La Haye du Puits, July 12

Wednesday, July 12
La Haye du Puits, France

Today, we cycled in a light drizzle through the Norman countryside on a 24-mile round trip (14 miles for me). More... We passed lots of pastureland with grazing dairy cows (much bigger than our American breeds), and also several half-timbered country manor houses. Many of these manors were “borrowed” by German generals who used them as their headquarters during the Battle of Normandy.

After the D-Day landings and the liberation of several of the surrounding towns and villages, American troops headed south, to the town of La Haye du Puits. The Germans were waiting here, and a fierce week-long battle ensued. It was particularly difficult because this is hedgerow country, with lines of closely spaced shrubs and trees that are trained to form natural boundary lines. They’re very pretty, but they also made good hiding places for German snipers.

At La Haye du Puits, we stopped to view the monument and stones commemorating the sacrifices of the American 79th Division, the 82nd Airborne, and the 90th Division in their struggle to liberate the town. The town was badly damaged but was rebuilt in concrete. The parish church, however, lost one of its spires in the fighting, which has never been replaced.

We also explored the town’s fantastic Wednesday market, where a variety of local vendors bring their fruits, vegetables, and wares to sell.

After everyone had viewed the market, I got a lift in the van with Sophie over the hardest hills, then she dropped me off to meet up with Gary at an old church. Then we cycled to the cider farm where we were going to have lunch -- in a downpour. (Gary says the rain was his fault -- he jinxed us by taking off his jacket, then saying “Watch, it will probably start pouring now.” Which it did.)

At the farm, we had a picnic lunch, toured the premises to see how they make cider, and tasted the goods. Cider is very big in this region. They make an apple brandy called Calvados from the famous Normandy apples, which is made much like whiskey except they distill cider. This particular cider farm also makes a special type of Calvados called “44”, which is Calvados mixed with 44 oranges punctured with 44 holes; 44 coffee beans; 44 sugar cubes; and 44 vanilla beans. The mixture is then aged for 44 days and bottled. We liked it so much we bought a large bottle for €25.

The rest of the group then cycled on to the small town of Lessay to view its abbey built in 1056 (bombed in 1944 by the Germans before they retreated from the town). I rode back to the hotel in the van with Sophie.

Later on, we walked into the little village of St. Germain-sur-Ay with John and Yvonne and stopped at a local pub called Chez Marie for a drink. The village is so small that there are not really any restaurants big enough to accommodate all of us, so we had dinner back at the hotel.

Dinan, July 13

Thursday, July 13
Dinan, France

We boarded another private bus this morning for a 2½ hour transfer to the medieval village of Dinan, a walled city perched high atop a hill on the edge of the Brittany region of France. More... Here we met a local guide named Marie-Élaine, who gave us a short tour through its cobblestoned streets.

Dinan was an ancient export and fishing port town, connected to the sea 15 miles away by the River Rance. The town grew by taxing river traffic, but because its location was so exposed, the townspeople retreated to the hillside behind ramparts. A large section of the city walls remains, part of which can still be View of river from Dinan walked upon. The town escaped the bombs of WWII, so its Gothic church and half-timbered buildings, many of them dating back to the 13th century, are still wonderfully preserved.

The buildings date from the time when property taxes were based on the square footage of your ground floor. To protect themselves from rain (and taxes), the townspeople would start their buildings with small ground floors, then expanded outward into upper floors, with roofs that nearly touched their neighbors. In medieval times, vendors would sell their wares in front of their homes while sitting underneath their leaning walls.

Although the people here mostly speak standard French, the traditional language of the Brittany region is Breton, which is closely related to Cornish and more distantly to Welsh. Along with Cornwall and Wales in England, where the original settlers emigrated from, Bretons are considered Celtic Britons. As late as the mid-20th century, the Breton language was banned from French schools, Celtic music was forbidden, and people could lose their French citizenship if they had a Celtic name. Since 1951, however, Breton speakers have been allowed to speak their language and celebrate their culture openly. The music stores in Dinan today sell mostly Celtic music, and they even have their own Breton TV and radio stations.

