Sunday 17 April 2016
This is a late in the evening post.  I don't know if I can stay awake to finish it tonight, but Myrna is working on her things in the office so I will work on it for a while.  This weekend we drove about 3 hours so we could tour Venice with the other senior couples in the mission.  We left about 1 pm on Thursday and stopped on the way to a little touristy town on Lake Garda, called Sirmione. We had a late lunch and toured the town, including a castle, then went to an old city (the Romans actually founded it) called Treviso,  We went there instead of to Venice (Venezia in Italian). The hotels in Venice are several hundred dollars a night, even bad ones, and the one we stayed at in Treviso, which is adjacent to the train station, is only 85 euros and includes a very nice breakfast.  We walked over to the train station (about 5 minutes) and a ticket was only 3.35, and it took about a half hour to get to Venice because it stopped several times on the way.  The trains are very clean and nice and don't go clickity clack like they used to.  We went together as a group of 16 senior missionaries in our white shirts and sorelle dresses and name tags, which people always stare at.  There are, of course, many people from all over the world in Venice and there are no cars, you either walk or ride boats (water taxis are about 20, water busses, we bought a one day pass for 20, and gondolas, which start at about 80, and I don't even know if the gondaleers (singing costs extra).  We even saw several guys out taking gondola driving lessons.  Anyway, here are a few of the many pix I took.


I  wasn't driving (Anziano Salatino, who once drove a limo in San Francisco did), so I could take pix as we drove and there are cars and trucks from all over Europe, this one is from Slovenia. which is a neighbor to Italy.  It was a clear bright day and we could see the Swiss alps from the freeway as we were driving north of Milano.


The Swiss alps remind me of the the Grand Tetons.


Map of where we went on Lake Garda on the way to Venice.  The other side of the lake begin the alps.


This is the only way to get into the city, only one car (this one a Porsche) at a time.  Most people just park and walk over.  Sister Salatino wears a bracelet that counts her steps and puts it in miles.  We walked about 6 to 10 miles each day, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and about 4 on Sunday as we walked from our hotel to (LDS) church and back.  Of course, you see a lot of cool things walking.


Inside the city, me getting a drink from the city well.  The water was cold and good.  The castle, where the king (of this city) once lived, in the background.  We didn't go in because of time.

This is lake water around the edges of town.

Looking down into the water from the shore, we could see lots of fish,


The old organ in the church (there are several in this small town, this is the only one we went in).  As I was leaving it, the priest came out of his house, so I asked him about the organ. He was leaving to go somewhere, but immediately said he would go back in and get the key and let me play it, and then lock it up when I left, which I did, while the others saw other things on the streets.



We decided not to eat at Leo's hamburger joint, we ate at an Italian restaurant, of course.  We had a pizza and a salad, which is generally our typical meal.  We get one pizza and one salad and each eat half, which makes a nice meal and costs about 10 euros.

Another salad and pizza with the other seniors once we got to Treviso.

We were studying the menu in this pix; we had the young elders who work in Treviso with us.  It's like going to dinner with 16 grandparents--fun!


We went on the train from Treviso to Venice, about a half hour and several train stops. One thing about Venice is there aren't many places to use the restroom, so you do it when you can.  This was the restroom at the train station.  It cost 1.50 to go through the turn style to use the restroom, e.g., pay to pee.


First of 120 churches in Venice.  Of course, there are tourists milling around all the churches with their cameras (many churches won't let you take pix inside), and there are off-limit places within the churches.  Sadly, for me, we didn't go in all 120, but our tour guide told us there are 120 still functioning churches in  Venice, and many which have been turned into museums.  There are also many synagogues in the Jewish Ghetto of Venice.

In Venice all the streets are waterways, some famous, and some not so famous, like this one where the folks hang their laundry and take their little boats to where they want to go.  Of course, there are no cars or other vehicles in Venice.


