Loading...After leaving Caffe Florian we decided to wander. Venice is probably the best wandering city in the world. You can’t go the wrong way, you can’t look at the wrong thing. High on my list was La Fenice (pronounced Fen-ee-chay), the opera house. We somehow managed to plan our trip during the one week of the entire year that La Fenice is dark. However, they have an audiotour and I was anxious to see the interior of the space. Unfortunately it was closed, and when we walked around to the back we saw they were loading in some scenery off of a boat. It was one of those moments you have in Venice, where you see the everyday and it sort of tickles you because they are doing it from a boat.
We found ourselves near the Accademia Bridge (one of four bridges that crosses the Grand Canal). We crossed but decided not to go into the Accadmia (art museum) and instead wandered around the Dorsodoro. The Dorsodoro is the sestiere (neighborhood) that, when you look at a map of Venice, is the skinny strip of land (Dorsodoro means spine) that ends in a tip. The Church of Maria della Salute is on that tip, one of the famous sites of Venice, the big domes usually a beautiful part of the skyline, but alas, covered in scaffolding for our trip.
In the Dorsodoro we found 2 of the sites we had seen multiple times in the travel shows we watched prior to our trip. We just stumbled across the little Gondola factory. The building looks like it belongs in the Alps, with its dark wood paneling and window boxes. The Gondola makers originally came from the Dolomites, the Italian Alps, so I suppose it’s not too unusual that their houses would look like this. Next we found Ca’ Macana, the famous mask shop right outside of Campo San Barnaba.
The best way to view the pictures (in my opinion) is to click on the first one which opens a larger view, then click Next in that new window. This way you can also read the captions.
