20th in Venice – Day 3

Venice is incredibly photogenic. Everywhere you turn you find a fascinating scene. On this date we were out to find the Banksy, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post.

Just three weeks before our trip a cruise ship had crashed into a ferry boat and a dock causing five injuries (thankfully, no fatalities). Italians have been trying for a few years to stop cruise ships from coming so close to Venice for a number of reasons, safety being one. I will break a personal rule and post a photo out of order here, because it makes sense to post it as I’m writing about this, though I didn’t take the photo until day 5. These ships come right up to the city.

Sitting in St. Mark’s Square enjoying the sunrise and in comes a ship.

And finally entered the Canal de Giudecca heading to port.

One major complaint is that the cruise ships are destroying the foundation of the entire city by stirring up the muddy floor of the canal. Banksy (google him!) passionately hates that this practice is harming the historic city and he painted a little girl on the side of a dilapidated building that was, at the time, for sale, making a statement about this issue.

Here are a few links that may be outdated in the future, and if so, please comment so I can clean the page up, but for now, they’re pretty interesting.

Enough about the political and art scene in Venice and back to our trip. On this day we decided to find a few spots to take photos of the city from up high. Along the way we saw some really beautiful places and I couldn’t resist taking photos around every corner.

After we tracked down the Banksy we headed to Scala Contarini Del Bovolo, a tower that offered a few of the roof-tops of Venice. Matt wasn’t impressed but I loved it. I wouldn’t suggest others go, necessarily, but I am glad we did.

Our next activity was to go to the top of the most expensive mall I’ve ever been to, the Tedeschi shopping centre. We viewed the Rialto Bridge and the Grand Canal from its roof! This is a free experience but you do have to make an online reservation because they only let 20-30 people at a time on the rooftop. They have an iPad just outside the door in case you show up without an appointment. I would highly recommend you make reservations ahead of time rather than risk showing up and not being able to get an appointment that day. We were lucky that an appointment was available 45 minutes later. I killed the time by having a cup of coffee, Matt tried on a 13,700 Euro watch, (~$15,390!) and then we shared a bubble waffle ice cream cone (at least that was in our price range).

The views from the Tedeschi shopping centre are incredible and this is a do-not-miss activity in my opinion!

This was the day we were schedule to take a Movie Tour. We love movies and we watched several leading up to this trip that were filmed in Venice. This tour was led by a local who took us to the filming locations. In addition to seeing some neat spots we recognized, the guide took us to a few places that were important historically and of interest to Venice, specifically.

The famous Danieli Hotel (as seen in several movies)

The spot where Johnny Depp jumps off the balcony in his pjs onto the market roof.

Casanova used to bring his dates here when it was a bar. Now it’s a coffee shop, I believe.

Instead of repairing foundations to straighten them (which, I can imagine, would be incredibly expensive and difficult, and probably dangerous), they just craft their doors around the tilted foundations.

Before street-lighting, Venice-inhabitants filled in the dark corners with masonry so that thieves couldn’t hide and surprise innocent late-night-walkers.

In the two photos above you can see the location in two famous movies: Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade and Katharine Hepburn in Summertime.

Two interesting things about these attached locations, though neither are about famous films. The top photo shows a church that has two exactly-alike entrances. “This duplication was so that the two rival local factions, the Nicolotti and Castellani, could each have an entrance of equal importance.” The bottom photo is of one of the last remaining gondola builders in the world. I took a really nice picture of this same spot during my photo-taking session and it’s in the previous post.

Our tour ended and we were on our own, and we walked past this spot where, just the day before, we had visited with our photography-tour guide.