Today we sailed into Venice and will be staying until early tomorrow evening. It would actually be more accurate to say that we were pushed, since that is what happened. The slowest possible speed for our ship (10 mph), is still too fast to navigate the Venice waterways. So, we were pushed by a tug boat into port. If we had sailed in, the ship's wake would push so much water into the city that the center of St. Mark's square would receive a couple of feet of water. Arriving in Venice was just amazing and was almost like a tour in itself. From our vantage point on the ship, we were able to take some great pictures. The ship passed right by St. Mark's square on it's way into port.During the summer the tides tend to be lower, however in the winter the highest tides actually flood the lower walkways of Venice in several feet of water. In order to prevent this, Venice is working on building some underwater dams, Project Moses, which will be completed in 2012. The dams will be raised during bad high ties that could flood or partial flood the city. In Venice there are no cars, trucks, or buses - they only have the gondolas and other water boats. This means that there is very little crime in Venice since there are no get-away cars.
Some interesting facts about Venice; there are 407 bridges, the national symbol is the winged lion, the water buses are called "vaporetta" and it is illegal for us to buy items from street vendors, like knock off purses or watches. It is not illegal for them to sell it, just for us to buy it and if were are caught it is a fine of 30 times the amount paid for the item....OUCH!!! And you can find almost anything fake in Venice.
After arriving in Venice, we had some time to wander before our Gondola ride and Champagne dinner that we had scheduled through the Ship. It was actually fairly easy to locate a vaporetta to take us to St. Mark's square. From there we wandered some of the streets and looked at several of the shops. The streets are all so small there since they are pedestrian only, and because there were two cruise ships there they were packed. We finally ended up in one of the recommended shops and bought a couple of the carnival masks as well as a pair of beautiful marionettes that we had shipped back to us. Saturday night the ship is having a masked party that will be filmed as a promotion for the Carnival cruise line. After shopping we needed to go back to the ship to get ready for our dinner, so we found the vaporetta stop and headed back.
After getting ready and meeting our tour, we took a private boat back to St. Mark's square where we headed back for our Gondola ride. Something to understand is that Gondola rides are not necessarily as you might picture them. The Gondoliers are frequently on their cell phones, smoking, and seem to be fairly surly fellows (there are currently no women gondoliers). Additionally, a ride is very expensive - around $180 for a half-hour ride and holds the max of 6 people. Carnival ensured that we actually had a 40 minute ride, with only 4 people, and every 3rd gondola contained an accordion player/singer. It made the ride much nicer. The part of the ride in the main canal was actually very rough, but once we got into the side streets it was much calmer. Gondolas are actually weighted on the right hand side since the Gondolier's stand on the left. This can make for an interesting ride. As part of the gondola ride, we were able to site with a honeymooning couple that Lael and I met in Naples. Derrick and Carla are a really cool couple that we kept bumping into them on the cruise! Carla lives in LA, a lawyer, and Derrick, rock scientist, lives in San Diego.
From the Gondola ride, we had a short walk to our dinner. The dinner was actually quite good. It was one of the best we had on our cruise. There were fewer people on this tour than on some of the others that we were on - maybe only 40 people total and only one group. After dinner we walked through St. Mark's Square and one of the gentleman on our tour got down on one knee and re-proposed to his wife of 36 years. Very romantic. From there we headed back to the ship as we were very tired (it was about 11:30pm).
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Gondola Ride
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Dinner
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