This guy was our tour guide.  There are many like him, and they are free.  They take you on about a three or four hour walking tour, and let you stop in the middle for a rest and meal, and at the end they say they get paid in tips, so they probably make more this way than by advertising up front. We gave him 15 euros, and others gave less or more, but we really liked him.  He is Italian and speaks really good English and has lived near Venice all of his life.  His specialty is he takes you through the back alleys and tells you things you could only learn about if you read many books.  He didn't even take us to St Mark's square, he said we could get there on our own.  This pix was taken in a street called Calle (generally this word is not used in Italy, they use Via, but it comes from Latin, he said, and is used in Spanish speaking countries, Venice was also ruled by Spain for a while). Calle Gheto Novissimo, which means the new ghetto street.  Gheto is an Italian word that comes from gettare (to throw away).  This is where the Jewish people lived for many hundreds of years (before they got hauled away to the concentration camps before the 2nd world war).  In this part of town they could lock it down at night to protect the Jews.  The rich Italians actually liked the Jews because they (the Jews) could be money lenders (against Catholic doctrine) and there was much need for this when Venice was ruled by so many different countries form around the world.  We had in our tour group a couple of newly weds, she has the blue scarf and he the black skull cap--she was from Los Angles, CA; and he was from France and barely spoke English. They are Jewish. They left the group within the gheto to see if they could get in some of the older synagogues, which fascinated them.  All the others in our group were senior missionaries. In this picture he was explaining that the Jewish houses had 7 floors and the Italian houses only had 5 or fewer.


All of the neighborhood squares had wells, which had fresh water collected from the roofs during rain, which Venice gets a lot of because it is on the ocean.  They all had these holes at the bottom, which had water, for the stray cats.  These cats were important during the days of the plague, because the cats ate the rats.  The red bag is a gift for the cats, perhaps catnip or fish scraps.


Another well in front of one of the other 120 churches in Venice.


One of the few town squares without a well, but with an old church.


 You walk on sidewalks and cross bridges to get to the other side of the street.
This is the only one without sides.


Or you can take a gondola ride across a street. In this pix is a missionary couple on the right, our Jewish couple on the left and our guide, and this gondola driver did not sing. The guide knew the gondola man and got us a good deal, only 1.20 each to ride across the street, but we did it in a real gondola.


We did go to the out of the way places tourists don't go, like the fish market, but by the time we got there it was winding down for the day.



Other groups crossing the street in gondolas.


There are, of course, many shops selling different things to the tourists. I went in this one and bought an apron, so when I cook with my white shirt and tie on I don't get it dirty. She was writing, free hand with the sewing machine Giovanni (John).  This is the only touristy thing I bought all day.


This was Friday, a school day, and these kids were out for recess. They don't have playgrounds.  You can see the young sister in her white habit in the door to the school
Another group of students, from some other school (probably high school), with their party hats.


Funny masks are sold all over Venice.  The represent the masks that doctors and other people wore during the black plague days.  They put strong herbs in the noses so they wouldn't be able to smell the plague, and some were very well decorated.  Now they are just for fun and some are very elaborate.



This was a boatload of artichokes, which just arrived from the mainland farms.  Everything has to be brought in by boat, so food is more expensive in Venice.  It would not be inexpensive to live in Venice, so the population is declining.









Another typical street, here you can see a church and with the bell tower of another in the background. Around noon and on the hour the bells ring, Venice is a noisy city.  There are also a lot of pigeons, which people actually eat.



We have crossed a bridge so you can see the Grand Canal, with St. Mark's, the duomo or cathedral, in the background.  Our guide left us here at the end of four hours.



Our first sight of St Mark's square.  There are lots of restaurants in the square.  But this was on the day the university was graduating.  We got there and they were reading off the names of the graduates, in alphabetical order, and two hours later they finished.  There were a lot of parents, etc. in the square that day, in addition to the students as well as tourists. We couldn't really see the ceremony (but we could hear the reading off of names on the loud speakers) until we got on top of the cathedral.


From the square looking back.



Anziano and Sorella Hoopes in front of St Mark's.  This cathedral was built as a replica of St Sophia in Constandanople (Istanbull) because that is who was ruling Venice at the time.  We were not allowed to take pix inside St Mark's, and we had to pay to get in. We also paid to climb the stairs (4) to the roof, where we could see the entire square including the graduation ceremony going on at the other end of the square.



Here you can actually see where the graduation was taking place.



Up on the roof of St Mark's showing the 6 famous horses, which were brought back as booty during the Crusades from the middle east.  Actually, these are replicas of the bronze horses, the real ones are inside and it costs (again 4) to see them, which we did. We also paid 4 to see behind the alter, which is pure gold, about 10 feet by 8 feet with lots of jewels, called the pala d'oro.


The graduates get laurels (leaves they wear on their heads), and then I guess they go rest on them.


Proud parents with their new graduate.


Last pix of this post, looking off the end of the back of St Mark's square at another island, there are several, which we toured the next day,  I will continue this post tomorrow with the islands of Burano (lace making) and Murano (glass blowing).  I don't even know the name of the island in the background, but it has its share of churches.