Venice, Italy

     Venice is an amazing place which has been around for 1500 years -- very expensive and an island shaped like a fish in a lagoon of the Adriatic Sea. The population of Venice is 58,000 people which is less than half of what it was three decades ago. In fact, Venice has sunk 9 inches in the past century.

     Venice is reached by a causeway for trains, buses and cars which only go to the island  train station or parking lots, but not into the city itself.  To get though it you walk, take water taxis or gondolas. The water taxis are much cheaper than the gondolas and they follow the Grand Canal, whereas the gondolas wind through narrow canals which take the place of many roads or streets throughout the city.

The Grand Canal which winds like a snake through Venice.

One of the few bridges across the Grand Canal

     We opted to walk across the city filled with 2000 narrow pedestrian streets and alleyways as well as 400 bridges.  Many shops, hotels, restaurants and churches line these streets.  Residents live above the restaurants and shops.  One can’t get permanently lost there since you are on an island!    As long as you know which site you are wanting to see and follow the painted arrows at street intersections , you can get around fairly easily. 

Narrow Streets 

Canals of Venice

     We decided against taking a gondola since it was slightly windy and cool. It is February! We only heard one gondolier singing as he passed by us.  Sounded as if his teeth might be chattering.

Gondola on a canal

Gondolier waiting for customers

Like taxis, Out of Service

      We didn’t just walk narrow streets and cross bridges.  We also visited churches and palaces.  Venice, during the Middle Ages, became the richest city in the world.  It no longer holds that title.

     The largest church and plaza in Venice is St. Mark’s Basilica in the Piazza San Marco.  The Basilica is on one end of the Piazza while on the other end is the Doge Palace.  It was the seat of the Venetian government and the home of its ruling duke, or Doge.  It was the most powerful half acre in Europe for 400 years.

The Basilica of St. Mark in Piazza San Marco

The palace of the Doge (former rulers)

     On the back side of the Doge Palace is a prison.  There is a bridge across a canal leading into the prison.  It is called the Bridge of Sighs, because the prisoners who were entering the prison were heard to sigh because of it being their last few steps of freedom.

 I decided it was a good time for me to sigh in front of the Bridge of Sighs because of being dragged through so many art museums and having to carry so much in my pockets! 

     The day we were in Venice was Dale’s birthday.  Not going to reveal her age but she was born in 1948!

The Birthday Girl

      We took a river taxi/bus from the opposite end of Venice back to the train station.  It gives you a different perspective on the city than what you get walking through it.

Another of the bridges over the Grand Canal

A former palace on the Canal

A church on the Grand Canal

     We stayed in Venice Mestre, which is a town on the mainland about 2 miles from Venice itself.  Lodging there is significantly cheaper than in Venice as are the restaurants.  We were two blocks from the train station and the cost to ride to Venice was a little over a dollar each.  The airport is outside Mestre so it made for an easier trip when we were ready to leave.

Florence, Italy

     This blog and the following one on Venice was delayed due to poor internet service in Athens, Greece.  

Remember to click on each photograph to enlarge it.

     The city of Florence, Italy is the home of the Renaissance with its narrow medieval streets, many churches, art galleries, street markets and the best gelato (iced cream) in Italy which we sampled liberally while there.  I think we ate our way through Italy with all the pasta that is available in every restaurant.  I thought they were going to make us get on the baggage scale as we were leaving the country.  We took the high speed trains from Rome to Florence to Venice.

Example of the narrow streets of Florence

     Our hotel in Florence was a former palace with its high ceilings, narrow rooms and a well just outside our door in the lobby.  The ceilings were the wooden beams and boarding left in place along with artifacts from the palace.

The hotel lobby with its wooden beam ceilings  

Artifacts from the palace along with the well on the right side of the computer room

     The museums and galleries we visited prohibited photographs.  They did sell books with the many paintings and sculptures.  One of the interesting things was to view the different styles of paintings and how they changed throughout history.  Art in  the Dark Ages was drab, gloomy and one dimensional.  With the Renaissance art became much more colorful and “life like.”  These museums contain many original statues as well as reproductions from famous artists of the Renaissance.  The original David by Michelangelo was housed in the Galleria dell Accademia.  It is much larger than either of us imagined.

Statues found in many of the plazas

     Every square or plaza housed an old church in the center.   Many of them were very large and all were very old.