It was market day here, too, so after our tour we grabbed a quick lunch from one of the food stalls (sausages wrapped in buckwheat crêpes – saucisse et galettes -- and a bottle of cider).

I also used a public washroom here where you were supposed to collect your toilet paper from a dispenser on the wall before you go into the stall to do your business. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that until it was too late, so I was forced to do what a billion civilized people on this planet still do – use my left hand. Luckily, there was a sink to rinse off with and hand sanitizer back in the van. From now on, I’ll make sure I carry my tissues with me!

Then we were reunited with our bikes at the port and began our 26.5-mile ride (15 miles for me). We started off on a nice footpath along the River Rance, but we soon encountered lots of rolling hills.

After some time to have drinks and view the granite houses draped with fishing nets in the estuary town of St. Suliac, I rode the rest of the way to our destination in the van with Adel. I was joined this time by two other girls from our group, Jennifer and Sanna, because they didn’t want to tackle the hills either. (Sanna is the mother of the two young men in our group. She was originally from Lebanon, which used to be under French control after World War I, so she speaks fluent French. She’s acted as our unofficial translator on this trip.)

Gary and Karen on the River Rance in St. Suliac, Brittany

Our new destination on this trip is the beautiful medieval fortified city of Saint-Malo on Brittany’s coast across from the English Channel. Saint-Malo was the legendary home of French corsairs (privateers -- private persons who held a letter of marque from the government allowing them to conduct piracy at sea during wartime). It’s also the main setting of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “All The Light We Cannot See” by American author Anthony Doerr.

Our hotel in Saint-Malo, The Grand Hotel des Thermes (the Grand Spa Hotel) is a modern resort hotel with thermal spas and massage treatments. While it’s by the far the nicest hotel we’ve stayed in on this trip with fantastic views of the sea, it’s also very confusing to find your way around here because it has two separate wings which require two different elevators. Gary actually got lost once!

Gary and I went for a long walk on the pedestrian promenade and stopped in at several bars for drinks. Then we had dinner at La Brasserie du Sillon, a seafood restaurant at the end of the promenade where our tour leaders had made reservations for us. The menu was entirely in French, but my limited knowledge of French vocabulary was enough for us to pick out what we wanted.

Saint-Malo, July 14

Friday, July 14 – Happy Bastille Day!
Saint-Malo, France

Today we cycled 21 miles (13 for me) along the beautifully rugged Brittany coast. More... Some of the scenery was so gorgeous that I didn’t even take pictures of most of it because a picture could never do it justice. But here’s a few that we took anyway:

Our first stop was the tiny fishing port of Cancale, known as “the oyster capital” of Brittany, where our tour leaders treated us to an oyster tasting. King Louis XIV supposedly liked Cancale oysters so much that he had them brought fresh every day to Versailles. Oyster farming is still a major activity in the port (about 25,000 tons a year). The oyster beds cover about 4 miles and can be easily seen at low tide from the pier. The oyster market (marché aux huîtres) at the harbor sells a wide variety of fresh local oysters at producer prices, but there are also stalls selling just about any kind of crustaceans you can think of.

Adel and Sophie set up our picnic lunch at the foot of the steps overlooking the oyster beds. When we were done slurping down our oysters, we just threw the empty shells right onto the beach.

After lunch, I decided to ride on to our next stop in the van again. While I was waiting for Sophie and Adel to pack up the van and meet me, I had time to browse around the town. I finally gave in to fashion and bought a blue-and-white striped shirt in a little shop that sold nautical clothing.

Striped shirts are one of those stereotypes of the French that it turns out is actually true. Called une mariniere (“sailor’s blouse”) or un tricot rayé (“a striped knit”), they were originally part of a naval sailor’s uniform starting in 1858. The distinctive stripes made overboard sailors easier to find in the waves. At the time, all of the French navy came from Brittany, so the shirt came to be called the “Breton shirt” or the “Breton stripe.” The shirts originally displayed 21 stripes – one for each of Napoleon’s victories over the British. They were manufactured in both cotton and wool, and eventually caught on with other workers in Brittany because of their practicality. Then French fashion designer Coco Chanel featured them in her 1917 nautical line and they became popular with everyone.

