It continued to rain some more so we retreated back to our apartment, not before visiting a small art gallery 100 paces from our apartment. The artist works in watercolours, and yesterday Cos bought a small book of drawings from the shop next door. Enjoyable. We continued our retreat to our apartment, not before an English couple asked us for directions. Their hotel was only 150 metres away, so Cos led them there before returning to the apartment to wait out the worst of the rain.
After the worst of the rain had passed, we headed to San Marco Basilica. Free entry but 5€ each for the Museum, which is a bargain by European standards. Basilica is impressive being constructed of Croatian marble. It is the third church to be built on the site, and so is young at 1100 years old. Like most famous churches, it has been added to and refreshed over the centuries countless times. The Museum was amazing with many artifacts dating back to the 2nd century. A lot of artifacts are touchable if you wanted to try. Sadly, visitors were not allowed to take photos in the Museum or the Basilica, but could on the terraces. The Museum gave you access to upper sections of the Basilica, which provided a better view of the extensive religious paintings and mosaics on the ceiling.
The Museum also gave access to Basilica terraces overlooking the square. The four horses on the Bastila are 2nd century Roman brought back from Constantinople. The Christian city of Constantinople was Venice’s rival. The city was sacked by crusaders after being encouraged by the Pope. Venice dutifully assisted the Pope by providing naval power and shipping the crusaders to Constantinople. The Rome based Pope wanted the power of Orthodox Christian Church (based in Constantinople) broken, as it rivaled his claim to supreme leader of Christiandom. The result, was Venice got the two lions of St Mark and the 4 horses. Consequently Constantinople was weakened which allowed the rise of the Islamic Ottoman Turks and Venice. ( It is amazing what history facts are triggered when you visit museums. )
After enjoying the Museum we carefully proceeded down the very steep steps to ground level and back into the square.
After sourcing some Euros for tomorrow’s water taxi ride (to the airport), we found late lunch (or early dinner 5pm) at another cafe we liked. Along the way ran into the English couple we helped earlier during the rain.
The tide today was high but within what is normal, however on the 12th November 2019, (two days after we left for the cruise), the city had 1.87 metre tides which went about 94 centimetres into the building pictured (see picture below). When we asked the shop owner, who was definitely Italian and probably a Venetian, about what it was like and that it must have been terrible. She just shrugged her shoulders and said ‘we live in Venice and deal with high tides all the time. We know when it will happen and just move averything up.
Due to wet weather, and we have now seen everything in Venice we want to see this visit, we returned to the apartment at 6pm for a early night ready for travel tomorrow.
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