UPS in Venice and other sights

Friday November 12, 2010 Day 135

I felt so much better this morning than yesterday - I think I have almost recovered from my fall. We got up and out rather late, heading first for the Rialto Bridge. It was full of mostly souvenir shops, in contrast to that of Florence, where the shops were exclusively pricy jewelry. As we looked down at boats plying their way along the canal and docking alongside the piers, we discovered that even UPS has to deliver by boat in Venice!

From there we made our way down toward St. Mark’s square. In the square, we gawked at the basilica, the bell tower, the hugeness of the square and other sights, and a pigeon landed on my arm. I saw one land on a man’s shoulder, and one woman had three or four pigeons sitting on her arms. I didn’t mind as long as none left a deposit.

We moved on down to the basilica for photos, then turned toward the lagoon. There were numerous thigh-high scaffoldings sitting on the square, apparently for tourists to climb atop to oversee the crowds. I decided to climb up on one to get a picture of the horses on the basilica. Big mistake. The scaffolding was about thigh-high for me, and that was too tall - I fell getting up onto it. I should have climbed onto it on my knees, then stood up. Instead, I tried to step up onto it, it was too high, and I fell forward, bruising my left knee and generally setting me back. I ached the rest of the day. I got my pictures, including some of the columns bearing the symbols of St. Mark and St. Theodore, and climbed down with Roger’s help. Fortunately we did not plan to see the basilica or climb to the top of the St. Mark Campanile, because at this point, I was not up to standing in line or climbing lots of steps. The later bridges we negotiated were enough of a punishment on my back without me volunteering for more!

 

 

 As we walked along toward the arsenal, my back begged for relief, so I selected a knee-high scaffold, shed my jacket, purse and glasses and laid down for eight minutes of back exercises. These went a long way in relieving my back and making it possible for me to get through the rest of the day. From there, we walked down past the Bridge of Sighs to the arsenal for photos, then turned to walk through the city to the train station. It was a leisurely walk, and we enjoyed the merchandise in the shop windows, the architecture, the canals, the tourists and had a delightful stroll overall. We bought a lunch of torte rustica at a pastry shop - mine was spinach and ricotta, Roger’s was ham and cheese. The clerk warmed them in the oven and we took them across the Rialto bridge where we found a scaffold to sit on and eat. We shared the crumbs with two pigeons who showed up.

We later learned that the scaffolding is there to create a walkway for pedestrians (and there are nothing but pedestrians in Venice!) when the water is high and the regular passageways are under water. Thank you, Shelli, for that information.

At the train station we bought tickets to Turin with instructions to change trains in Milan and Turin. Then we strolled back down the main pedestrian corridor to our hotel cutoff. We spent 15 minutes or so making sure we could get back to the main corridor, as our train leaves at 6:58 tomorrow morning and we could not afford to get lost and spend time wandering around trying to figure out where we went wrong and getting on the right track again. Then we returned to the hotel. We spent the last few hours mostly on the computer, relaxing and taking it easy.

I feel as if we gave Venice short shrift, but Venice returned the favor by hiding the sun for almost the full extent of our stay. Because of my two falls, I wasn’t up to more exploring, and certainly not museuming. The stairs were always a strain, and there are stairs and more stairs and still more stairs in Venice. We still got the flavor of the city, which is absolutely amazing and spectacularly beautiful.

As we were headed back to our hotel, we saw how the UPS guy delivers once he off-loads the boat.

Random impressions of Venice:

Even the ambulances are boats.
Masks, masks, masks.
There are 409 bridges in Venice.
The islands have to get their power from the mainland via underwater cable.
Where does the sewage go?
Murano glass everywhere