The striped shirt still seems to be a fashion essential in France. I’ve seen lots of people on the streets, both men and women, wearing them during this trip, usually with a scarf or a blazer. (I heard you’re never supposed to pair them with a beret, though. That makes the whole look too gimmicky or over-the-top, like you’re on your way to get your mime makeup done.)

I also had another public bathroom adventure while I was waiting for the van. This was one of those unisex public bathrooms where each stall had only a tiled hole to stand – or squat – over, and no toilet paper in sight. Luckily I was wearing cycling shorts, which aren’t that hard to take off, and I was carrying tissue paper in my cycling jersey pocket. I learned my lesson well after my mishap the other day.

Sophie then drove me to meet up with the group at our next stop – the manor house of Saint-Malo resident Jacques Cartier. In 1534 he crossed the Atlantic and sailed up today’s St. Lawrence River as far as modern-day Montreal, making him the discoverer of Canada. We had a short guided tour of his manor and watched a brief film about him. The film did a good job of celebrating him as a brave explorer, while at the same time not hiding the fact that he had the usual white European man’s attitude toward the natives he encountered during his travels. (He kidnapped an Indian chief’s sons to act as his guides. He eventually brought them back on his next voyage, but then kidnapped the Indian chief himself to bring back to the king as a trophy.)

After we cycled the short way back to the hotel, we had several hours before we had to meet up with our group for our farewell dinner. Gary and I put on our bathing suits and took a dip in the hotel’s Aquatonic sea water thermal spa. This was like a giant communal swimming pool with a series of mazes. Each pool had jet baths, currents and air jets which massaged different parts of the body with different intensity and positioning. Very refreshing!After we cycled the short way back to the hotel and got cleaned up, we had several hours before we had to meet up with our group for our farewell dinner. Gary and I put on our bathing suits and took a dip in the hotel’s Aquatonic sea water thermal spa. This was like a giant communal swimming pool with a series of mazes. Each pool had jet baths, currents and air jets which massaged different parts of the body with different intensity and positioning. Very refreshing!

After that, we got dressed and made a visit to La Ville Intra-Muros, Saint-Malo’s ancient walled city. It took a good 25 minutes to walk there from our hotel, but it was worth it.

It’s hard to believe that the Saint-Malo you see today is not the original, but a restoration. Eighty percent of this walled city was destroyed during World War II in August 1944, mostly by American shelling and bombing as well as British naval gunfire. The Allies believed false reports that there were thousands of Germans occupying it. The Germans did urge the citizens to evacuate beforehand, but many of them chose to stay because they thought they would be safer in the cellars of the corsairs’ houses than in the open country.

Later, the Germans rounded up all men between 16 and 60 and locked them in an old fort on an islet, as punishment for a supposed terrorist attack in the town. Several of these hostages were later killed by a falling shell because the fort was in the line of fire of the oncoming Americans. A truce was arranged on August 13 to allow the remaining people to evacuate, but by then most of the city was in flames. When the Americans entered the city with tanks the next day, they found the burning city mostly empty. The Germans didn’t surrender until August 17 because Hitler had ordered them to hold out until the end. (Many of these events are included in the book “All The Light We Cannot See,” which is set in Saint-Malo.)

After the war, the Malouins painstakingly restored the city as close to its original style as possible, mostly in a 12-year period between 1948 and 1960. The project was only officially finished in 1971! Today, all of the mansions have identical facades of granite and a 60-degree pitch to their gray slate roofs. Other restored buildings that you can visit today are the Chateau de St.-Malo and the Cathedrale St.-Vincent.

St.-Malo's burned-out mansions in August 1944, and St.-Malo today

After we explored the town itself, Gary and I climbed up one of the many stone staircases to see the view from the top of the ramparts.