Religious Center of Piazza Duomo

Basilica of Santa Croce

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Interior of Santa Croce

     A bridge over the River Arno is called the Ponte Vecchio and up until the year 1565 was lined with butcher shops which used the river as their waste disposal.  In the year 1565, the powerful and princely Medici family enclosed the passageways  and removed the meat markets giving them a safe and private passageway from their palace south of the river to their offices on the north side.  Today, the bridge is lined with elegant  jewelry as well as gold and silver shops.

Ponte Vecchio

     The last ‘palace’ we visited  was the Pitti Palace purchased by Medici in 1549.  He was the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.  In the late 18^th century it was used for a time by Napoleon, then as the Kings palace until King Victor Emmanuel III donated it to the people of Italy in 1919.  Since then it has become a huge art gallery and museum.   It contains huge gardens behind it and fantastic views of Florence and the surrounding mountains. There are over 140 rooms open to the public including apartments of the royalty, galleries of porcelain, silver, costumes, carriages, art, modern art, etc.  The only one I would have ‘pitti’ on in that palace would have been the poor cleaning lady.

Dale standing in front of the center section of the Pitti Palace

Rear center section of the Pitti Palace

A view of a section of the Palace gardens

View of Florence from the gardens

Rome - The Vatican, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and Circus Maximus

      We arrived in Italy the afternoon of the 10^th.  Being tired we opted to get rested up before continuing sightseeing.  The morning of Monday, the 11^th, we headed for the Vatican.  Shortly after arriving, it began to rain so our visit was split over two days. First we didn’t want to stand in long lines in the rain to visit the Sistine Chapel and then we were informed that they had closed the Vatican museum that day.  We did however visit the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Peter’s Square.  The Basilica is a massive structure with many statues, much artwork, elaborate architecture and below the main floor, the crypts of the popes.  Monday was also the day the current Pope Benedict XVI resigned – probably why they had closed the museum.  As we were leaving the Basilica, the courtyard was filled with media, their cameras and satellite uplink trucks.  It wasn’t until after we had returned to our hotel room and turned the TV on that we found out he had resigned.

Remember to click on each picture to enlarge it.

 

The Basilica of St. Peter and St. Peter's Square

The Dome from the inside of the Basilica 

 

 

The Canopy over the main altar

 

 

Mass in a side chapel

 

 

Examples of sculpture work in the Basilica
 

                  Saint Veronica                                                                Sculpture

 

 

 

Examples of paintings  

    

 

 

 

 

Artwork over the crypt of Pope John Paul II

 

 

 

 

Papal Guards 

 

 



     The following day we returned to the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel with tickets and tour guide in hand.  The Vatican allows photos to be taken inside parts of the  Museum but not in the Sistine Chapel. The security people in there were removing people continuously for taking pictures with their Ipads, cameras and cell phone cameras.  Also silence is observed in the Sistine Chapel so if visitors started to talk, a security person over a loud speaker would  broadcast shhhhhh!, which immediately quieted the crowd.
 

Photos from inside the Museum

     Returning from the Vatican the first day, the rain stopped so we visited the Spanish Steps area.  The Spanish Steps is named for the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican 300 years ago. It has been the hangout for many Romantics over the years such as Keats, Wagner, Goethe and others.  Now it is known as the ritzy shopping area of Rome.  Walking down the Via Condotti, the Gucchi store is across the street from the Prada store which is next to the Rolex store, etc.  Obviously we didn’t do any shopping on that street!

     From there we followed the Via del Corso south toward the ruins of the Roman Empire.  On the way we were attacked by a Roman soldier, but Dale got the best of him before she turned the sword on me.

    

     The Colosseum and the remains of the Forum are amazing. The floor (arena) of the colosseum where the gladiator fighting took place was an oval of 280 feet long by 165 feet wide.  The Colosseum held 50,000 people in it and segregated people by class.  The senators had their own section with their names on the stones they sat on as did the Vestal Virgins, the emperor ,etc. It rained off and on while we were touring these ruins requiring us to spend some time huddled under our umbrella while under arches and trees.  The pictures don’t do this massive area justice.  West of the forum area are the remains of Circus Maximus, the 2100 foot long arena which could seat a quarter million people cheering on chariot races taking  place there.  Remember Charleton Heston in Ben Hur?

