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xiphiasWe didn't find any place to blog from in Trieste, but I did try taking notes about the last part of the trip. Still, as I didn't have my cane, I was pretty wiped, so my notes are extremely vague, and this won't be in as much detail, or written as well, as I'd have liked.
But, anyway. . . onward to Trieste through Venice.
We checked out in the morning, walked to the Roma Termini station, and took the train to Venezia Santa Lucia. We got off the train, and went to buy public transit bus tickets.
See, in Venice, the buses, like the fire trucks, police cars, postal delivery trucks, UPS trucks, and the rest, are all boats. Obvious, when you think about it -- Venice has no roads. So, we got tickets for the #1 vaporetto, the main commuter bus line. It goes from one end of the Grand Canal -- where the train station is -- to Piazza San Marco at the other end of the canal. It's €6 per ride, which is pretty darned steep for a single bus ride -- so their bus passes become economical pretty quickly -- €13 for 12 hours unlimited, €15 for 24 hours . . . still, as Lis and I were only planning on taking one ride down the canal and another ride back up, we just spent €12 each.
And we got to see the Grand Canal of Venice from one end to the other.
It didn't do much for me, frankly. I think that maybe I'd gotten spoiled by Lis's way of dealing with a city, which is to just wander randomly through it for a day or so, just to get a feel for what the city is, and only then take a look at what the city presents itself to be. Just cruising down the Grand Canal showed us all the nifty, crumbling, decayed architecture of the city, but not really anything else. That is what people are there to see, I guess, but, well, it felt. . . post-apocalyptic Disneyland. I understand that that really is what the city is like -- it's a decaying, dying city which has been about appearances and looking impressive ever since the 1600s or earlier, so "post-apocalyptic Disneyland" is a fairly reasonable vibe to get off of it.
The bus let us off at Saint Mark's Square, and we pulled out the Rick Steves' walking tour that we had. For the amount of time we had, the Rick Steves' thing was just about perfect -- he had a bit of a tour of what he thought was worth seeing, and how to go about it efficiently. After all, the #1 Vaporetto cruise we'd just been on had been his idea, too, and we'd been using his tour guide book to explain what we'd just been seeing.
If you want to know what we saw, you should just pick up his Venice guide book -- it's probably in the library. We pretty much just followed his boat tour followed by his walking tour. And we saw the things that he pointed out.
There were a couple things on that tour cool enough that I feel that I have to point them out, even though they're right in the book, too. The world's oldest digital clock is in the clock tower of St Mark's.
See, what it is: it's an incredibly complex clock, with a 24-hour sweep, along with dials for astrological signs, phases of the moon, and so forth.
But a 24-hour sweep clock moves slowly enough that you can't tell very precise times off of it. (The 6-hour sweep clock at Castel Gandalfo, on the other hand, which makes four revolutions per day, moves quickly enough that it doesn't need a minute hand). So, in addition, they have a digital readout.
You know those novelty 12-sided dice which are long rods with 12 faces? The shape could be called a "regular duodecilateral prism" (in the geometrical definition of "prism", not the optical definition).
So, you've got two of those, in two housings next to each other. (So that all you see is a window with a flat display on it -- you can't tell from the ground that they're duodeclateral prisms -- I'm just telling you that so you know how it works -- it's not part of the visual experience of it.) One of them has the Roman numerals I through XII on it; the other has the Arabic numerals "0" to "55" in intervals of 5.
Every five minutes, the Arabic counter rolls over. Every hour, when the "55" rolls over to "0", the Roman numeral rolls over.
Then there's the Basilica of St Mark. This is one of those buildings that defies description. It's. . . well, unique. Basically, it's every single archetectural style known in the early Renaissance. It's a Gothic/Byzantine/Arabic/Neoclassical building. And it's decorated wiith Gothic/Byzantine/Arabic/Neoclassical/Renaissance/Medieval/WTFOMGBBQ frescoes, mosaics, sculptures, bas reliefs, gold leaf, and with every single color of marble which occurs on Earth.