Quite a crowd was gathering at the port entrance to the city as we were leaving, probably for Bastille Day celebrations. Gary and I still had a long walk ahead of us to get back to the hotel, though.

At our farewell group dinner tonight, we exchanged contact information with the other members of the group and drank toasts to Adel and Sophie, who took great care of us on this trip. (The highlight of the dinner for me was seeing John show up wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt and a scarf. I considered running back up to my room and changing into mine, but decided it would be a bit too much.)

Much later on, around 11:00 PM, Gary and I could hear the sounds of fireworks going off. We could actually even see them when we went out on our bedroom balcony and leaned over. So now we can say we (kind of) celebrated Bastille Day in France!

Mont St.-Michel, July 15

Saturday, July 15
Le Mont St.-Michel, France
We said our good-byes this morning to Sophie and Adel and boarded a private bus More... for a trip to the island abbey of Mont St.-Michel (Saint Michael’s Mount). A local guide named Arielle met us at the entrance and gave us a tour of this remarkable structure.

This rocky tidal island is surrounded by the Bay of Mont St.-Michel, which turns into a mudflat with dangerous quicksand at low tide. The bay is fed by the Couesnon River, which marks the boundary between Brittany and Normandy. The river used to flow on the other side of the mount, making it part of Brittany, although both regions wanted to claim it. Today, Mont St.-Michel is just barely – but conclusively – part of Normandy.

On the top of the mountain, soaring 240 feet above sea level, is the Abbey of Mont St.-Michel. Hermits had been coming to the mountain since the sixth century in order to isolate themselves to seek holiness, but an abbey wasn’t built until 708. In that year, according to a local legend, the Archangel Michael appeared in a vision to a local bishop, Aubert of Avranches, and instructed him to build an abbey on the top of the mountain as a place where devout Christians could make pilgrimages.

Hermits and pilgrims came here for centuries, and a small town grew at the bottom of the mountain, outside the walls, to cater to the needs of the pilgrims. An order of Benedictine monks was installed in the abbey in the year 966. During the Hundred Years’ War, England made repeated assaults on the island. Although the English conquered all the rest of Normandy, they were never able to take the island because of its improved fortifications. Mont St.-Michel’s resolute resistance to the English made it a symbol of French national identity, and was said to have inspired Joan of Arc.

Pilgrimage to Mont St.-Michel declined after the French Revolution, so the abbey was closed and converted into a prison. The prison finally closed in 1863, and the mount was declared a historic monument in 1874.

In 2001, the Benedictines were replaced by a community of monks and nuns of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem. Unlike the Benedictines, this order is not cloistered and interacts with the local community and the pilgrims. They meet four times every day in the abbey church to recite the liturgical office, and are often joined by visitors and pilgrims.

Today, the town of Le Mont St.-Michel has only 50 residents (which includes 5 monks and 7 nuns), but entertains more than 2.5 million tourists a year. There are about 50 shops and hotels in the town to serve them.

After the tour, we got a few souvenirs. Gary particularly wanted a small replica of the St. Michael statue, since he’s the patron saint of the military. Then our group met up at the bus again and made the 4-hour trip back to Paris.

Everyone is staying at the Pullman Paris Montparnasse Hotel, near Charles de Gaulle Airport. It’s a very nice ultra-modern hotel, and the only one with air conditioning on our entire trip! Some members of the group will be here for a week as part of VBT’s post-trip extension. Those of us who already saw Paris on our own are only staying here overnight before we catch our flight home in the morning.

Tomorrow we head home. It’s been the trip of a lifetime. . .

New Lenox, IL, July 16

Sunday, July 16
New Lenox, IL, USA

Now that I’m home and have some time to reflect on the trip, here’s my impressions of France: More...

