Venice, Day Two - (2)

This is a continuation at my post of January 19, 2013.   After eating our gelati - chocolate for my husband and hazelnut for me, we resumed our walk in the city. Presently we arrived at a large campo and, as you can see in the photo below, it was a warm day for October and people were wearing summer clothes.

We kept walking along the canals.  In Venice a "fondamenta" is the little alley along the waterway and foundations of buildings - the larger alleys are called "riva."

Walking along the canals felt as though we were walking inside a painting, as the scenery has not changed.  Below is a painting of a canal in 1928.

Canal in Venice, 1928 - painted by Peter Mork Monsted, Danish 1859-1941

Sometimes, along a building, there would be an open entrance, just like the entrance to the building.  But it was the entrance to a narrow alley, as can be seen on the bottom right hand side of the photo below.

 It was dark at first, but suddenly the alley was open to the sky, and it was very light. I believe these are called "sottoportego" (a passageway going under a building.)

 Some of the alleys were quite narrow.  My husband is standing in the middle of the alley in the top middle photo below. (Click on any photo to enlarge, and on collages too.)

 It was strange to be in a narrow alley, then find ourselves facing the Grand Canal.

 So we stopped and looked - and for me, it was a good time to take several pictures.

Then we went back along a canal again - never sure exactly where we were.

 We walked along so many canals that, after a while, it is quite hard to distinguish them and several times, we walked back around the same canals.

 After another long walk, we ended up again at the Grand Canal.  This time we were close to a beautiful palace.  Fortunately there was a sign on it.  We had arrived at "Ca Rezzonico" named after the wealthy Rezzonico family who moved there in 1758.  Now it is a public museum dedicated to 18th century Venice.

 Later I found out that this palazzo had been rented out in the 1880s.  The poet, Robert Browning (1812-1889) died in his son's apartment there - the painter Robert Barrett Browning.  The American painter John Singer Sargent rented a studio in this palace as well.  Then each summer between 1923 and 1927 the composer and song writer Cole Porter (1891-1964) rented the palace.  His monthly rent at the time was $4,000 per month ($51,000 in today's money.)  While my husband was looking at the Grand Canal I took several pictures of the sculptures on the wall of the palazzo.

 We entered the interior courtyard of the palazzo and rested on one of the benches on the side.

 It was dark and cool there.  I could see a fountain at the other end of the courtyard and walked up to take a closer look.

From a distance, it looked like there was a ceramic turtle in the center of the fountain.

  I looked at it for quite a while.  It was life like but it did not move at all.  Then, just as I was leaving - it moved!  I saw more turtles in the water and some fish too.

We walked away along some more canals, passing several religious carvings.

We could hear music - someone singing and playing the guitar, in English.  It had to be an amateur, as he was not very good, but we saw him again after we walked crossed a large campo.  He still did not sound any better!

We went back through the confusing maze of alleys and stopped at a canal as a powerboat was passing by.  I did not take its picture but you can see its passage in the water in the photo below.

  Nowadays there are many powerboats that create small waves against the foundations of the buildings.  After a while these small waves contribute to the deterioration of the walls and they crumble.  The gondoliers don't like the powerboats either as the constant waves have reduced the life of a gondola from the traditional 40 years to more or less 10 years.

 Below is a 19th century gondola which was exhibited in the courtyard of Ca' Rezzonico.

 I wonder if the gondoliers below are talking about the difficulty to row their gondolas amongst all the powerboats, motor taxis, etc., that crowd the canals.

As we (slowly) walked around I liked to look up at the colorful windows (and laundry.)

As the centuries went by, the shapes of the windows have changed.

The gated window below looks like it has been there for ages.

 

I guess I could have written a post on what I saw when I looked up at the Venice buildings.

As we went across a small bridge we noticed a sign in front of a 15th century Venetian Gothic building - "Casa di Carlo Goldoni."  Later we found the entrance - a beautiful staircase, but we did not go inside as it was closing.  It is where the author, Goldoni, was born in 1707.  Now it is a small museum dedicated to him, as well as a 30,000 manuscript archive and library and a small 18th century puppet theatre.

As we walked I could not stop and take a picture of the old door below.  Just look at the imposing lock!  I wonder how long this door has been there?

Just as for the windows, there is a good variety of doors in Venice.

Somehow we found ourselves near the Grand Canal again, close to the Rialto Bridge (which is pictured on top of this post.)  It is a very busy area and must be quite crowded during the tourist season.

We stepped up to the top of the bridge and I took pictures to show what I saw, from both sides.

We stayed on top of this bridge for a while looking at the water traffic below.  But then we left and, as we passed an outside cafe, we thought about stopping but we were so tired that we felt if we stopped, we would not be able to keep walking afterwards.

We bought a piece of pizza to eat later from our own little window looking over our canal (below) and were so pleased to reach our inn.  In just a day we had seen so much - so many images and colors were in my head.  I am happy to have taken a large amount of pictures so I can revisit all the sites now.  This was our second day in Venice... and we still had three more days to go!