Monday 3rd June

Caught the high speed train to Venice at 10.30 & spent the next 25 minutes in tunnels with short gaps across valleys. They really travel at high speed all right but it is a shame that nothing can be seen en route. By the time we got to Bologna it was raining again so we were very lucky with the weather yesterday. Arrived in Venice just before 1.00 & walked directly to the convent where we are staying in pleasant sunny weather, what a relief.

After changing into lighter clothes we wandered towards the centre as we are on the northern edge of Cannaregio just close to the lagoon & about 500m from a Vaporetto (ferry) stop but with a canal just outside the front door. We walked down through the Nuevo Ghetto, the first Jewish ghetto in the world established in the mid 1500s where the only place the city where they could live until the 1860s. The old blocks are up to 7 storeys high here & the synagogues are thus not at ground level. From there we eventually found our way through a tortuous set of passages & lanes back to the Grand Canal & the bus station to work out how to get to the airport to leave. Every corner brings something new as although all the blocks are old many have been done up in interesting ways. On our way back we seemed to take forever to find the convent having been into a couple of churches & we went t a Kosher restaurant where we both had Polenta based dishes.

Tuesday 4th June

Had a lie in today & took a look at the basilica next door, Madonna del' Orto. This is a large Venetian Gothic building with huge paintings by Tintoretto, a parishioner, which flank the high altar & is quite beautiful with a very tall bell tower next door. Having walked to a pier & bought a 2 day pass for the vaporettos we took one which circumnavigated the city which took about 90 mins. It passed an incredible range of ships & boats including a most magnificent 80m black, steam yacht of the 1920s or earlier & several 50m+ cruisers. The local work boats are about 15m in length & are used for everything including telecom, ambulances, fire, rubbish collection & general transport & apart from one hoon the conduct is pretty good. The water taxis & the gondolas are beautifully finished & look very smart but their charges are prohibitive so we are staying on foot or by vaporetto.

After a snack we took a tour of the ghetto which was fascinating. It has 5 synagogues of which we saw 3 each with different features. The first 2 were Ashkenazy, one for German & the other for French Jews & the third was for Greek & Turkish Sephardic Jews & all were on the top storeys of buildings. Apparently the Jews were not allowed to own any property, were confined to certain businesses & were locked into the ghetto between sunset & sunrise. The community was freed of these restrictions by Napoleon but they were reimposed & final freedom only came when Italy became a nation in the 1860s. It grew to about 5,000 but is now about 400 & during the war about 250 people were deported in 1943 & 44. The remainder had fled the area & were sheltered by Italians in the surrounding countryside.

From here we went to the Grand Canal & took a boat to St Mark’s square where we inspected the incredible Duomo, which luckily wasn’t too busy. The interior is just amazing as it is covered in mosaics in the Byzantine style but I was most intrigued by the carved pillars which support the tabernacle above the altar as these looked so truly mediaeval. Took a boat across to the other side & wandered though a very artistic area past the Peggy Guggenheim museum & eventually found somewhere for an exorbitantly priced beer but met Anna an American widow of an Italian who now lives in Florence. Her comments on life & people in Italy were very insightful & we enjoyed talking to her.

Had a good dinner & called it a day.

Wednesday 5th June

After a latish start we took a ferry from a nearby pier to visit, Torcello, one of the islands as we wanted a lazy day. Unfortunately we got off too late & ended up unwittingly on the wrong island, which we only discovered after we had walked 2k into a village & couldn’t make sense of the description as it was a relatively recent one & the bell tower was completely wrong. Back we went to catch a ferry & ran for it at the end. This took us to Burano from where another one took us to Torcello. This proved to be a real gem as it has a wonderful Romanesque cathedral with some magnificent mosaics & fine Byzantine carved panels & also a lovely domed roofed adjacent chapel. We were so impressed as it sits in open, low, flat country between 2 canals & there are very few buildings around it. Returning to Burano we rejoined the tourist masses as it is a lace making centre full of streets & canals where all the little houses have brightly painted walls. It also has a fine church with a tall but very much leaning, bell tower & the effect is quite disturbing.

The journey across the lagoon takes more than an hour on the vaporetto & passes Murano, the home of Venetian glass making but it is marked with tripod posts at 50 m intervals with lights which mark the routes to be used. The vaporetti (ferries) are about 25m in length of low & solid construction & appear to only do about 8 knots flat out, thus minimising the wash presumably.

On our return we decided to try to get to see a church by Palladio on San Giorgio, a small island almost opposite St Mark’s & after quite a bit of running back & forth to various jetties we got there. It again was a revelation as it is beautifully designed although quite austere internally except for a wonderful set of wooden stalls behind the altar with tremendous carving. We also went, by lift, luckily to the balcony of the bells tower where Jane got some excellent shots of Venice. It was a great way to have a last look at this fascinating & unique city. We took another ferry back to our local stop where it had just started to rain gently, picked up our brollys & went for our last meal here. Then we wandered once more towards the station, caught our last ferry & returned home to pack up for tomorrow morning. Over the past 3 days we must have averaged more than 2hours a day on vaporetti & they are a great way to see the place. At €30 for the 3 day passes we surely had our moneys worth.

Venice has been brilliant for us & one day we hope to return.