• Contrary to the common belief, most French people are not rude. They’re just not as talkative as Italians or as outgoing as Americans. They’re polite, but reserved. Some of the waiters could be a little abrupt, but I guess I would be too if I dealt with tourists all day long. We found that if you made the effort to say a few words in French, it made all the difference in the world. Which leads to my next observation:
  
  
• It really does pay to learn to say “Bonjour,” “Au revoir,” and a few basic phrases in French before you go. (I studied French for a year-and-a-half in high school, which was 40 years ago, but most of it came back to me. Another great tool is the Google Translate app, which will tell you the correct French word and the pronunciation.) The French really do appreciate it if you make the effort to learn some of their language, instead of just expecting them to speak yours. This should be a basic rule for any country you visit. You’re a guest in their country, so it’s just good manners to learn some of their language, besides being practical.
  
  
• French people will usually start to speak in English when they realize you’re American, especially in tourist areas, but it’s not because they don’t think you speak their language well enough. Sophie told us they do it because it gives them a chance to practice their English.
  
  
• The stereotype about French people wearing striped shirts seems to be true, but berets – not so much. We only saw a few people wearing them, mostly old men. We did see one young guy wearing one, but all of his friends were laughing at him, so they must not be in fashion anymore! (And no, there are no mimes in Paris.)
  
  
• French food is as delicious as everyone says – especially the butter, the cheese, the wine, and the bread. Bread is served with every meal, so French people buy it fresh every day; we saw lots of people on the Metro with baguettes sticking out of their handbags. The food is rich but it’s worth every calorie. I gained 4 pounds while I was there, but it was the best four pounds of my life!
  
  
• The French usually eat dinner much later than us – around 9 PM. This is partly because of the later sunset. Also, most French people don’t get home from work until about 8 PM because they take long lunch breaks, usually at home with their families.
  
  
• When you’re dining out, you won’t get your check until you specifically ask the waiter for it (“Je voudrais l’addition, s’il vous plait”). French people like to take very long, leisurely meals (an average of 2 hours), with a lot of talking and socializing. It you’ve got that much time, great – you can dine like a real Parisian! But if you’re on a schedule, like we were, make sure you ask for the check or you’ll be waiting a long time for it.
  
  
• French restaurants are not comfortable with the whole concept of “doggie bags.” If you ask for one, they’ll provide it, but they may give you a funny look. French people have been taught from childhood to eat everything on their plates, to the point where it’s considered bad manners to walk out with leftovers, so it’s just not a part of their culture. Portion sizes are also much smaller in France, so there’s usually not as much need for doggie bags. Many French chefs hate the phrase “doggie bag” (there’s no exact term for it in French), because they think it implies that their food is only fit for dogs. This attitude is changing, but it will probably take some time. A new anti-waste law went into effect in January 2016 that requires French restaurants to provide take out containers if diners request them. The government wants to reduce the 7 million tons of food thrown away each year in a country where 3.5 million people depend on free charity meals.
  
  
• Unlike Italy, tipping is not common in France across the country and there are no set rules about it. It’s not mandatory, but it’s appreciated. And when you do tip, it’s much less than what is common in the States. The tip is usually included in your total bill (service compris) but if you want to acknowledge good service with an extra tip, 5% to 10% is customary. Another option is to leave €1 to €2 for every €20 spent. Basically, if you want to tip, do it based on the level of service you received.
  
  
• Many shops and restaurants are closed in France from 1 to 3 PM. This is because of the long lunch breaks at home that I mentioned before. When they open up again, it may not be right on time, or they might even remain closed if they don’t feel like coming back in again. They don’t consider it as being lazy; it’s just the French way. They care more about the quality of life than about making money.
  
  
• Bathrooms are different in France. The toilet is always in a separate room, never in the same room as the sink and the shower. This is because of the French concept of hygiene – they believe that the place where you get rid of your bodily wastes should be separate from the place where you wash. Showers can be very small, and often there are no shelves to hold soap or other toiletries. I expected to see more bidets, but only one of our hotels on this trip had one, unlike Italy where every hotel we stayed in had one. And always carry tissue paper with you, in case there’s no toilet paper. Bathrooms in hotels and restaurants usually are adequately stocked with it, but you never know what you’ll find in public restrooms on the street, especially in small countryside villages.
  
