March 12, Day 16, Venice

 The highlights today were visits to St. Mark’s Cathedral and the Doge’s Palace.

We decided to buy the tickets electronically the night before because we did not trust what we were seeing on the streets, which was a surprisingly small number of tourists.

Buying them online was… not great. The process took forever, crazy settings, multiple options, and we had to enter the name of every visitor. Basically painful.

Then the next day, it turned out that even on the subject of tickets, we still didn’t do it right.

First, we probably could have bought the tickets on site. There were still not that many tourists. Second, there is a kind of click-and-bait ticket scene going on. In St. Mark’s, you can buy the main entry ticket, but then there are additional tickets for the museum where the famous horses are kept, and another ticket to access areas inside the golden domes. The Doge’s Palace has a similar system with extra sections.

Inside the buildings, there are QR codes in the right places where you suddenly realize what you are missing and can buy the extra access. But then you still have to go through the whole routine of re-entering the name of every visitor.

Why make it so complicated? Why not just charge the card and let people walk in?

Now that my righteous anger is over, both sites are incredible.

St. Mark’s Basilica is overwhelming. The sheer amount of golden mosaics is unbelievable. They cover thousands of square meters and depict biblical scenes and Venetian history. There is a lot of other beautiful art, but it is really the mosaics and the massive scale of the church that leave the biggest impression.

Upstairs in the museum, there are beautiful tapestries and the famous Horses of St. Mark up close.

The horses have their own interesting story. They are ancient bronze horses dating to classical antiquity, carbon-dated to the 2nd century AD. They originally stood in Constantinople on the Hippodrome. After the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Venetians brought them to Venice as war trophies and placed them on the façade of St. Mark’s. Napoleon later took them to Paris, but after his defeat, they were returned to Venice. The ones outside today are replicas, while the originals are preserved inside the museum. They are golden but have scratches all over - the note says it is so that they stop reflecting the sun so intensely as to be blinding. 

Outside in the square, there is also the famous clock tower, with a large 24-hour clock. It is a beautiful 15th-century construction, and the clock still keeps accurate time. We noticed several other 24-hour clocks around the city, too, which is pretty cool and not something you see very often.

While waiting for our Doge’s Palace entry time, we went to get tiramisu at I Tre Mercanti. Absolutely stunning. The desserts are much, much better than most of the formal meals we have had here.

Then we spent some time looking at the columns and sculptures surrounding the Doge’s Palace. he variety is enormous and surprisingly entertaining once you start noticing it. Each column capital was carved individually, often by different craftsmen and workshops over time. Many of them depict small scenes from biblical stories and classical myths, as well as animals, virtues, trades, and everyday life. It was a way to both decorate the building and quietly communicate the ideas and values of the Venetian Republic. Some scholars also believe the variety reflected the different guilds and artistic schools that contributed to the palace over the centuries. The result is that the entire façade becomes almost like a stone storybook, where no two columns are quite the same.

The two large columns at the edge of the Piazzetta are especially famous. One carries the Winged Lion of St. Mark, symbol of Venice. The other carries St. Theodore, an earlier patron saint of the city, shown standing on a crocodile or dragon. Historically, executions were carried out between those columns, which made the location somewhat ominous. Rene said locals consider the spot bad luck. You can also see the 24-hour clock from there. And there is a saying, "I'll show you the time."

Finally, we went inside the Doge’s Palace and spent several hours exploring. The scale and richness of the place are extraordinary. The palace was not just the residence of the Doge. It was also the administrative center of the Venetian Republic, housing the courts, government councils, and state offices. The massive halls, covered in paintings by artists such as Tintoretto and Veronese, were designed to impress foreign diplomats and visitors with Venice's wealth and stability.

Compared with the scale and elegance of this institution, even the Romanian Parliament does not come close.

The visit ends with a crossing of the famous Bridge of Sighs, which connects the palace to the old prisons. Prisoners would pass through this enclosed bridge after sentencing and supposedly sigh as they caught their last glimpse of Venice through the small stone windows. Rene said that prisoners were strangled in their cells when their crimes did not warrant public displays between the two columns.

The prison itself is solid and heavy, very much what you would expect from an old stone prison.

Afterward, we crossed the Grand Canal at the beautiful Rialto Bridge and went looking for the fish market. Unfortunately, it had already closed for the day, and all we saw were seagulls fighting over a few leftover fish heads.

We walked around the area. It is very pretty. But we still did not find a fish restaurant that called to us, so we ended up settling for pizza.

Then we wandered some more and discovered an amazing store called Kooch, run by a woman from Iran. “Kooch” means migration. The store was incredible, and we could hardly drag ourselves away. Even more interesting was the conversation we had with her. We found ourselves surprisingly aligned on many perspectives. We hope her dreams will come true.

We kept walking through that lovely part of town with beautiful galleries and quiet streets. At one point, we took a water taxi toward Murano, but changed our minds and instead got off near where we had planned to have dinner the night before.

We tried another place that looked more local. And it was… even more tasteless than yesterday.

For God’s sake, why? Danik's dish was kind of unique - lasagna had different textures, but they managed to make all the parts - ground beef, cheese, pasta taste exactly the same. 

It made me think about something Rene mentioned yesterday. He had tried twice to start a canoe company on the canals, even won legal cases about it, and still could not move forward. Venice seems extremely determined to keep things the way they were for a thousand years.

The scarcity of international restaurants is another example. The city is very protective of its traditions.

But the world keeps changing around it. In some ways, resistance to change was also part of what eventually led to the end of the Venetian Empire.

Still, for all that, the architectural wonders here are extraordinary.

We loved our time in Venice. But we are ready to continue the journey.