I opened the curtains this morning and this was our view!
We arrived after dark last night so we couldn't really see very well, and we even have a tiny balcony. Our first ever stay on the island of Venice.
This morning we were up early and made our way along tiny streets and over tiny bridges to our destination.
We went to St Mark's Square at 9am and were just about the firsts tourists in sight.
We were booked on to a group tourist trip, but it's the middle of January and quite early in the day, so we were the only customers. We had the guide to ourselves and we were the very first people to arrive at the Basilica of San Marco.
Once inside it was almost deserted and we had a fantastic view of the whole place.
The golden ceilings and mosaic floors were superb and it is supposed to house the remains of St Mark, however, Matt our guide was very sceptical about that.
Then we went next door to the Doge's Palace that was also extremely quiet.
The rooms inside were magnificent and full of paintings showing off the glory of Venice through the ages.
We walked across the Bridge of Sighs and saw the view from the window where according to Lord Byron, prisoners were supposed to look out at the beautiful view and give a sigh, as it would be the last view that they would ever see before being taken to their prison cell.
This is misleading as it is actually a view looking at the Bridge of Sighs, rather than the other way round.
I realise that this blog is rather short of facts, even though we heard hundreds of them over our two hour private tour.
However, Darren's best fact that he says that he will remember for a long time is that the only way that you can become a gondolier is to be the son of an existing gondolier. Also that they only take cash and earn a fortune.
My memorable fact is that in the olden days they had 24 hour clocks, but that one o'clock in the morning started at our 6am which was when everyone got up, and it seems far more logical than our system. Not quite so logical however, was that some of the clocks went anticlockwise.
We also did a long walk in the afternoon and saw some great views.