  
• Don’t expect air conditioning in most French buildings, except in modern hotels near the airport or other buildings that cater specifically to tourists. Unlike Italy, Greece, and Spain, France is still very entrenched in standard European ways when it comes to adopting air conditioning. Part of the reason is that most of the buildings in Europe are much older than ours, and it’s expensive to renovate them with AC. Also, temperatures that we consider comfortable are too cold for many Europeans, and most of them are used to warmer room temperatures because they grew up without any AC. Then there’s also the whole environmental argument about AC being an energy guzzler. So if AC is a must for you, then try to travel to Europe in the spring or fall rather than in summer.
  
  
• The city of Paris really is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. What’s amazing is that the beauty is mostly man-made -- the uniformity in the heights, facades, and roof angles of the buildings; the way the buildings are aligned in relation to each other; and the way the major avenues lead up to ornate buildings. Almost all of the buildings are lower than 5 stories, so it’s on more of a human level. Paris has always been residential and any commerce it has is only to serve Parisians, so it has no ugly factories or skyscrapers. A very high percentage of Paris is gardens, museums, or public spaces. And of course, it was never bombed or destroyed in either World War.
  
  
• French people care deeply about beauty and aesthetics, the visual aspects of everything around them. They love life and enjoy all of its pleasures.

Venice, Aug. 5, 2012

Aug. 5, 2012
Venice, Italy

We’re in Venice! But the less said about our flight over here, the better.
More...
The next time we have an overnight flight, I really think we’re going to have to splurge on first class and get a sleeping pod. It’s impossible to sleep in a cramped, upright economy seat. Plus the food is probably better in first class.

Venice is beautiful, but all of our friends who’ve been here before were right – in August, it’s just as hot and humid as it is in Chicago, and it’s very crowded. After we checked into our hotel (the Hotel Bel Sito in the Campo Santa Maria del Giglio), Gary and I went for a walk to the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square) to find an ATM and browse around. We found it was very hard to navigate the narrow cobblestone streets because they’re just teeming with tourists of all nationalities, many with young children in strollers. As for the heat, we had to take two showers today – one in the morning and one in the evening. I wish I had been able to book a tour later in the year in September or October when it’s cooler and supposedly less crowded in Italy, but all of the Go Ahead tours for this particular trip were already fully booked for those months. I guess other tourists besides me are catching on to that, so maybe it wouldn’t be less crowded here in the fall after all.

Venice is still beautiful, though. It really is a city built on water. It’s actually a group of 118 small islands in a shallow lagoon that are separated by 177 canals and connected by more than 400 bridges. In the older central section of the city where we’re staying, the canals act as roads and all transportation is on foot or by boat. We had to take a pretty wild water-taxi ride over here from Marco Polo International Airport on the mainland. The only place where motor vehicles are allowed is on the northern edge of the city, where they recently built parking facilities and a road to the mainland.

The architecture here is incredible. Venice was a very wealthy center of trade and commerce during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance because of its access to the seas, so many of the buildings, especially the churches and civic facilities, are very lavishly decorated in the Gothic style with elaborate sculpture, gilding, and bright paint. And of course, there is always the sound of bells ringing from the many church bell towers.

Everyone here speaks pretty good English, so I haven’t had much of a chance to use the Italian phrases I taught myself before we got here. I say “Ciao”, “Grazi,” and “Buon giorno” a lot just to show I’m making an effort, and I did ask a booth vendor how much something cost in Italian (“Quanto costa?”). But they seem to know you’re American as soon as they hear your accent and launch right into English, so you can usually get by with that.

Later on, our tour group had an introductory meeting and went out to dinner at a local restaurant (Taverna dei Dogi on Calle Albanesi near the Ponte dei Sospiri or “Bridge of Sighs”) with our tour director Monique Verloo, who is a pretty interesting person. She’s half Belgian, half Italian, but was born in the States, so she holds dual citizenship and speaks several languages. She lives in Rome during the summer as a Go Ahead tour director and in Pennsylvania during the winter as an architectural historian, and also teaches Aviation English to Italian pilots and air traffic controllers.

