2022-07-15: Venice Day 1

2022-07-15: Venice Day 1

Today was our first full day in Venice. Unfortunately, Michael is the only one who slept well last night. The boys were sharing a room in the apartment but we’ve discovered on this trip that Michael is a noisy sleeper. He hums and makes whining noises while he sleeps. Patrick had a hard time sleeping with the noises so he moved to the couch in the main room of the apartment. Amanda was too warm which makes it hard for her to sleep. And Darrell kept hearing noises outside. There was a woman balling her eyes out at about 2:00am shouting that “it was all her fault”. He couldn’t see what was going on from the apartment windows but it was loud enough to keep him awake.

Aside from the crappy sleep, everyone was in decent spirits. We grabbed some breakfast at a cafe just outside the apartment before heading to Palazzo Ducale aka the Doge’s Palace for a tour. We had tickets for The Secret Itinerary tour at 10:00am. We entered the palace and waited for our tour guide in the main courtyard. Once the guide introduced himself, we began our tour. It was a tour of the prisons and torture chamber of the palace dating back to the 1200s. The cells were intentionally small so the prisoners couldn’t even stand up straight. The conditions weren’t great, but were considered good for the time. They were checked out by a doctor once a week which wasn’t common in other places. This is the prison where Giacomo Casanova was imprisoned before his escape. For anyone who doesn’t know, he was a common man with many faults most notably being a womanizer. He was smart and made friends with folks of a higher standing than he. He ended up saving a senator in Venice who had suffered a stroke while riding with him in a gondola. The senator took Casanova in and taught him the life of a nobleman. He continued to be a womanizer and started writing about the church in a negative light. His poor choices caught up with him and he was arrested in 1755 for affront to religion and common decency. He was imprisoned in the Doge’s Palace. He made friends of the warden and was granted special treatment because of it. He was allowed to go for walks in the attic of the prison whee he managed to find a piece of broken marble and a steel rod which he smuggled back to his cell. He started digging a hole in the floor of his cell to escape through. Before he was finished though, the warden entered his cell unexpectedly one day and discovered the hole he was digging. The warden was furious and threatened to tell the authorities of his behavior. Casanova thought quick and told the warden if he did tell the authorities, Casanova would tell them the warden was the one who allowed it to happen by letting him out of his cell to walk the attic. The warden decided to keep quiet, but moved him to a different cell. He was place in a cell near a priest who had also been imprisoned. The prisoners were allowed to read and borrow books. Casanova and the priest started conversing by writing notes to each other in the books. Casanova had managed to smuggle the steel rod to his new cell when he was moved. And then he managed to get it to the priest. The two plotted their escape. The priest dug a hole in the roof of his cell and escaped to the corridor above where he was also able to dig a hole into Casanova’s cell. The two of them escaped their cells and made their way through the palace ending up in the nobleman’s area only to find the doors out of the area locked. Only noblemen were allowed to enter that area and it was early in the morning after a party had taken place the night before. A couple of guards saw their silhouette in the rooms and assumed they had partied too hard and had passed out somewhere and had gotten locked in. They rushed up to the locked doors and let Casanova and the priest out with their apologies for locking them in. They both escaped to the mainland together where they then went their separate ways. It’s an amazing story.

After the tour ended, we explored the rest of the palace to the chagrin of the children. The main issue was that it was HOT! It was approaching 30 degrees outside and the palace gets awfully warm. We explored the armory which they found interesting but the courtrooms and justice halls didn’t hold much interest to them. We walked over the bridge of sighs where the prisoners saw their last glimpse of Venice before entering the darkness of the prison for their sentence. Once we were done exploring the palace, we walked around the outside of the palace to see the bridge of sighs from the outside. There was also a market of vendors set up outside the palace that Patrick wanted to explore, but he was too hot to do it then and Michael was overheated. So we headed back to our apartment to cool off for a bit.

We relaxed in the apartment until it was time to grab some lunch. We headed off in search of some pizza which isn’t hard to find. We enjoyed our pizza lunch and explored Venice for a while. We made our way to the Rialto Bridge which is the biggest bridge over the canal in Venice and is very decorative. We checked out a local food market where we grabbed some bottles of water for tomorrow and Michael found some cookies he wanted to try. Then we made our way back to the apartment. After the crappy night of sleep and the heat of the afternoon, we all needed some time to cool off and relax for a bit.

We headed out to grab some dinner around 7:00pm. We wandered the streets of Venice aimlessly until we found a restaurant near the grand canal. The service was lacking but the food was decent. We enjoyed our dinner and then wandered back to St. Mark’s Square. There were vendors shooting toys with lights into the air that then float back to the ground. Of course the kids wanted them. We haggled with a vendor and got four of them for more that we should have paid still I’m sure. The kids played with the toys for a few minutes but it was approaching 10:00pm so we had to user them back the apartment for some sleep. Our plan is to check out Murano and take a gondola ride tomorrow.