Two weeks after we returned from Italy last spring Tom asked when we were going back! While we probably won’t be doing that any time soon we sure have enjoyed looking back at our pictures and reliving the great time we had. In the last blog I shared what we saw in Turin and Milan. We had just arrived in Venice so our tour will start up again there.
The next morning it continued to rain so we took a water taxi instead of walking to St. Mark’s Square. There we had a tour guide of the Doge Palace which was once the center of government in Venice with a prison attached. We walked across the famous Bridge of Sighs - the last view of Venice that the prisoners had before beginning their jail sentence.
The Doge Palace is now an art gallery where we saw many beautiful works of art. The most memorable items were several clocks including a 24-hour clock and a 6-hour clock.
We also toured St. Mark’s Basilica on our own. It would have been better with a tour guide as there was so much beauty to see but we didn’t always know exactly what we were looking at.
In the afternoon we took a water taxi to the island of Murano and toured the famous glass factory. They tried very hard to sell us all kinds of their beautiful items. We did buy wine stoppers to take home to our kids - a fun and more affordable remembrance of our trip.
Then we went to the island of Burano which is known for its colorful houses as well as its lace shops. Instead of lace we opted for gelato!
Venice was one of my favorite cities during my trip 40 years ago but I was disappointed this time around because it rained the entire time we were there. It was difficult to truly see the city under an umbrella and none of the iconic gondolas were sailing.
The next day we drove to the medieval walled city of Siena. We walked over 12,000 steps in four hours to see the city as well as three churches. There were so many fun shops along the way that would have been to browse through but no time since we didn’t arrive there until afternoon. The Duomo di Siena was an absolutely gorgeous building with striped stones both inside and out.
My favorite room inside the church was full of original Gregorian Chant books - medieval music that I learned about in college and also taught my eighth grade students at Irving Middle School.
We also toured the Church of St Dominic where the relics of St. Catherine of Siena are housed
and the Basilica of San Francesco which has a Eucharistic Miracle.
After spending the night in Siena we drove the next day to another walled city called Orvieto. It, too, had a beautiful Duomo with striped stones. We explored this church on our own and noticed many graphic paintings on the walls.
We then had some time to explore some of the shops in the neighborhood and I purchased a ceramic spoon holder with Italian words on it. We had lunch on our own at a cute little restaurant with great food and lots of risqué pictures on the walls. Sorry - no photos of those!
After spending an enjoyable afternoon in Orvieto we boarded our bus to travel to Assisi. At this point in our trip we noticed that we were really enjoying the smaller towns that we were visiting as opposed to the larger cities like Milan. We were much more comfortable exploring those places on our own as it felt a little more like home. Luckily for us there were several more small towns on our itinerary. Stay tuned for our adventures in Cascia, Lanciano, and one of my favorite places, San Giovanni Rotondo.
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