Rome.....close enough!! Still loving the pasta and pizza as well as our two daily gelato treats. Meant to be rain tomorrow...