June 26, 2007 - Venice

Bridge of Sighs Entrance to Doge's Palace Saint Mark's Basilica - and pigeons, pigeons - EVERYWHERE! Ponte Rialto, or the Rialto Bridge - the first and most important bridge in Venice Busy waterways in Venice. Boats were everywhere! Everywhere you looked was a picture! Beautiful canals ran between all the buildings and gondolas were all over the place. The buildings were right on top on one another. Chris shimmied up between two buildings to show how close they were. Chris dipped me in Saint Mark's Square We got up this morning a little later than normal and took a bus in to Venice. We had a tour of Doge’s Palace, the Bridge of Sighs, the Dungeon and Saint Mark’s Basilica. Doge’s Palace was incredible. Lavish, gorgeous marble, gold ceilings, paintings by Tintoretto. It was beautiful. The dungeon was yucky. Evidently, no one except Casanova ever escaped from this prison. And no one knows how he escaped. Perhaps one of his mistresses. Who knows? The Basilica was gorgeous. It was all done in mosaic, and most of it was gold plated. Amazing. After this, we went to a Murano glass factory where we saw an incredible glass blowing demonstration. He did it so fast, so meticulously, and so gorgeously. I could have watched much longer than we did. And then we got to walk through their showrooms and see the thousands of dollars worth of masterpieces. They were incredible. We walked over to Ponte Rialto, the first and most important bridge in Venice. It was so crowded, and we kept losing part of our family, so Chris held up his Nalgene bottle all through Venice with a frog sticker on it. So here we were – the entire Beutler clan following a smiling frog. I’m sure we looked interesting. From there, Jason, Kendra, Stephanie, Dan, Amy, Nancy, Chris and I went to find the most crooked door in Venice. It was really crooked! We enjoyed that a lot. Chris and I split off from the group and we walked around some of the back streets of Venice. There were bridges everywhere, and everywhere you looked was a picture. We found the perfect Pinocchio (the legend of Pinocchio originated outside of Pisa) for Grant, bought Chris’ mom a present, me a necklace and an ornament for our Christmas tree. We could have spent a lot more money. There were so many lovely things. We shared a lemon gelato and met back up with my family at 6:30 for dinner. We ate a delicious pizza for dinner, walked around Saint Marco’s square for a while, sat down and enjoyed the ambience for a while and took lots of silly pictures. As we were leaving to catch our water bus, Stephanie and Dan decided that they wanted one last dance in Saint Mark's Square, so we waited between the two pillars where they used to punish criminals. We were all just taking it all in when Chris tapped me and motioned for me to look behind me with his head. So I turned around and saw a very tall man with a red shirt standing right next to Jason. My first thought was that he was trying to pick-pocket, so I was watching him very closely. Suddenly, he said something and stepped around Jason and took off running full speed ahead. About that time, we saw another man running from another direction. They tackled a man selling roses, restrained him, and they all three walked away calmly. We're hoping that they were arresting the guy, and it wasn't something shady. Jason said later that when the guy hid behind him, he muttered something that sounded like “Police.” It was quite unique to have the police use my brother as a shield from being seen by the criminal. His height comes in handy sometimes! We caught a water bus, enjoying the scenery along the Grand Canal where we saw a huge rat running along the side of the buildings, and then took another bus back to our hotel, getting back around 10:30. We had planned on calling home tonight and when we got home, we had a message that Chris’ mom had called. We called right away and found out that Gramps had died. What a tragedy. We’re so disappointed that we’re not home. I’d do anything to be there. The funeral is on Thursday. It hasn’t hit home to Chris yet. We’ve talked of flying home, but think it is best if we stay for the remainder of the trip. We think that’s what Gramps would have wanted.