I'm having trouble with the Venice entries because most of what we did during the day was walk along the canals and get lost in obscure neighborhoods. I've got hundreds of photos of these canals, but I have no idea what part of Venice they're in so I keep not using them and instead go from church to museum to palace because those are more easily identifiable and I know when I visited them. So the blog entries seem like we just kept going to churchese but in fact the trip was relatively light on that sort of thing apart from Piazza San Marco. I guess at some point I'll just do a photo dump of canal pics in the blog and call it something pseudo-artsy like Visions of Venice. But for now, it's lunchtime, and we ate at a very famous, and famously hard to find, seafood restaurant, La Corte Sconta. The restaurant sits almost at the edge of the city in an entirely residential neighborhood far from tourist sights, but that all adds to the charm. The interior is a bit dull, but most people opt for the charming outdoor terrace covered with vines. There's no menu, the waiters just chat with you and heavily suggest a series of dishes, all with the freshest seafood available. Everyone starts with a plate of various seafood appetizers, then we had a squid ink pasta, then some grilled fish. Somchai was in heaven, I'm a bit pickier about seafood but thought it was really well done. I must say I don't get the point of squid ink though. It's smelly and thick, and tough to get off my teeth, so I went around looking like a hillbilly for the rest of the day. (Food-15, Decor-15, Service-13).

While San Polo, the area we explored yesterday, attracted few tourists, today we explored the Castello district, which made San Polo seem like Disneyworld. The Castello is a large district and starts just yards from Piazza San Marco, but there's some sort of invisible force field that repels visitors from crossing the border. We managed to penetrate the defenses, and visited the old Greek neighborhood, centered around their church, San Giorgio dei Greci. It was of course not open when we got there, but conveniently there was a museum of Greek religious icons across from the church. It was my first real exposure to these icons, which I found interesting, although I also realized that by now we had spent more time with Egyptian and Greek artefacts than Venetian ones. The church kept threatening to open but never quite got around to it, so we moved on.

We had dinner at the hotel's casual restaurant, Cip's Place. The restaurant is on a pier in the lagoon, with fantastic views, although since our room is right behind the restaurant, we had already soaked in the same view for several days already. The food was pretty similar to the formal restaurant but had some casual stuff like pizza as well, although I can't imagine the look of the waiters if you ever actually ordered pizza here. Actually the waiters here were a bit younger and friendlier, the guests were still creakily old and dressed to the nines. (Food-14, Decor-12, Service-15)

The Palazzo Grassi is owned by the Fiat auto company (or to be confusingly precise, was, is they sold it a few years after our visit). It's used to host special events and exhibits, and by coincidence it was holding a special museum exhibit about the Egyptian Pharoahs that was getting great reviews from all over the world. We tried to visit the day before, but the line was about a mile along so we gave up. Today, as we were walking back toward piazza San Marco to get the boat back to the hotel, we passed Palazzo Grassi and not a soul in line. I assumed it was closed, but we pulled on the door to check and we had the place pretty much by ourselves. I have no idea why the attendance was so variable, but we really enjoyed the exhibits and spent a couple of hours there. If we had managed to get in with the crowds yesterday, I think I would have been out of there in ten minutes flat.

The Scuolo Grande di San Rocco is next door to the Frari, and has obviously used a different decorator. They also used a different painter, Tintoretto, another Venetian superstar painter. His work is everywhere, probably the highest concentration of his paintings anywhere, although they struggle to stand out in the sea of gold and marble that coats every inch of the interiors. This scuola was associated with Saint Roch, who was particularly important to the sick. When the plague nearly wiped out Venice in the 1520's (you remember this from the previous post about the church built to thank god for not killing everyone, right?), cash came pouring in here in hopes of buying the saint's protection. Instead it bought this wonderful interior.

The most artistically important district of San Polo is centered around the Frari, the Franciscans' church. Like most of the churches in Venice, the exterior is surprisingly dull, just a very large, nondescript brick building. Given the plodding exterior, the lightness of the interior is quite surprising. The church isn't wildly decorative inside either, but it's elegant, and the highlight is a series of masterpieces by Venice's most famous painter, Titian.

We then sat around for an hour at Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio, waiting for the church to open. The church was ok, but the piazza surrounding it, where we sat drinking coffee, was more fun, a sort of playground/neighborhood meeting place. But since we were only there because we were waiting for the church to open, it's hard to recommend this as a must-see area, particularly because the surrounding neighborhood is pretty bland. I hope I'm succeeding in giving the impression that this morning wasn't going very well, and thanks for sharing our pain.

We next visited Scuola San Giovanni Evangelista, which was closed indefinitely, so all we got to see was the exterior. That's unfortunate because it's the interiors of these institutions that are remarkable. There were about ten of these grand scuola, and four hundred of minor scuola, in Venice. They started as charitable institutions associated with monasteries, but soon morphed into social clubs for rich merchants, the class below the ruling class. The leading ones then decided to spend most of their resources in outdoing one another artistically rather than follow their original charitable mandates. They now house some of the best artwork in Venice, which is too bad because their schedules are very sketchy.