There are about 25 or 30 people in our group, including a family from New Jersey, but mostly middle-aged women traveling with friends or family members. The exception is two young girls in their late teens or early 20s, Jennifer and Ali, who just happen to have grown up and gone to school in Manhattan, Illinois, which is only about 10 miles from New Lenox, where we live. Talk about a small world!

Italians sure do like to eat. At dinner tonight, we were served four courses (first lasagna, then salad, then rosemary roasted chicken, then gelato with fruit), which Monique says is pretty standard for most Italian dinners. Yet all of the Italians I’ve seen so far have been skinny! How do they do it? (On second thought, it must be all the walking they do here. Let’s see what they look like in Florence.) All of the food was excellent!

The bread (which Monique says comes with every meal and for which you are charged whether you eat it or not so you might as well eat it) was in the form of hard, crusty rolls and was served without any butter or olive oil, so at first we weren’t sure how we were expected to eat it. They gave us butter when we asked for it, but later I saw Monique using her roll to mop up the meat sauce on the lasagna, so I guess that’s how the locals eat it. (We found out later that it’s considered very “lower class” here to eat your bread with butter. Maybe it’s that way for Italians, but for Americans it’s just the custom we’ve grown up with.)

They also do not serve tap water at restaurants in Italy. If you ask for water, you get a bottle of mineral water, which is available in either “sparkling” or “still.” They also refer to it as “with gas” (sparkling) or “without gas” (still), which caused some confusion the first time we were asked. I thought maybe they were enquiring about the state of our digestion instead of our water preference. (For the record, Gary and I prefer our mineral water – and our digestive systems -- without gas.)

After dinner, Gary and I went for a nightcap at a little place that Monique recommended called Sangal, a contemporary-style restaurant and lounge bar with a great outdoor terrace on the roof. It’s in a square called Campo San Gallo on a side alley and over a stone bridge off of the Piazza San Marco. (Most of the restaurants, shops, and cafés directly on the square are very expensive, so it’s always best to find something on the side streets.) We liked it so much we’ll probably go back there for dinner tomorrow night.

While we were looking for the bar, we also ran into an American couple from North Dakota on the bridge who asked us to take a picture of them, and to make sure that we got the Hard Rock Café in the background. (It must be mandatory now for every popular tourist spot in the world to have a Hard Rock Café.) When we said we were from Chicago, the guy said “Go Bears!,” which was nice to hear. When Gary asked him if he preferred the Cubs or the White Sox, he said he wasn’t much of a baseball fan, but if he had to pick he’d go with the White Sox. This is exactly how Gary and I feel, so it’s another case of “a small world.”

Venice, Aug.6

Aug. 6, 2012
Venice, Italy
Today, a local guide named Lisa took us on a tour of Piazza San Marco and the Doge’s Palace.
More...
The Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square in English) is the main public square of Venice. All other squares in the city are known as campi (campo in the singular tense). The Piazza features the famous cathedral of St. Mark’s Basilica (Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di Marco in Italian) at the eastern end, which is the one of the most famous examples of Byzantine architecture in the world; St. Mark’s Campanile, which is the bell tower of the basilica and stands alone in a corner of the square near the front of the church; and the Clock Tower on the north side of the square. The clock is built above an archway over a main street called the Merceria, which leads to the Rialto, the financial and commercial center of Venice.

The long Gothic-style arcade along the north side of the square, known as the Procuratie Vecchie, used to accommodate the offices of the Procurators of St. Mark’s, while the arcade on the west side is known as the Napoleonic Wing because it was rebuilt by Napoleon in 1810 when he took over Italy. The arcade on the south side of the square, known as the Procuratie Nuove, is built in the Classical style. It was meant to be a palace for Napoleon’s stepson, but now houses the Museo Correr (Correr Museum). There’s also a famous café on the ground floor called Caffe Florian, which is one of the oldest coffee houses in continuous operation (since 1720). We were tempted to go there, but were warned it was one of the most expensive places on the square.

