15 Things You Should Do In Venice

Note: Do not go to Venice in the summertime. Everyone else does. It's crowded and smelly. Don't do it. Go in winter. It's chilly, but gorgeous, and you can do everything you can in summer, but without the crush of people. Oh, and buy a map from the public transportation people. It's a good map.


1. Go to the Bridge at Rialto. The view is worth it.

2. Shop for masks.

3. Find the only horse in Venice.

4. Eat something on the Grand Canal. Not necessarily dinner, but at least a snack. Try not to be too distracted by the lobsters staring at you from their icey beds of doom among dead fish with oranges in their toothy gaping mouths.

5. Step inside the Cathedral of San Giovanni. (hint, it's right next to the city's only horse)6. Ride a Gondola. (Practice your haggling skills beforehand, and be prepared to use them, remember every Italian sterotype from the movies) [disclaimer: this is still on our list to do]

7. Eat Spaghetti.

8. Eat gelatto in St. Mark's Square.9. Go to the Bridge of Sighs. If you can find it beneath the ads for the Opera's version of the History of Italy.

10. Wander the city. It's all gorgeous.
11. Shop more-but carefully. Remember that Venetian glass is heavy and fragile, and you have to get it home somehow. By plane.
12. Eat tiramisu.
13. Eat more tiramisu.

14. See a sunrise on the Grand Canal.

15. take lots of pictures.

Dubrovnik

Tired yet? Yeah, us too. Travel is great, but a port-a-day does get exhausting. Dubrovnik was the last stop on the cruise--well, other than returning to Venice and spending one last day there--and it was a good thing, too, because we were pretty port-ed out. We'd heard from a friend that Dubrovnik was beautiful. I feel as though I've use that word a great deal in these posts, and it really does characterize many of the places we went. Dubrovnik is breathtaking.
Cruise ships dock at the modern city--which is all red roofed--because the old city harbor is far too small.
The port is sheltered, tucked in an inlet--the docks are off to the right of the bridge above.
I know very little about Croatia, their history or their recent past, except that they have been wartorn. I never imagined an immaculat new city and perfectly preserved old city.

We took a bus over the ridge from the new city to the old city. There was a collective gasp as the Norman castle came into view. Not even the Pyramids got that response from the busload of Americans. Those Normans sure knew how to build a castle.

Once you got inside the old city, everything was stone. Well kept, clean, operational. Once again, we were there before the rest of the tourists in the world, and before all the shops were open. It was a rainy day the way VA does rainy days: it would pour, then the sun would come out, then it would pour, and then the sun would come out. It made exploring a stone city interesting.

This is the main street when you walk in.

See the oranges? They decorate with them.

This was a working church.

Everything was still decorated for Christmas.

There's the old harbor, through that door. Much, much too small for the Magnifica.

Not entirely sure who had the idea to name a pizzeria this:

We bought tickets to walk the city wall. It was amazingly gorgeous. Norman castles+lagoon water=more beauty than I thought possible in a single spot.

Overlooking the rooves of the city:

And there's the wall, going up a cliff. I only barely survived this part of the tour.

Narrow walls. Low guard rail things. Normans apparently didn't believe in guard rails.

But someone believed in cannons.

Bells rang almost constantly while we were there.

This is the inside of a memorial to Croatia's defenders.

Remember the rain and sun cat and mouse game I was mentioning? Well, this made for plenty of rainbows.

We wandered through almost the entire old town and still made it back to the ship (and the hot tub!) and hour before we were supposed to be on board to leave. We were pretty tired at that point, and sitting in a hot tub in 40 degree weather was a fabulous way to unwind and recover from being rained on so many times. Dubrovnik was doubtless the most beautiful port other than Venice, and it is definitely more striking than Venice.

We spent the evening packing our bags and dancing in our favorite lounges, feeling great relief that on the following day we'd debark in Venice--familiar Venice--and after that be on a ship no more.