 

The Colosseum

 


Inside the Colosseum



The Pantheon
 


Remains of the Basilica of Constantine & Maxentius



House of the Vestal Virgins



Remains of the Senate



Remains of Circus Maximus
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Sights and sites in Israel

     Along with religious sites, we visited historical sites also.  One of our tours took us east and then southeast of Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and Masada.  Shortly after leaving mountainous Jerusalem we dropped in elevation down into the Judean Desert and to the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth at 1388 feet below sea level . The sudden drop into the desert of Israel had us passing Jericho, the oldest city in the world, past date palm plantations along the Dead Sea as well as passing the site where caves yielded the Dead Sea Scrolls.  They were discovered in 1946 when a goat that disappeared was found by a Bedouin in a small cave which hid the Scrolls.  Continuing south we soon approached Masada, a fortress built on the top of a mountain near the Dead Sea.  In the First century the fortress Masada was captured by Herod the Great, a Roman client king of Judea. He built a palace on top of this isolated mountain with slave labor that included fine palaces, heated baths, a sauna and an ingenious rock-hewn cistern system that filled with water in the winter time.  He stored a food supply in his palace to last for 7 years.

     After Herod’s death, Masada became a Roman garrison.  In the year 66 CE the Jews revolted after the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem and overran this garrison.   They remained on Masada until the Roman Xth Legion and auxiliary units totaling 15,000 soldiers built an assault ramp of dirt and stone which was finished in the year 73 CE to crush the Jewish resistance.  A total of 960 Jewish men, women and children inhabited the mountain top at the time of this assault.  These inhabitants burned the food store rooms and vowed to not be enslaved by Rome.  When the Roman soldiers broke through the western wall of Masada, they found that all 960 of the inhabitants had committed suicide.

Please click on each photo to enlarge it.

Judean Desert

Jericho in the distance

Date Palms

Caves  in the white cliffs just above and to the left of the trees is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered

Masada

Fastest way to the top of Masada




Ruins of Herod's Palace

Pillars below the sauna floor where heat from furnaces was pumped in by slaves to warm the floor and room

More ruins of Masada

Roman camp from the siege, in the valley



Roman assault ramp built to breech the fortress of Masada

        Young Israeli soldiers, as part of their training, are brought to Masada and take an oath that Masada will never fall again.   

Ibix, a goat like animal with long horns found in the desert near the Dead Sea

     After leaving Masada, our bus driver took us to a resort on the Dead Sea where people take mud from the Dead Sea, which is supposed to have medicinal properties, and smear it on their bodies.  Floating in the Dead Sea will wash off the mud as well as give you an unbelievable experience!  No way to sink in water that is 32% salt.  After leaving the waters, the next step is to enter a sulfur water sauna for additional healing before washing salt, sulfur water and any remaining mud off.

The Dead Sea

Floating in the Dead Sea



Dale all mudded up and ready to float



Her Crocks won't let her put her feet down on the bottom!




A Bedouin camp in the desert

     The photo with me wearing an Arab headpiece, a keffiyeh,  is to prepare for the Thursday camel sale.  I tried to trade Dale for a couple of camels and two wives but since she had no experience herding goats, the seller refused the deal.  You can only have more than one wife it you own more than one camel!  Of course, with the living conditions they survive in, the wives will smell like the goats so it would be hard to tell the difference.

      Friday morning, Feb 8^th, before heading to Italy on Sunday, Dale and I took out extra baggage into the office in Tel Aviv.  Before heading back to Jerusalem, we had lunch on the beach of the Mediterranean, then took a stroll along the shore watching swimmers and surfers.  We went to Tel Aviv on Friday because the Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday and ends at Sundown on Saturday.  Many places are closed during that time, including the office .

Swimming and surfing in the Mediterranean Sea

Walking along the beach

     On Saturday, we returned to the Old City of Jerusalem once more before leaving Jerusalem for the last time.   The apartment we rented is only about three blocks from the walls of the old city.  We visited the Tower of King David and learned the history of the old city and the conquerors who controlled it over the ages, wandered through the Jewish section, one of four sections,  Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian, in the old city.

The Tower of King David

Archeological work in the Tower

In the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem

     We saw quite a bit in Israel and learned much during the time we were there.  We could have spent another couple of weeks and still not see all we would like to see.  When we return to Tel Aviv after leaving Greece, Dale will have a couple of days in Tel Aviv with me before she returns home.  We can explore some of that city and included it in this blog.