Getting Around in Venezia

Wednesday, June 5

After breakfast in the room we were out and about.  Our initial plan was to visit the Basilica de San Marco, the main cathedral of Venice.  We had bought unlimited rides on the Vaporetto, and took the boat to the Piazza San Marco.  Each vaporetto ride is 7€. A 2-day (48-hour) pass is 30€. While our hellovenezia car was not worth it, we got value from our boat pass. The VeneziaCard did not have the advantages of the other cities' tourist card, like priority admission.

The line to visit the Basilica was hundreds of people long.  Early in the morning.  Before the height of the tourist season.  It was now that we discovered our disappointment with having bought the visitor's card.  The cathedral was not high on our priority list, so we proceeded to our next destination.

The Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) had almost no line, and has considerably greater historical and artistic value.  Tintoretto's Paradiso may be found in the Palazzo.  It is the largest oil painting in the world at 23' x 75'.  We visited the New Prison and crossed the Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs) to get to the prison. 

More impressive to me than the art, either its dimensions or its quality, is that the architects of the time could build palaces with rooms with ceilings that span more than 80 feet without central support.  Remember: there is no availability of steel I-beams.   Even if they cut huge pine trees, how could they support such a ceiling??  I am still dumfounded!

After a picnic lunch, we took the vaporetto to the Jewish Ghetto.  In the Ghetto we ran across a nursery school: Scuola Materna Comunale F. Rafalovich Comparetti.  Rafalovich is the name of my mother's father, before he shortened it upon immigrating to the US from Poland.

In the ghetto, the guided tour took us through the three main renaissance synagogues of the neighborhood.  While not in good condition, they were all beautiful in their own way.  There are few local Jews, and services are held only once a week.  Different synagogues are open for the services at different times of year, primarily for tourists and transients.  Here, again, no photos were permitted.  Of course, there is also a Chabad house open for business in the ghetto.

In one of the synagogues, the walls had a small oil painting at the capital of each column; the non-Jewish artist had also decorated one of the important churches.  The paintings of pivotal biblical events differed considerably from those we saw in museums and in churches.  Whereas, for example, the splitting of the Red Sea in a church would show Moses in flowing robes, the myriad Israelites marching into the sea, and the Egyptian chariots being swept under by the turbulent water,  the painting in the synagogue showed only the turbulent sea with a dry path cut through it and a forearm, presumably of Moses, with a staff stretched out over the background.  "Graven images" are not permitted in Judaism.  A picture of Moses would not be found in such a synagogue.

We took the vaporetto back to San Marco, where we had our obligatory daily gelato.  After some souvenir shopping, we made our way to a restaurant for dinner, and then -- by way of vaporetto -- back to the B&B.