And it works. I mean, do you know anyone who has the sense of style of a peacock, who wears absolutely everything wrong and garish and too bright and totally hideous, and makes it look damn good? That's what this building does. It shouldn't work. But it does.
Pictures don't do it justice, but here's one I found on the Web, anyway.
Yes, those are onion domes on top of Gothic arches. You can't help but admire it in a kind of "what the FUCK" way.
We also stopped for lunch at a place called "Vino Vino". The food is reasonable -- not fantastic, but certainly edible, and not overly expensive.
But the wine selection. . . . Oh. My. Ghu. And cheap for what you were getting. I mean, the prices for wine were only slightly above retail. Normally, when you order wine in a restaurant, you expect to pay, like, at least a three time markup over retail, with five times not being out-of-the-question. Here, the markup was, maybe, 20%, 30%. Rather than the normal 300% markup. For some of the best wines in the world.
And then we went to the Rialto Bridge, partially because, hey, the Rialto Bridge, and partially because there is a shop there, Rivoaltus, which is generally considered to be the only non-tourist-trap shop on the bridge.
They sell blank books. Bound in leather. Which they bind in leather, themselves. Moleskine, eat your heart out.
They've got journals and so forth, but what Lis and I both bought were slipcovers for notebooks, in different sizes. Lis got a soft leather cover for the notebooks which she uses for everything; I got a smaller one. They're really, really cool.
Okay, so that was Venice. We were only there for a few hours -- I'm sure we could have seen more, and done more, with more time. People say that an afternoon in Venice is enough, which is what we did, but I think we could have spent a day or two profitably.
And then we went off to Trieste.
But, anyway. . . onward to Trieste through Venice.
We checked out in the morning, walked to the Roma Termini station, and took the train to Venezia Santa Lucia. We got off the train, and went to buy public transit bus tickets.
See, in Venice, the buses, like the fire trucks, police cars, postal delivery trucks, UPS trucks, and the rest, are all boats. Obvious, when you think about it -- Venice has no roads. So, we got tickets for the #1 vaporetto, the main commuter bus line. It goes from one end of the Grand Canal -- where the train station is -- to Piazza San Marco at the other end of the canal. It's €6 per ride, which is pretty darned steep for a single bus ride -- so their bus passes become economical pretty quickly -- €13 for 12 hours unlimited, €15 for 24 hours . . . still, as Lis and I were only planning on taking one ride down the canal and another ride back up, we just spent €12 each.
And we got to see the Grand Canal of Venice from one end to the other.
It didn't do much for me, frankly. I think that maybe I'd gotten spoiled by Lis's way of dealing with a city, which is to just wander randomly through it for a day or so, just to get a feel for what the city is, and only then take a look at what the city presents itself to be. Just cruising down the Grand Canal showed us all the nifty, crumbling, decayed architecture of the city, but not really anything else. That is what people are there to see, I guess, but, well, it felt. . . post-apocalyptic Disneyland. I understand that that really is what the city is like -- it's a decaying, dying city which has been about appearances and looking impressive ever since the 1600s or earlier, so "post-apocalyptic Disneyland" is a fairly reasonable vibe to get off of it.
The bus let us off at Saint Mark's Square, and we pulled out the Rick Steves' walking tour that we had. For the amount of time we had, the Rick Steves' thing was just about perfect -- he had a bit of a tour of what he thought was worth seeing, and how to go about it efficiently. After all, the #1 Vaporetto cruise we'd just been on had been his idea, too, and we'd been using his tour guide book to explain what we'd just been seeing.
If you want to know what we saw, you should just pick up his Venice guide book -- it's probably in the library. We pretty much just followed his boat tour followed by his walking tour. And we saw the things that he pointed out.
There were a couple things on that tour cool enough that I feel that I have to point them out, even though they're right in the book, too. The world's oldest digital clock is in the clock tower of St Mark's.
