Venice Day 1

 

October 18, 2011

This morning we dock in Venice to begin our visit to this wonderful city.  The sail in was beautiful.

Charlie has been wanting to come back here to get the mask that he never let me forget he didn’t get the last time he was here!!!! 

I have done quite a bit of research on what to do and how to get around.  We have purchased 36 hour Venice Connected Tourist Travel cards that should take care of most of our transportation needs.  There is a people mover from where the ship docks to Piazza Roma where we can access the transportation.  Hopefully this will go smoothly as we have an 11:35AM reservation for the Secret itinerary tour at the Doge Palace. 

Venice was governed from the Doge Palace for a thousand years.  Here the elected doge of Venice held his court and presided over a system of councils, designed to prevent any one self-interested faction from seizing power.

 

From the palace itself, the Ponte dei Sospiri ( Bridge of Sighs) crosses a canal to the prison and the notorious, waterlogged dungeons below water level known as pozzi (the wells).  This is where we will start our tour that includes the interrogation rooms and torture chamber of the State Inquisitors and the cells under the roof of the prison, from which Casanova made his dramatic escape in 1756, while serving a five-year sentence on charges involving blasphemy, magic and espionage.  No pictures were allowed on the tour but I have included a few pictures of us coming out of the dungeons…we actually were pretty lost down in the dungeons…Anne and Evelyn were not having a great time!!!

This after noon we are planning to to do a lot of riding on the vaporetto as many have suggested,  Got to plan our route.  Hopefully we can spend a few hours just riding the canals and enjoying the beauty of Venice.  The vaparetto system is truly amazing.  It is just like a bus system in other cities.  It was a lot of fun. 

We found a neat little trattoria to have an early dinner.  I’m getting addicted to pasta with clams!!!

 

Tomorrow we begin the search for Charlie’s mask……..