VENICE IN WINTER ON A RAINY DAY

VENICE is like a dream..and I am posting few photos and experience on demand from my friends ( some foodie foes also) . March is the   worst  time to visit Venice , but I did not have much choice. The Feb was busy with Venice carnival and I did not have enough money to visit during carnival.  So I and Sunny ( see Cinque tere and Begamo blog) decided to go in March with Mrs and Mr. Rajaraman , my colleague.

Being a reasonably lazy person I always excused ( Hypocrisy) myself out from seeing places. So Sunny and I framed a strategy, decide a place where to go, and book ticket. These tickets are not refundable, so we had to go and in the bargain saw beautiful places of Northern Italy. You can see my earlier blog here on Bergamo and Cinque Tere..( More to come on lakes).

Milano is connected by fast and passenger trains to all places in Italy. So one fine morning we set out to see Venice. ( Venice is there in my blood because I spent many days in 1998 on some official work on main land and used to stay in Venice and commute.)

So here are some photos ..it is pretty depressing beacuse of the rain and cold....but who will post cloudy Venice photos ? So you can treat these as rare ha  ha .

We took a train from Milano Centrale in the morning and were in Vencie by 10-40 AM.

It was cloudy , drizzling and the temperature was 5 deg C.

We got out of the station and my colleagues posed for a photo in front of the Grand canal. (Hummmm, no one took mine :-( ) I liked the big advertisement in the back drop....so took the photo quickly

(NOTE: PLEASE CLICK EACH PHOTO TO ENLARGE AND ENJOY THE DETAILS, I HAVE POSTED REASONABLY HIGH RESOLUTION PICS.)

In front of Venice station, with my colleagues,Sunny and  Mr. Rajaraman and his wife   (the Canal Grande in the back ground)

I love big hoardings, and always try to take photos of hoardings.. See the  picture above and you will know from where I captured this photo at 10X zoom..so very unrealistic.

In front of the Venice station, you get ferry (water bus) to travel through the grand Canal. Always buy a whole day ticket for about 18 Euro and you can make as many trips as you want. A single ride will cost about 6 Euro.

We boarded the Bus for the main destination," San Marco's Basilica", which is an hour's ride. The bus crisscrosses the canal to pick up or drop passengers.

Here are the photos taken from the water bus on the grand canal.

The Austrian bridge, 1st of the 3 bridges (Old ones) as you proceed down the canal

View of buildings along the Grand Canal ( The yellow bordered jetty on the right is a bus stand)

The Academia Bridge ( 2nd one)

The most famous Rialto Bridge 

Rialto Market 

The end of the Grand Canal, to the right is the "Basilica di Santa Maria dela salute"

We got off at San Marcos stop and proceeded towards the Besilica of San Marco.

We are now walking through the Piazetta San Marco ( Piazza San Marco is different)  to the Basilica of San Marco and the Piazza.To the right is the Doge's palace and Basilica in front

Piazzeta San Marco
This is the Lagoon side entry, photo  taken from the Basilica, to the left is the Doge's palace and to right is Biblioteca Marciana. The famous twin pillars representing Marco and Todaro are at the water front.

Campanile
Make it a point to go up the tower and have a look. We didn't have time . I had gone up the tower earlier, need to fish out the photos with bright sunshine.

Basilica San Marco
This is the Jewel of Venice, the most beautiful piece of architecture with breathtaking mosaics and interiors. The whole Venice was depressing due to cloud cover and lack of sunshine. You must see the night view. The view is obstructed due to maintenance of structures!

View of Mosaics in the Basilica ( Click to enlarge )
At the entrance

Few other mosaics ( click to enlarge)

Piazza San Marco

It is in front of the Basilica. Also called as Courtyard of Europe by French Poet and the tourist hot spot..very good eating joints, shops etc. You can see, even on a rainy day , tables are laid out. If I had time , I would have sat down with a bottle of wine and some tit bits.

Walk around

We just strayed around the narrow lanes full of souvenir shops, eateries. I bought few standard ones like famous Venice masks and few magnetic stickers for the fridges of friends.

The small masks at a shop window

While walking around, I was delighted to see a Sardarji family on the Gondola, who waved at me 

The Gondola ride.

Gondola ride is expensive ( for me, but worth it) at 150 Euro for one hour and 6 persons. We took a ride, I mean the Gondola man took us for a ride. It was really nice and memorable. 

In the picture below, we are entering Rio di Palazzo. This place was used for off loading straw (the place is called Ponte della paglia (straw) ) . Walls on both sides are covered for maintenance..,,to the left is Doge's palace and to the right and at the backside is the famous prison. Beyond the bridge in front, you can see another bridge, which is called Bridge of sighs.

The bridge of sighs

The white bridge connects the court to the prison on the right. The walls are  now all covered, so have a look at internet to see how it looks. Many people think that the name has come from lovers who failed in their affair and used to sigh, standing on the bridge. ( How Bollywoodic and romantic!!!! I wish....ha  ha ).  This is not true. The sighs were of condemned prisoners, who might be seeing the outside world for the last time,( while crossing over to the prison.)

More pictures from the Gondola

The famous fish market on Grand canal ( from the Gondola), going  to the Grand canal is part of the deal)

Back to the Gondola staring point and the famous Island San Giorgio Maggiore in the back ground

Now it was time to get back and we stopped for few minutes at 
Santa Maria

Dela Salute

That famous statue at Santa Maria ( The one below , not the one above, thats NO ONE of SOMEONE)

Bye Bye Venice
At railway station ( Train at 18-20 to Milano Centrale, just enough time for ice cream )

NOTE: 

Dear friends

Venice is well publicized on the net. You get all the information there, and much better Photos and description and guidance, to visit. I am just sharing what I saw.

I am running short of recipes to post ( because I am cooking from my treasure which I dug out from your food blogs, thank you, for this favor). I am planning to add the word "TRAVEL" to my blog tittle .

Happy cooking and exciting travel too....