Ah, Venice (Day 1)

We started out our trip with a plane ride from Sardinia to Verona... We had planned on taking the train from Verona to Venice... (We got on the wrong train and almost ended up in Austria!)

Several hours later than expected, we arrived in Venice and made our way to the Dorsodouro district to the Locanda Gaffaro. (An Italian version of a Bed and Breakfast.)

This is on the Grand Canal just on the other side of the train station.

Can't believe how beautiful it is here!

We found a little Chinese place for dinner...

Ponte Rialto (Ponte is Italian for Bridge)

Window shopping..

Making our way to the Ponte de Sospiri.. (Bridge of Sighs) It's supposed to be a romantic place... HOWEVER, upon further research..It passes over the Rio di Palazzo and connects the old prisons to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace. It was designed by Antoni Contino (whose uncle Antonio da Ponte had designed the Rialto Bridge), and built in 1602. 

The view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment. The bridge name, given by Lord Byron in the 19th century, comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice through the window before being taken down to their cells. In reality, the days of inquisitions and summary executions were over by the time the bridge was built and the cells under the palace roof were occupied mostly by small-time criminals. In addition, little could be seen from inside the Bridge due to the stone grills covering the windows.

The smaller Isola di San Michele (below) can be seen from Sestiere Canaregio.  The island was a popular place for local travelers and fishermen to land. Mauro Codussi's Chiesa di San Michele in Isola of 1469, the first Renaissance church in Venice, and a monastery lie on the island, which also served for a time as a prison. San Cristoforo was selected to become a cemetery in 1807, designed by Gian Antonio Selva, when under French occupation it was decreed that burial on the mainland (or on the main Venetian islands) was unsanitary. The canal that separated the two islands was filled in during 1836, and subsequently the larger island became known as San Michele. Bodies were carried to the island on special funeral gondolas, including Igor Stravinsky, Joseph Brodsky, Frederick Rolfe, and Ezra Pound. The cemetery is still in use today.

We then climbed the Campinile di San Marco. It is the bell tower of St Mark's Basilica located in the Piazza San Marco. The original 9th-century construction, initiated during the reign of Pietro Tribuno and built on Roman foundations, was used as a watch tower or lighthouse for the dock, which then occupied a substantial part of the area which is now the Piazzetta.  This replacement was built in 1914 after the original's colapse.

Terry and his pigeon horde.