See, what it is: it's an incredibly complex clock, with a 24-hour sweep, along with dials for astrological signs, phases of the moon, and so forth.
But a 24-hour sweep clock moves slowly enough that you can't tell very precise times off of it. (The 6-hour sweep clock at Castel Gandalfo, on the other hand, which makes four revolutions per day, moves quickly enough that it doesn't need a minute hand). So, in addition, they have a digital readout.
You know those novelty 12-sided dice which are long rods with 12 faces? The shape could be called a "regular duodecilateral prism" (in the geometrical definition of "prism", not the optical definition).
So, you've got two of those, in two housings next to each other. (So that all you see is a window with a flat display on it -- you can't tell from the ground that they're duodeclateral prisms -- I'm just telling you that so you know how it works -- it's not part of the visual experience of it.) One of them has the Roman numerals I through XII on it; the other has the Arabic numerals "0" to "55" in intervals of 5.
Every five minutes, the Arabic counter rolls over. Every hour, when the "55" rolls over to "0", the Roman numeral rolls over.
Then there's the Basilica of St Mark. This is one of those buildings that defies description. It's. . . well, unique. Basically, it's every single archetectural style known in the early Renaissance. It's a Gothic/Byzantine/Arabic/Neoclassical building. And it's decorated wiith Gothic/Byzantine/Arabic/Neoclassical/Renaissance/Medieval/WTFOMGBBQ frescoes, mosaics, sculptures, bas reliefs, gold leaf, and with every single color of marble which occurs on Earth.
And it works. I mean, do you know anyone who has the sense of style of a peacock, who wears absolutely everything wrong and garish and too bright and totally hideous, and makes it look damn good? That's what this building does. It shouldn't work. But it does.
Pictures don't do it justice, but here's one I found on the Web, anyway.
Yes, those are onion domes on top of Gothic arches. You can't help but admire it in a kind of "what the FUCK" way.
We also stopped for lunch at a place called "Vino Vino". The food is reasonable -- not fantastic, but certainly edible, and not overly expensive.
But the wine selection. . . . Oh. My. Ghu. And cheap for what you were getting. I mean, the prices for wine were only slightly above retail. Normally, when you order wine in a restaurant, you expect to pay, like, at least a three time markup over retail, with five times not being out-of-the-question. Here, the markup was, maybe, 20%, 30%. Rather than the normal 300% markup. For some of the best wines in the world.
And then we went to the Rialto Bridge, partially because, hey, the Rialto Bridge, and partially because there is a shop there, Rivoaltus, which is generally considered to be the only non-tourist-trap shop on the bridge.
They sell blank books. Bound in leather. Which they bind in leather, themselves. Moleskine, eat your heart out.
They've got journals and so forth, but what Lis and I both bought were slipcovers for notebooks, in different sizes. Lis got a soft leather cover for the notebooks which she uses for everything; I got a smaller one. They're really, really cool.
Okay, so that was Venice. We were only there for a few hours -- I'm sure we could have seen more, and done more, with more time. People say that an afternoon in Venice is enough, which is what we did, but I think we could have spent a day or two profitably.
And then we went off to Trieste.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-05 11:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-05 11:44 pm (UTC)And we saw one stray cat during our brief sojourn -- but we saw (and photo'd) cats in just about every city in Italy we visited. You'd think they like sunny warm spots or something...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-06 01:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-06 01:25 am (UTC)Missed shuls in Florence and Venice.
Clearly, I have to go back...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-06 02:41 am (UTC)I don't know if Ian would have a better reaction to Jerusalem than Italy, but there is the interior of an Italian shul in the Israel museum in Jerusalem, and also an "Italian Shul", which has lots of (formerly) Italian Jews, and actually feels like it was lifted out of italy and plopped down in Jerusalem. Davening there was much less depressing...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-10 04:10 pm (UTC)