Our wonderful family gave us a fantastic gift for our 50th Anniversary -
A Mediterranean Cruise
that included stops in Croatia, Montenegro, Italy, Greece, France and Spain!
This was really a dream vacation and we enjoyed every minute. How we wish that they could all have been with us to see the beautiful and amazing places that we visited. But, alas, we will have to share the experience in pictures.
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| The adventure begins May 16th with a flight to Venice by way of New York. |
After a 3 hour layover in New York we spent a long night flying over the Atlantic. We landed in Venice and made our way to the dock where we boarded a boat that took us to a stop in the city nearest to our hotel.
Finally reached our hotel.
We had two full days in Venice. We explored as much as we could. We thought we might get lost but we managed to find our way around. We were hungry so our first stop was lunch. We tried our first authentic Italian pizza.
Our next stop was Saint Mark's Square and Basilica. This has been the center of life in Venice for 1000 years. It was built in the 9th century to house the body of Saint Mark. It had to be rebuilt in 1063-1093 and combines Romanesque-Byzantine style. The pillars are various colors of marble that come from different parts of the world.
The sculptures and mosaics are incredible. Inside the cathedral photos are prohibited. It was very ornate and beautiful.
From our hotel window we could see the street leading from the canal dock and the gondolas in the canal.
As we walked around we saw many more canals and narrow streets.
There are many restaurants and cafes. We ate dinner at Hard Rock Cafe. The streets are lined with shops of all kinds. We saw shops of glass blowers, woodworkers, leather goods, large grocery stores and small markets, movie theater and opera house, high end clothing stores, expensive watch and jewelry stores, churches and museums, apartment buildings and homes, gardens and piazzas. It is a charming place. We enjoyed our time there.
Ran into Charlie Chaplin in a piazza.
We found the famous Rialto Bridge.
Of course we had to check the gondola ride box. There was a man singing opera in a gondola near us. That added to the charm.
On our last day we went back to St Mark's to feed the pigeons and go up into the bell tower. From the top you have a panoramic view of the entire area. There were light rain showers that day but it really didn't bother us at all.
You can't see them all but they were everywhere!
And then it was time to say goodbye to Venice and take a water taxi to the cruise ship port.
Observations about Venice -
Many smaller canals turn off the Grand Canal, there is NO
traffic noise, it is very clean and we saw no trash floating in the canals. There were a few dogs, we didn't see any bicycles. I wonder about several things like how do they keep building from flooding, are they worried about "climate change", where do they take their trash and how does the sewer system operate.
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