VENICE
06/07/2026 - 06/09/2026
The final stop of our big adventure was Venice. We only included it as a stop because we found a good flight home from Venice. We had just 2 nights, so really only saw a few highlights before heading home.
The historic island city of Venice is very small, with a surface area of just2 square miles. It is a floating city built on millions of petrified wooden piles driven into clay and consists of 118 little chunks of land connected by over 400 bridges. All transportation is by boat on canals as there are no cars or bicycles. By law, since 1562, all gondolas are painted solid black to prevent wealthy residents from showing off. Venice is a really cool town!
We blew a good bit of money on a tour of the Doge’s Palace and St. Mark’s Basilica and it was worth every penny. The tour started at 8:00am, which meant we actually got to go into the palace before it was open, which was amazing! And Venice at 7:30 am is pretty amazing as well… quiet and cool and peaceful.
The Doge’s Palace in St. Mark's Square was the residence of the elected leader (Doge) of the Venetian Republic and served as the seat of government, justice, and the city's prisons. There has been a Doge’s Palace on this site since 810, but the original was destroyed in a fire. The current structure was built around 1340 with additions and expansions for about another 200 years.
The Chamber of the Great Council in the palace is one of the largest halls in Europe at 178 feet long, and was built without any supporting columns. In this hall hangs Tintoretto's Il Paradiso, which is considered the largest oil painting in the world at 72 feet in length. This room was pretty incredible!
Behind the scenes of the lavish ballrooms and magistrate offices were secret torture chambers. Nice, huh! We didn’t get to see the secret torture chambers or the really bad original prisons, but they did take us through the “new” prison which was also part of the palace.
The final stop of our over priced tour was St. Mark’s Basilica which is located right next to the Doge’s Palace. It is one of the most celebrated examples of Byzantine architecture in the world, and known for its opulence. But seriously, aren’t all those old Catholic churches over the top with opulence! The initial 9th-century church was destroyed in a fire, but the current structure is pretty stinking old too … construction began in 1063.
The basilica was originally founded to house the relics of St. Mark the Evangelist… which the Venetians didn’t even have. So they sent some merchants to steal the body from Egypt. They hid St. Mark’s remains in a barrel under layers of pork to get past Muslim customs officials. No way the Muslims were going to dig through a barrel of pork to see if anything was being smuggled out illegally! Pretty clever!
The inside walls and ceiling of the basilica are covered in 85,000 square feet of golden mosaic tilework. The gold leaf is sandwiched between layers of Murano glass, designed to reflect candlelight and create a shimmering, heavenly atmosphere. It was admittedly pretty stunning.
Much of the basilica's decorative marble, columns, and sculptures are actually plunder taken in 1204, when Venetian forces sacked Constantinople. Over 500 columns inside and outside the church were brought back as war trophies. They also stole 4 huge bronze horse statues from the Hippodrome of Constantinople. Those Venetians were some serious thieves!
We got up bright and early the morning of June 9th to finish packing and catch the 8:25 ferry to the airport which took almost an hour and a half. Once in the airport, we got to enjoy terrible signage and long lines throughout. Our flight departed late so we missed our connecting flight in Dublin - which would have gotten us home at 7pm (in time to hang out with AC and Erica and enjoy the Hurricanes game). We were re-routed to Washington DC where we had to sit around for 3 hours before catching a flight to Raleigh. It was almost midnight when we finally made it to RDU, so we were pretty stinking tired after being up for about 23 hours. And then we discovered that our luggage was still sitting in Dublin! Ugh! Toiletries, makeup, medication, toothpaste, shower soap, clothes… remember, we have been gone for a year, so we have none of these things available at home!
This travel day was one of the worst of the trip, second only to our Singapore to Greece travel day(s) back in March. But the bright spot this time was our greeting committee!!! Cutest welcome home ever!! 😊
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