June 19 - Venice

We sailed into Venice around 8 AM.  It was a gorgeous day with perfect blue skies and a moderate temperature, unlike when Katie and I were here in 2012.  As we sailed past the Doge’s Palace and San Marco I could see that the Bridge of Sighs was no longer covered in some advertisement as it was the last two times I was here.  It was nice seeing it again.

Hooray!  No advertisements

Apart from the Emerald Princess at the next dock over was the Regal Princess, which is absolutely enormous!  Two small cruise ships were tied up along the Giudecca Canal. Perhaps because there weren’t more big ships docked, Venice didn’t seem as crowded as it has on previous visits.

After breakfast we headed ashore to wander on our own.  Our first stop was to purchase a day pass on the vaporetto.  We decided to take it all the way to Lido.  After the stop at the Rialto Bridge we were able to get seats up in the bow of the boat.  That’s my favorite spot to see the sights of Venice.  Once on Lido we changed to the vaporetto to Murano, our destination for lunch. 

Murano is such a lovely place! It has a lot of the charm of Venice without the throngs of people.  We walked around looking at the Murano glass sculptures on display.  Some are exquisite; some are more unusual.  The only one that seems to be permanent is the blue one near the clock tower.

A glass flower garden

Another of the public sculptures

After walking along the main canal we had a nice lunch at a restaurant we’d been to before and then headed back to Venice. We found our way to Piazza San Marco and had a drink at a café on the square.  The prices are astronomical but you pay for the ambiance.  It was getting late so we headed for the vaporetto.  As we made our way to one of the stops for San Marco we found the little garden, Il Giardetti, which we’d never noticed before.  It’s a little sea of tranquility in the midst of the chaos that is the San Marco area.  There was a nice view of the Campanile’s top from the garden.

After a crowded ride on the boat and a quick trip on the People Mover we walked back to the ship.  According to my Fitbit, we walked a little over 6 miles and we were both tired after a long but lovely day.