Tuesday October 18, 2011

Dave woke up with a headache so it was just John and I for the walk this morning. We took almost the same route as yesterday, but diverted away from the water for a bit to see a different area of the city. After breakfast, Andrea took us on a walking tour across the Rialto Bridge (this is the only bridge in Venice with small shops lining the sides). We meandered around stopping in places to hear small stories of the area. One of the places we stopped was at Marco Polo’s house. He was only one of many Venetian merchants who traveled to China for spices and other exotic goods, but he is the only one who is remembered as he was once captured by Genoans and put in prison for two years. While he was in prison waiting for ransom to be paid for his release, he decided to write about his adventures. This is what made him famous. After our walk, we took the water bus (vaporetto) back to San Marco. We found the post office and bought stamps for the postcards. We stopped for lunch at a cafeteria (it was okay, but nothing to write home about) and then went back to the hotel for a short break before our next walking adventure. This time we went to the Jewish Ghetto (according to Andrea, the word ghetto was coined in Venice because the area that was used to house the Jews was originally a warehouse area that was used to make cannons and the Italian word for cannon making is similar to ghetto. We came back to the Square via vaporetto and set off to do a little more shopping and to get dinner. We again came back on the early side. We downloaded the cameras and hopefully I can get some pictures on the postings. The photos today are of the Grand Canal and a smaller canal. As you can see there is a lot of traffic on the Grand Canal - you can see gondolas and water buses, but keep in mind that there are also water taxis which hold about a dozen people and zip around both the buses and gondolas!