Our first full day in Venice began, as usual, with breakfast at the hotel. (When you open your room door you can smell the baked goods.) The wireless seems to be better here, which should make updating the blog along with all other Internet communication easier. At 9:15 am we took a winding walk down narrow streets and over canal bridges to the Doge’s Palace in San Marco’s square. It was very chilly in and outside of the palace making note taking and concentration difficult. Imagine standing in a damp refrigerator for 3 hours, this would be similar to what we experienced. However, the interior rooms where the Doges governed the city of Venice, the armory with its collection of weapons, and the prisons were (insert superlative here). In the city’s we are visiting we are comparing how they governed and how they employed art and architecture in within those administrative structures. We then went to the Basilica of St. Mark next door and reveled in the beauty of this Gothic structure. Neither venue allowed interior photography, but if you visit your local library or search on line you can find images of what we saw and can’t personally document. Our break for lunch was around 1 pm and class reconvened at 5 pm in the hotel where it was warm and concentration was better.
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