Venice, Italy

We only have 1 day to spend on Venice so we wanted to see as much of it as possible and did we ever- I think Mat said he had almost 20,000 steps. 

            We arrived in the airbnb last night and just got settled.  We are staying in Venice, but we had to park the car off the island, so we wanted to make sure we could do that in the daylight.

 

We left the airbnb a little after 8:00 this morning to walk over to St. Mark’s Square.   We had read online that St Mark’s basilica was having a Holy Thursday Mass at 9:30 this morning and then for most of the day was not going to open for tours so we figured we would just go to the mass and that would also allow us to see the inside of the church.   We walked around St. Mark’s Square a little and then went into the church- the general public was only allowed to sit on the side sections.   The rest was reserved for the clergy and other religious.   What an impressive mass it was- I would guess around 150-200 priest in the procession and the bishop.   The singing was so beautiful- all in Latin.   My mom took a few pictures 

  We spent the next couple hours on a great tour of the Dogge Palace and learned all about the government then- very much like our system actually and we got to see Casanova’s cell. 

 After that tour we had a quick sandwich for lunch from a deli and then it was onto shopping for masks and gifts from the Morano Glass stores, then lots of walking- we saw Marco Polo’s house, the gondolas and many other sites.   We ended the day with dinner around 8:00.