The Doge’s Palace was the official residence of the Doge of Venice, the chief authority of the Republic of Venice. It also housed the courtrooms and the prisons. The palace is located in the Piazzeta di San Marco (the “little square of St. Mark”) adjacent to the south side of the large square, and is built in Venetian Gothic style. It’s very elaborate inside, with lots of marble, carved and painted ceilings, pure gold gilding, and wall frescoes. You can tell the Doges wanted to demonstrate how powerful and wealthy Venice was through the care they lavished on their civic buildings.

The tour ended with a glass-blowing demonstration at a glass shop whose name I can’t remember, which is just as well because we didn’t buy anything there. The glass-blowing demo itself was fascinating, but after that they ushered us into their showroom for the obligatory sales pitch. That’s the one big drawback with tour companies – they usually have arrangements with local merchants to bring their groups into the stores and try to get them to buy. I liked several pieces of the glass jewelry I saw and they also had some very nice wine glasses, but everything seemed extremely expensive. Gary convinced me we could probably find something made of Venetian glass for more reasonable prices if we looked around (it turns out he was right).

Lots of the big hotels in Venice offer boat rides over to the island of Murano, where the best Venetian glass is made, but I’ve heard these tours can be scams. The glass factories there do a very hard sell, and if you don’t buy anything, they’ve been known to inform you that you’re on your own getting back to your hotel. I’m glad our tour company kept us away from there.

After the guided tour, we were free to spend the rest of the day as we wanted. Gary and I decided to skip touring St. Mark’s Basilica because the line was too long. Instead, we went to the top of the bell tower (luckily it has an elevator), where we saw a fantastic panorama of the city in all directions.

We also viewed the art work, furniture, and other items in the Correr Museum on the upper floors of the Procuratorie Nuove on the southeast side of St. Mark’s Square. We then split a small pizza marinara for lunch at a little pizzeria off the square whose name I also can’t remember. Pizzas here have a much thinner crust than in the States and are more sparing with the toppings, but are still very good.

After that, we walked all the way to the Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal to browse through the luxury shops and restaurants located there, then did some souvenir shopping at some of the less expensive shops closer to San Marco. We were able to find a wine stopper of Venetian glass for much less than that glass shop would have charged us.

Speaking of shopping, you’ll also see lots of vendors standing on the sides of the streets or in the squares in Italy selling cheap little toys and fake leather handbags. We weren’t tempted by anything they were selling, which was a good thing because we found out later these “vendors” have no license to operate. They run at the first sign of the police, but it doesn’t stop them from setting up again in another street.

The best part of our day was in the early evening when we took the private gondola ride that we had signed up for, which included a bottle of champagne; two musicians (a vocalist and an accordion-player) who serenaded us as we floated along the canals; and a picture of ourselves in the gondola by a professional photographer. You can also take public gondola rides, where you share the cost (and the boat) among 4 to 6 other people, but of course it’s not as romantic. Sure, it’s kind of a hokey, touristy thing to do, but it’s also unique to this city. How can you be in Venice and not ride in a gondola at least once? Besides, Gary and I are celebrating our 32nd anniversary on this trip, so this was our treat to ourselves. It was actually very enjoyable – everyone on the bridges stopped to call out to us and took pictures as we floated along and sipped our champagne.

After the gondola ride we were still in a mood to celebrate, so we stopped in at several bars for drinks before going back to Sangal to have dinner on the terrace. Since we were ordering for ourselves this time, we confined ourselves to just two courses. I had ravioli stuffed with goat cheese, seafood, and asparagus tips for an entrée, and tiramisu for dessert (homemade, of course). Yum. I just know I’m going to gain weight while I’m here.

After dinner, we went back to Piazza San Marco, which has more of a party atmosphere at night (not to mention being much cooler), and mingled with the people there before heading back to the hotel.