Venice, Italy

The last day in Venice we decided to take a boat tour instead of fighting the crowds in Piazza San Marco.

Since Venice has over 400 bridges, I thought I would give you just a sampling of some of the Bridges of Venice.

There are only a few of the islands of Venice that you are allowed to drive a car on the island. This one of the care bridges.

This bridge is called the Bridge of Sighs.  The reason for this is that as the prisoner was convicted, they would cross this bridge and the two windows would be the last light they saw until their sentence was over, as all Venice prisoners were housed in darkness.

In the morning, we had fog and overcast skies. In the afternoon as we left Venice, the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful day.

What many people do not realize is that there are 10 different islands that make up the Venice area. Venice itself has several islands primarily consisting of the “downtown” area. Many of the outlying islands have their own governments.

As you can see from these pictures, there is also a big open area of water between some of these islands. Here you see a work boat dredging the lanes.

In the morning tour, we went around the tourist islands while the cruise ship itself exited Venice through the Canale Della Guidecca.

The cruise ship terminal is on the island of Tronchetto. As we came back from the morning excursion, I was able to get some shots of the ship. The Carnival Destiny was our first Carnival ship in 1998. This year, cut the ship in two length wise and added several decks and renamed it the Carnival Sunshine. It is nice to come back to our first ship and see what they did to her.

Here you can see why Venice was so crowded today because of the number of cruise ships in port.

The first item we see as we head into Venice is the old cruise terminal, Terminal Aliscafi

As we head toward the Adriatic Sea, here are some shots overlooking Venice.

Next, we see the Ciesa dei Gesuti, which has been turned into a museum

On the right we see the Redentore. During the festival, they build a bridge across this wide canal so that everyone can make the pilgrimage without taking a water taxi.

Next we have the Santa Maria Della Salute, or the salute to the Saint Maria.

As we pass the Grand Canal on our left, we see the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square) and the Basilica of San Marco.

Notice the people crowding the area. With all the ships in town, it was a mess here.

St. Mark’s is one of the areas that flood every so often. It gets about 1 foot of water in it 10-12 times a year. They have a project to stop the flooding and more about that later.

Since Venice is built on mud, almost all of the buildings are sinking and not all of them are straight. While this tower is leaning, it is not the worst in the city.

Here is one of the towers that leans the most.

Even the lighthouse has a little lean to it.

The yellow structures are the “bus” stops for the Vaporetto, or water taxi.

They even have to collect the trash by boat.

Some more scenes of Venice.

There are only two islands in which vehicles can be driven. This island is large enough to have a bus service on it.

How do you delivery packages in Venice? You have to use a boat of course.

If you look real close, this fisherman is actually standing outside his boat. Venice has never ever been conquered by an opposing force. The reason is that the water was extremely shallow and when the invaders brought their boats to invade, they would get stuck. The Venetians would then use their specially designed boat to attack the invaders and always won.

I mentioned earlier that Venice is sinking and floods. They are working on a ten year project which they call Moses. Basically, it consists of building dams at the entrances to the Adriatic Sea. The Southern one is complete and the Eastern entrance will have to allow ships to enter and leave as necessary. Therefore, this is taking a little more time.

And finally we see the Venice beach and enter the Adriatic Sea.

While we were sailing out of Venice, several of the children decided to work on the rope walk.

A Mister Potato Head welcomes the young kids into Camp Carnival.

We had great weather as we left Venice, even though things did not start out very good. We are here and look forward to Dubrovnik, Croatia, my favorite city.

I must be off!