A quiet day in Venice

With a whopping 30 million tourists flocking Venice each year it's difficult to imagine you can spend a quiet day in this city - quiet meaning without (too many) tourists. It is possible though.

Just go off the beaten paths. Keep your eye our for the details. The city is full of them!

Gondola city

The whole gondola business is a tourist trap if there ever was one.
That said, it makes for wonderful pictures!

Naming a theatre 'the Phoenix'?

Yes, in Venice they named their theatre La Fenice, the Phoenix.
It's world famous (and rightly so).
The Venetians had to rebuild the theatre three times - IMHO that happens when you name your theatre after a bird that regularly goes up into flames to be reborn again.

Well, the theatre was thrice reborn. We all hope the 1996 destruction was the last in it's history. Because the theatre, as it is now, is a stunning beauty. Can't say other than that.
See for yourselves...

(ps -we were not allowed to take pictures inside the Theatre. I'm just saying)

St Mark's Square and the San Marco

You're in Venice and you go to the city's most famous landmark: St. Marks Square and the San Marco.

We too went to St. Marks Square - on a blazing Sunday, a month before the start of the official tourist season. 

The Square was jam-packed. 

The queue waiting to enter the San Marco spread all the way to the water front (a couple of hundred metres away!). 

The atmosphere on the Square was exhilarating: each and every person was thoroughly happy to be in Venice, to be at St. Marks Square on this warm, sunny mid-April Sunday afternoon. 

No, we didn't queue for the San Marco Church that afternoon. We thought the waiting line would certainly be shorter on Monday morning. Well, when we came back next day it wasn't,  but since this  was our last morning in Venice we joined the queue and a quarter of an hour later stood in this most famous church.

It was dark. 

The church's interior - so different from all the churches we had visited earlier - is built in a rather sombre greyish brown stone that absorbs all the light coming from the very small windows that adorn a truly huge interior. 

On the whole is was slightly confusing: an immense space, but dark, and crowded with droves of visitors that are lead through paths through the church. You meekly follow the people in front of you and shuffle obediently through the vast interior, where you are not allowed to take pictures (every visitor does) and where explanations about the church's functions and history are not allowed (because it is a place of worship (every guide does). 

Where in all other Italian churches we looked up we now, inadvertently, looked down, where we found  the most amazing floors: all made of mozaics in the most intricate and absolutely stunning patterns. 

So I cannot truly say 'I saw the San Marco's inside' because the church really was too dark to see much. But we did see the mozaics, and they were amazing. So here's what I can show you of the famous San Marco (my camera photographed what I did not see: an interior flooded with light!)

The Rialto market

Yes, Venice still has it's locals, although it's a tiny amount - 62.000 inhabitants - compared to the stunning amount of tourists - a whopping 30 million - that visit the city each year.

The locals are still there, and as in every other Italian city they do their shopping at the small supermarkets that shatter the city and.... at the local market. The market near the Rialto bridge.

Early in the morning we set out, walked the tourists paths that were now deserted but for the Venetians heading for their daily shopping at the Rialto market. We thoroughly enjoyed it.