Day Twenty-Four
Venice
31 August 2007 - 21:54

With our shoes mostly dried from the day before, we headed out in the direction of the San Marco church, considered the “must see” in Venice, besides the water.

The line was incredibly long for San Marco and when a lady approached us and offered for 10€ to give us (and others) a tour and to skip the line, we agreed. The lady gave us an interesting history of Venice and decent tour of the church. Even though we have seen plenty this one is very different. The entire roof is lined with mosaic glass and gold leaf, and took 300 years to decorate. The sight is extremely impressive, but they ban photos (I took a couple anyway; another lady beside me whose flash fired was asked to stop).

While we were inside the church the rain began to fall again. The church actually floods and today was no exception. They are well prepared though, and have wooden boards for people to walk on.

Outside of the church, the whole plaza was flooded. People were weaving along the thin dry parts, and when we saw the line for the tower we decided just to get lost again.

With our map once again proving useless, we walked around looking at the masquerade masks, glass shops, and other Venetian things. As we looked in one glass shop, we saw the man inside making a blue glass cat. When he was finished we entered and bought the very same cat. It was still quite warm!

Later, Justine bought a papier mache mask and I bought a small (fake) bronze winged lion, which is a Venetian symbol.

We bought some packet pasta at a market along with a bag of mixed dry herbs and porcini mushrooms which seem to be the Italian equivalent of a jar of sauce. You fry the herbs and mix with the cooked pasta. Again Justine cooked; we mixed a jar of chunky tomatoes with it all too. Not bad.