-The Lady

Olympia

Olympia is roughly 20 minutes by bus from the little port of Katakolon. For centuries, Katakolon's only real purpose in life has been to be the gateway to Olympia. Abby's preconceived notions put Olympia--the birthplace of the Olympic Games--at Mt. Olympus, the home of the gods. But no, Olympia and Olympus are no where near one another.
As a student of Latin (and as the Romans borrowed anything they liked from the Greeks) and having studied the classics, I was pretty familiar with the mythology. I was even more familiar than I knew with the geography. We opted to take the cruise tour to Olympia--since it was Christmas day and no sensible soul would be running a private bus, and there really is nothing but one little street of tourist shops in Katakolon.

Our tour happened to be bilingual this time, which meant our guide said everything twice. Once in English, once in German. It might have been a cultural thing, but I don't think she really appreciated the pageantry, history, legend and ridiculousness of Greek myth. It's such a convoluted mash of "could have happened" and "you totally made that up" that you really ought to tell it with a smile. She didn't, though. She was dry as beef jerky. Not even in a funny way.

I was still glad we went, because we got to drive through Greek countryside, and it was so beautifully normal. Rolling green hills, low forested mountains, red roofed houses, olive trees, orange trees...I liked Greece.

We arrived at Olympia and walked on a little road that cut above the archeological site (being Christmas, the site itself was closed). The Greeks established the games, and built the great temple of Zeus because it was at this spot that Zeus fought with his father, Chronos, and took over...um...being god. The temple of Zeus was one of the 7 Ancient Wonders, and now nothing at all remains.

There are stones scattered all around, it looked like a graveyard. There are only two columns remaining, and they weren't a part of the temple. There are ditches where houses used to be.

Here are the two remaining original columns.

Below is a reconstruction of one of the pillars of the temple of Zeus.
Our tour guide was very careful to blame the destruction of this place and of the Olympic Games on the Christians. The irony is that all the Christians did was stop worshiping Zeus. They did outlaw the Olympic Games, but at the time the games were not just feats of arms, they were out and out worship of Zeus. Back then, it was normal to outlaw things you didn't want done. After that people stopped coming to Olympia, and then earthquakes and floods did the rest (and the Christians can hardly take credit for those). The River Alpheus claimed the hippodrome, and earthquakes claimed Zeus. God had the last laugh.
In fact the only part of Olympia that sits the way it always has is the stadium itself. The simple reason for this endurance is that there is practically nothing to the stadium. It is a hallow in the ground with a marble starting line, and two marble finish lines (his and hers).

Off to the side, at the far end of the stadium, there was a monument to the man who brought back the Olympic Games.

There were little irises everywhere:

This is the road back toward the stadium (you can see it on the L) and beyond that, Olympia, and beyond that, a little stream, and beyond that, the tourist trap town.

We had a surprising amount of sucess in the tourist trap town--did a lot of our Christmas shopping there, fittingly enough.

As strange as it was to visit the temple of a false deity on Christmas Day, it was profound. Zeus is no more. His temple in ruins, just a graveyard. But Christ lives.

-The Lady

Christmas Eve on the Sea

After spending an entire day in Egypt we were pretty bushed. It was actually a relief to spend Christmas Eve at sea. Let me tell you, though. Europe does Christmas differently. Christmas Eve seems to be a much bigger deal than Christmas Day, and I'm reasonably sure this wasn't just because it was a day at sea, rather than a day in port. Dinner was better (steak!) than any other meal, and the "Baked Alaska" was presented with fanfare and fire and a parade of bow-tied waiters. The Italians appear to exchange gifts on Christmas Eve (or at least, the Italians at the next table over sure did) and whoop it up with champagne and twirling napkins. After our entertaining cutlural experience of a dinner we retired to the Tiger Lounge (which was primarily a German hang out spot, interestingly) for some dancing. At the changing of the bands we moved to our favorite lounge, La Ametista, where we danced the rest of the night away with the jazz band.