Monday, April 30, 2012

World Cruise - Day 109 - Apr 30 - Venice, Italy

Sail in to Venice early this morning (shortly before 6a, just before first light of day) was beautiful.  View of St. Mark’s (San Marco) Square:
View of Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore:
View of St. Mark’s Square straight on.  You can see the Bridge of Sighs in the first canal o the right of the palace:
This may be my last sunrise pic for awhile:
OK, one more:
We are getting ready to get off the ship shortly, so will do some more pic updates later today.
We ended up taking Alilaguna water taxi to a nearby stop, then took our luggage to our hotel.  Not the ideal location for us due to all of the bridges, but it is where Susie and Alan are staying, so it was our way to connect up with them here.
We walked around with Sonia and her friend Maria (from Milan) for most of the rest of the day.
After we finished slogging our luggage over the bridges, we went to the nearby square for a refreshing (and well deserved) drink:
I had fun watching the pigeons.  When the male (right) is courting the female (left, looking disinterested), he ruffles up his feathers and makes a cooing sound:
Later we went to St. Mark’s Square and watched more pigeons:
We had drinks at one of the outdoor restaurants there with an orchestra playing in the background:
This pic has a lot going on: the boy is feeding pigeons out of his hand, the girl is wearing a mask and a little boy is running toward pigeons top left:
Krissie gave out some more of my medals from the cruise ship (still trying to lighten our load) and this little boy was one of the recipients:
Our hotel room is on this canal.  Our balcony is the covered one on the second floor:
Back in the square near out hotel, these three guys were playing some classical music:
There were gondolas throughout the day, it was a pretty busy day in Venice due to both the number of cruise ships in port and tomorrow being a national holiday in Italy (May 1st):
I went back to the hotel to get checked in for our flights and get our bags up to our room, then met up with Sonia, Maria and Krissie at a restaurant near the Arsenale area:
Krissie on the bridge in front of the gate to Arsenale:
I took this pic because of the leaning tower in the background, top left, but Krissie and Sonia are interesting subjects as well:
The fountain on the right is used by locals to fill up their water bottles:
View from Rialto Bridge of the Grand Canal, with all sorts of different boat traffic, including vaporettos, water taxis, gondolas and more:
Sonia, Maria and Krissie with Rialto Bridge in the background:
This is a tower in Venice that I took our kids to climb back inn 2002 when we were there visiting (while Krissie and Sonia were having a coffee at Florian’s):
Another slightly leaning tower.  There are several in Venice:
We liked the way this bridge looked, so took a pic of the girls there:
As we were relaxing on a square, I caught ths pic of several kids playing with dolls nearby:
La dolce vita:
Cappuccino art:
Sonia began kicking a ball around with a local boy:
We had dinner at a cute little restaurant off the square near Sonia’s hotel, we ate outside in a covered courtyard:
St. Mark’s at night:
This is the last entry in the world cruise blog.  I hope you enjoyed reading about our adventures.

5 comments:

  1. Good job, Brian. Looking forward to the next one...

    Pete

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  2. Though I didn't correspond very well I did read each blog entry and I have to say, it has been an extreme pleasure gallivanting across the globe with you. Hope to see you very soon. (I'm also very pleased Uncle Brian that you are returning with Aunt Krissie and not 1,000 camels :) Bon voyage!
    -Stephanie

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  3. It never ceases to amaze me the things you think of capturing on film. I love how you caught Sonia with the ball in the air on that shot. The favorite picture of this entry was probably the first picture of St. Marks though. I always love the photos of the children though too.

    Glad you have returned home safely.

    Julie

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  4. Lovely sunrise shots! I especially ike the photo (before the drinking fountain) and, if I may, I would like to use a cropped version to use as a facebook profile shot. Are you willing to send me a larger version of the photo to do that? (I don't have many good photos of myself you see... not being very photogenic). What a beautiful 'San Marco' shot to end your blog with.

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  5. Hi Sonia, I sent you the pic you requested. If you need a different one, please let me know.

    ReplyDelete