Venice - San Marco area

After we got checked in to our hotel we started wandering around.  Here are some pictures I took that afternoon.

One of the canals we crossed.  Yes that bell tower is leaning.

Entrance to Piazza San Marco - with St Marks' Campanile

Piazza San Marco

Another bell tower across the square

Campenile di San Marco

Some ornaments / masks / animal heads?

Close up of an alligator mask

Narrow streets (walkways) are every where

 whole row of ancient door knockers on the door to St Marks Cathedral

In side the entrance of St Marks Cathedral on the ceiling ad walls were these fabulous paintings and mosaics
This one shows the complete story of the creation with Adam and Eve in the outside ring.

Here is Noah and the flood

The would not allow pictures inside of the cathedral - but it was fabulous.  Most impressive was the gold and the mosaics - especially on the floor.  These pictures are from the inside the entryway.

Yes this a  mosaic marble floor with individual pieces laid to form this pattern.

One of the front doors to the cathedral

Then we went through the Doge's palace.  It was enormous.  This is the central square inside of the palace.

There were two wells?  Big enough to be baptismal fonts.

Statuary around the square

Formal stairs up to the court rooms and governing legislature

Every where  we go there is a depiction of St George killing the Dragon

A view of the Doge's palace square from up several floors

The back side of St marks Cathedral that is connected to the Doge's palace.

Not sure of the story of this.  But you can put your fingers into the his (or her) mouth.

Here is thier family tree - Yes, They kept track their ancestors 

More doors - of course!

We walked up these stairs.  Wonderfully decorated everywhere.

There was an armory and even a cannon!

The palace square and the connected cathedral.

We then went through several narrow corridors and found ourselves in the prison.

Comming back through the narrow corridors I realized that we are on the bridge of sighs.  You can see all of the tourists taking pictures of the famous Bridge of Sighs.

A shot of the Bridge of Sighs after we were back from the prison.

This is the other well?

After studying the figures I don't think it was a baptismal font. 

View of the personal Doge's entrance to the cathedral.

After all of that walking we were looking for a place to sit down and rest awhile before we went to dinner.  We could here some music way off in the distance so we followed it.  It was a famous restaurant in Piazza San Marco with a 5 piece orchestra.  Violin, clarinet, Bass, Piano and an Accordion.  They were great!  Playing lots of american standards type of music.  We pulled up a chair and sat down and enjoyed it.

After a while the waiter came up and asked us what we wanted to order.  We asked for two cokes.  They came on this silver tray.  They were tiny cokes - 250 ml (about 1 measuring cup each).  I knew it would be expensive.  The bill was 31 euros!  A little over $42.

I don't begrudge them at all for the bill.  We enjoyed over 2 sets of them playing.  The music was great!  The atmosphere was wonderful.  We were in Venice!  We had a great after noon.

Venice

March 17, 2014

Last week end we celebrated our wedding anniversary by taking a trip to Venice.  We hopped on the Metro, rode to the train station and then rode the fast train from Milano to Venice.  It was a fantastic trip!

 This is Milano Centrale.  The main train station just 10 metro stops from Famagosta

 It was just 2 1/2 hours to Venice.  A nice relaxing ride.  We hopped off the train and walked out of the train station and there was the Grand Canal.  We bought a 48 hr pass for each of us on the Vaperetto.

 We then hopped on the vaperetto and rode down the Grand Canal and soaked in the sights.

 This is the famed Rialto Bridge.  The main pedestrian bridge across the canal in the central part of Venice.

 The architecture of the main buildings  was very interesting

 Here is a carved Owl.  Big and Fat.

 These appear to be fresh frescos on this building

 Just like you always see in the pictures.

 One of the almost hundreds of churches in Venice.

We rode past Piazza San Marco - the main square in Venice.

I will end up with several posts on our trip to Venice.  Stay turned in.

Serrevalle Scrivia

March 9, 2014

Last weekend was cold and raining.  We had a bunch of stuff to do at the office so we decided to not go any where special  We did play a game of Settlers of Catan with the assistants.  It was fun.

This past week was very busy.  Tuesday we had new missionary training.  There were 19 new missionaries along with their trainers.  Peg only had to cook the dessert for this training lunch.  She made my favorite cookies - Oatmeal Raisin.  She made about 100 cookies so we had some for the office and of course for my own consumption.  Wednesday we closed an apartment in Milano (Vialle Monza).  This is an apartment that we have been renting for 19 years.  And during that time the landlord has made no improvements.  It is a dump.  We moved the elders out of this apartment a month or so ago and last week Peggy was able to come to an agreement with the owner.  We met two sets of elders there at 8 am and loaded up everything that we might save into the van.  We packed it to the ceiling.  I then drove to the Mission office where we unloaded the refrigerators and washing machine and some beds into the garage we rent below the office.  We then drove back to the apartment and tore apart all of the cupboards, dressers, tables, chairs, counter tops, sink, shelves, cabinets, and oven so we only had flat boards.  Somehow we were able to squeeze it all into the van and hauled it to the dump.  I got done about 4 pm.  Also this week we assisted in putting a missionary apartment binder together.  120 of them with all of the hints, helps, rules, guidance, ect for living in missionary apartments in Italy.  Peg was still working on this Saturday Morning.  I was busy the rest of the week catching up from two missed work days.

My plans for Saturday were to drive up to Monza and see John The Baptist's tooth.  But President and Sister Dibb invited us to go with them down to Serrevalle Scrivia where there is a giant outlet mall.  While of course I am not much of a shopper, it was OK.  Sister Dibb was still shopping strong after 3 hours.  Peg and I had stopped after about an 1.5 hours and got some gellato.

The mall was put together like a mall in California - all walkways were outside.  It was very nice and new.  Many many big expensive stores like Prada and the like.  Quite a few of the stores had guards at the doors that would only let people in as others left their store.  Of course these elite stores had lines waiting to get in.  I only looked in the windows of these stores.  There were coats that normally cost 2400 euros that were marked down to just 1200 euros.  "A real bargain".

Yes they had a Ferrari Store.  We did go in there.

 There were 2 Indy cars there.  I was surprised by how small they were.  Inside they sold all kinds of Ferrari trinkets. Coats, hats, clothes, etc - just about everything they could put a Ferrari logo on.

Here are two Ferrari mountain bikes.  The far one had front and rear suspension and was priced at 1650 Euros.  While the closer on was only front suspension and only cost 1250 euros.

When we met up with the Dibbs again we went to a restaurant in the shopping center.  It was OK.  Not horribly expensive.  Peg got the best plate which was Pasta with a Zucchini sauce.

After eating we drove to Alessandria where we attended a baptism. It was very nice.  We had been to this church building last December where we served a large Christmas dinner for a zone conference.  They used a portable baptismal font.  1st time I had ever seen that.  All in all it was a very good day.  

 Here is a picture of a "parked" car that we walked past on the way to church several weeks ago.