We spent the rest of the day in San Polo, one of Venice's six districts. Since almost all tourists just stay in the San Marco district, we had the whole neighborhood to ourselves. It's not really that attractive, and has fewer canals and hence less Venice-ness. But it was a good opportunity to see the real Venice, since the people living there seemed like they've been there for many generations. One of the downsides of visiting outside the tourist zone is the vagaries of opening hours. Our first stop was Palazzo Mocenigo, an old palace that's been converted into a museum showcasing Venetian design. Unfortunately it was closed on the day we visited. I put the photos here because I'll forget to talk about it otherwise, but we did manage to get in a couple days later, and it wasn't worth the repeat trip. Only a few rooms are open, and they didn't give much of a feel of anything. Ca Rezzonico is a much better option if you're into this sort of thing.

Just some landmark palaces and churches along the Canal. The octagonal church is on the tip of the Dorsoduro jutting out into the lagoon, and is basically a mirror image of the San Giorgio Maggiore, which we visited earlier on its own little island.

Just some more photos of the canal. There are only three bridges over the canal, so there are a number of mini-ferries that just run across the canal all day. These ferries are actually just retired gondolas sans decoration and singing captains, but one strange feature is that you stand up while you're crossing. I'm not sure I'd make it across while standing, and I'd hate to end up in the canal, so we stuck to the bridges while we were canalcrossing.

The next morning we did the other must-do tourist thing (I mean besides the gondola ride, which is never going to happen), we took the waterbus down the Grand Canal. The Canal winds its way through the city at a leisurely pace (remember the reverse S in the aerial photo?) and cuts the city neatly in half. It's the city's lifeblood, lined by the palaces of the city's leading families, which makes for spectacular scenery as the waterbus sputters by. There are close to two hundred of these palaces on the Canal, many of which are now hotels or museums, and the rest are some of the most prized real estate in Italy.

We headed back to the piazza for dinner, at Quadri's, one of the world's oldest restaurants (270 years in the same place). It's also one of the most famous due to its pole position on the Piazza, and the well-known story of its rivalry with the cafe across the square, Florian's. During the Napoleonic wars, one cafe housed the French military stationed in Venice, and the other was the hangout of the local, independence-minded elite. They both had orchestras, which sent out dueling musical messages. Both places still have outdoor orchestras that entertain a decidedly more downscale crowd, and both still gouge the customer with twenty dollar coffees. Since most people have sticker shock at the coffee in the cafe, few venture up to the restaurant above, which is too bad because it's quite good and its prices, though high, are no higher than the typical Venetian high-end place. But for the price you get loads of history, elaborate decor, and very solicitious service. Food is good but again pretty traditional. (Food-14, Decor-16, Service-17).

We had lunch at nearby Campo Santo Stefano, a square almost as large as Piazza San Marco, but much less popular, mostly because it's not nearly as nice. But it's a nice place to get off the tourist circuit, and there are a couple of places to visit. There's the namesake church, with a heavily leaning belltower, very typical when building tall structures on marshy land. There's also the home of a famous Doge, who was most famous for a series of victories against the Turks in the 1690's. His most famous achievement was to lob a missile at Athens' Parthenon, where the Turks had been storing gunpowder. Having wrecked one of the world's most famous historical monuments, he then wreaked further havoc by chopping off bits and pieces very destructively to bring back some souvenirs to Venice.



We had lunch at a cafe in the square, which was nothing memorable, then wandered back to the piazza to catch our boat back to the hotel.

The area around San Marco is full of interesting nooks and crannies, but visitors stampede down the two obvious exit points from the piazza, one toward the Rialto market and one toward Venice's premier museum, the Accademia. Both these routes are perpetually thronged with crowds, and lined with souvenir and gelato sellers. Masks are a Venetian specialty, made famous through Venice's pre-lenten Carnival. We saw some beautiful masks in a shop and thought they would make a unique souvenir, but didn't want to carry it around so decided to postpone the purchase. Since we then passed one hundred other shops selling the same assortment of masks lining these streets, our interest in the "unique" souvenir cooled considerably. Other photos are of some nearby churches and landmarks. One of the most important landmarks in the area is La Fenice, Venice's worldfamous opera house. Unfortunately, the centuries-old landmark was burned down by workers doing some renovation work, so it's just a huge construction site. I understand it's recently reopened, which is amazing, because the difficulties of doing major construction in waterborne, tightly packed Venice are pretty huge.

Just some views of Venice from San Marco's rooftop, which are of course spectacular. Equally spectacular are the special effects Somchai used to create panoramic photos by combining several smaller photos, don't you think?

The interior is truly stunning, a giant Alladin's cave covered with gold mosaics from the thirteenth century. The mosaics tell dozens of biblical stories, but since the stories climb up to the ceiling, they're entirely impossible to follow. The whole effect, down to the dim lighting and smoky atmosphere, is magical, but for the fact that the crowd control system here is deadening. There's only a narrow corridor where the crowds can funnel in and around the church, so it's impossible to explore on your own, and the whole experience is like being in a giant conga line. The four horses in the photo were ancient Roman sculptures that the Venetians stole from Constantinople in the thirteenth century, and are something like the city's mascots.

Venice's cathedral is certainly unique in Europe,and looks much more like a mosque than cathedral. Its origins date to 828, when two Venetian traders in Egypt broke into St. Mark's tomb, stole his corpse, and smuggled it out of Egypt by hiding it in a shipment of pork, which the Muslims wouldn't investigate. The basilica was built to house the corpse, and has been the center of Venice's religious life ever since.