Venice: Canal Mania

We just spent the last 4 days in Venice. We had a skinny 4 story town house from the 17th century, in a narrow alleyway almost next to the piazza Santa Maria Formosa. To get there we took the train from Milan, then we took a vaporetto from the train station to the Rialto bridge, then we walked to the house. Vaporetto is the Italian name for water taxi to get across the canals in the city, and that is what you use to get around. In Venice every day we always walked to the Piazza San Marco, which has towers with golden lions with wings, and horses with wings, and horses without wings, then we took the vaporetto to wherever we went. Venice is in a very big lagoon, and we also went to many islands in the lagoon with the vaporettos too.

Venice has a very big castle, called the Palazzo Ducale, which we visited. The Palazzo Ducale is really kind of a city hall, since Venice used to be a republic: it was called la Serenissima. The Doge was elected a bit like the President, and could never leave the Palazzo Ducale. In the Palazzo Ducale there were beautiful paintings in almost every room .We also saw secret passageways, and went over the bridge of sighs which was the bridge from the Palazzo Ducale to the prisons. We also visited the prisons and the dungeons: the prisons were very cool and cold, and the doors to lead the people in were all different sizes. The people who were managing the place had lion mouths on the outside of the walls of their offices, and the citizens could place accusations against others in the lion mouths.

We also went into the Basilica San Marco, which is the main church of Venice on the Piazza San Marco. We went up a set of stairs that led to four very famous statues of horses. The Venetians stole them from Byzantium when they invaded the city in the 4th crusade.

We also tried to get the tour of the Jewish ghetto. The first time we made a mistake and the second time it was full, so in the end we gave up. The word “ghetto” comes from Venice, and it was the name of the places where the Jews were told to stay, and then they called by that name the places where the Jews were told to stay in other cities.

Venice is a very pretty city. One of the things that make it very pretty is the canal streets. Also all the houses look really old on the outside.