Day 17 Friday, May 23
VENICE
This is our last
day in Venice and my 70th birthday.
We slept a little late and packed a few things.
It was warm out with a beautiful sky like yesterday.
We took the vaporetto to Santa
Maria della Salute (see
"O" on the map), which is known as the Crown Jewel of 17th
Baroque. It was begun in 1631 by Baldassare Longhena and took fifty years to
build. Longhena died 5 y
ears
before it was finished. It contains
125 statues as well as paintings by Titian and
Tintorettos. It was very open with a
large central dome and a lot of side chapels.
The dome was being restored and was enclosed in scaffolding.
It is very difficult to take a picture except from the water as it sits
on the point where the Grand Canal meets the Guidecca.
We started to
walk to Santa
Maria del Rosario (see
"R" on the map) when it began to rain b
ut
we got in before it began
to rain hard. This church was
built in 1743 by the Dominicans when Gesuati order was suppressed.
The façade reflects Palladio’s Il Redentore.
The inside was richly decorated. There
was a large ceiling fresco of the
Life of Dominic by Tiepol.
When we came out it was raining hard so we stopped in the nearest café
for lunch. I breaded veal and french fries and my wife tomatoes
with buffalo mozzarella cheese.
By
the time we fi
nished lunch, it started raining again, so we took the vaporetto
to the next
stop so we could visit San
Sabastiano (see "M" on
the map) which was a 16th century church.
Veronsese had been commissioned to decorate the entire church.
It had a beautiful sacristy.
Our final church
stop was Il
Redentore (see
"Liii on the
map) which was built in 1577 in
thanksgiving for the end of
the 1576 plague. It is a beautiful
example of Palladio’s work. It has
a classical interior with paintings by Veronese and Vivarini.
We were rather
close to St.
Georgio Maggiore (see
"Lii" on the map). This is P
alladio's finest design.
We had spent considerable time in St. Georgio on our 2004 visit to Venice
so we did not stop for a revisit. I will write about it when complete
Italy 2004 and make a link to it.
It continued to
rain off and on. Since it had been
such a beautiful day when we started out, we had not taken our rain jackets or
umbrella. We decided to take
the vaporetto the long way home. We
passed a lot of huge cruise ship that we docked.
We got off at the Rialto Bridge.
We had dinner reservations at the Cipriani Hotel on the Guidecca which is a very fancy place. This
was another "need to" make reservation well in advance. They had their own boat that took us from St. Mark’s Square to the
hotel. We ate outside near the
water. Two nights dining with such a view can
really spoil a person. It was not
too far from where we had dinner at Harr
y’s
Dolci. I guess we ate
too much celebrating my 70th birthday because we didn’t write down what we ate.
Whatever it was, it was delicious and expensive. It
was a very nice birthday.
The next morning
we got up early and pulled our suitcases several block to Fondamente Nuove near
where we ate on Monday night to caught a boat to the airport.
We flew to Madrid where we had a 6 hour wait for our flight home.
This was a
wonderful vacation. We did not feel the pressure of moving from town to
town as we have on other trips. It was nice to have a whole week in
Florence and a week in Venice....although a week would never be enough for
Venice. We could go back to Venice tomorrow. We also
enjoyed the days that we had in Padua and Ravenna. If we had it to
do over, we would have spent several days in Ravenna.
