Having over half a day left in Venice, we headed towards the REALLY touristy side of Venice across the Great Canal, namely Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark’s Square) and Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace).
Buongiorno Venezia! 🙋
A bit of an omnious day… of ARMAGEDDON. Just kidding, lol.
I don’t even know what church this is anymore, too many churches. 😂
Saint Mark’s Square: the highest concentration of tourists in Venice! (Just like Lady’s Market in Hong Kong!)
Read on the internet here about four (Roman!) tourists ending up with a bill of €101.8 for 4 coffees at Saint Mark’s Square, ALWAYS check before you eat at obvious tourist traps. Why would a cafe hire a live band like this unless they intend to charge you a ridiculous cover charge?
Basilica di San Marco (St. Mark’s Basilica), under construction. 😤 Didn’t go in because of long lines and we’ve just about had enough of basilicas by now.
You can still see beautifully gilded statues at the top though.
Just underneath this statue is where they used to hang criminals, the criminals would be facing the clock and the executioner would say to him: “I’ll show you the time.” So if anyone in Venice says they’ll show yoi the time, it means U GUNNA DIE B*TCH!!
The clock you look at before ypu get hanged, a nice 24hr clock so you don’t get the time of your death confused!
The Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (National Library of St Mark’s), coolest library exterior I’ve seen.
Just gondolas covered up for the rainy day.
We have booked a “Secret Itineraries Tour” of the Doge’s Palace and you’re probably thinking: wtf is a doge? The Doge of Venice (no, not the doge meme) was the ruler of Venice in the old days and this was their residence for many centuries, inside was the Doge’s apartments, courts of law, archives, prison cells, etc. The tour took us through the palace and some restricted places through secret doors and such. When we arrived at the palace, the line was, as expected, long. It was really disorderly and people were all trying to push in because there was no clear line for those with prepaid tickets and those without, so heaps of people were trying to push in thinking they don’t need to line up because they had prepaid tickets, little they know that it WAS the line for prepaid tickets.
And here it is: Doge’s Palace! Such architecture, many amaze!
Courtyard of the palace.
Doge’s Palace is filled with secret doors like this inconspicuous wardrobe here.
The armory, located just above the prisons. The prisons were too dark to take pictures but one of the Doge actually decided to line the walls with lead on purpose so the prisoners will suffer.
Your usual crazily decorated ceilings.
Gold encrusted ceilongs, nothing special. *Yawn* 😪
A zodiac clock! I want one!!! 😱 …but it’s not even right, isn’t it Gemini now? I can’t read this clock!
You can see another island through the windows of the palace.
The Grand Council Chber is so big I can’t even fit it all in a photo.
Maybe a vertical panorama? Nope.
A horizontal panorama… Anyway it’s one of the biggest rooms in Europe.
Looking down into the courtyard… That green well in the middle, does that remind you of those green pipes in Mario!? Is this why Mario is Italian??? 😱
View through the cracks of Bridge of Sighs.
Looking into cells, a bit bigger than some of the hotel rooms I’ve stayed at.
Bridge of Sighs from the outside.
Went back to same restaurant for encore, clockwise from top left: tuna tartare, latte, black pasta with tomato sauce, tiramisu, panna cotta, duck+sweet potato gnocchi. 👍
Just want to say weather’s been so far excellent for us, everyday was scorching hot (well, cooler in Florence and Venice) and it was pouring so hard as we were trying to make our way to the airport bus, out shoes and socks were soaked but it was a good experience, haha. If it was going to rain, I’d rather have it rain when we were leaving instead of when we are actually looking at stuff.
Goodbye Venice! 👋 from above you can see random houses.by themselves just on tiny islands with no bridge connecting, they are probably abandoned or need a boat every time they leave the house… HOW DO I GO ABOUT GETTING ONE??
Hello Geneva! 👋 Passed by the Snowcapped Alps but they were covered in clouds.
Rays of god light in the airport. God: “Bless this area of and in particular!”
It was FREEZING COLD getting off the plane, it was basically Australian summer temperature suddenly dropped to Australian winter within a 1hr flight.
At the baggage claim, you can buy train tickets while you wait for your baggage, they have train times displayed and everything. They even have a machine where you can get a ticket for traveling around Geneva for 80mins FREE as long as you have a boarding pass!! Now I know why god blessed this land in particular…
Anyways, took a train from Geneva Airport to Morges (costing a whopping CHF21 for a 30min ride!!😱) where our friends Cedric and David picked us up as they kindly invited us to stay at their place in the small village of Saint-Barthélemy. Yay!! Can’t wait til daylight! 💃💃💃
Around ½ of The World in 80 Days 