Friday, October 27, 2006
9 Aug: Piazza San Marco
Planning for Venice is kinda easy. Visit the islands in the lagoon, check out the main Piazza and buy a mask. So we've done the beach and the islands. Whats left is Venice itself. Early in the morning, we walked on over to St Mark's Square where its at.
But before we reached St Marks, we saw
The Crawling Baby! This little crawling machine can walk but insisted on crawling on all fours to pursue the unlucky pigeon which was just minding it's own business.
Next, we saw the super sian looking dog lying across the street.
Along the way, we saw a pet accessory shop. We seen lots of pet dogs in Italy but have yet to come across a pet shop selling pets. Dunno where they get all the dogs from. Mail order? Sell-a-vision? Inside the shop is this little birdy who can say 'bonjour' and other greetings. It speaks with a deep manly tone. Quite creepy.
The little boy was pretty fascinated by it. Not as much as Shuyi who kept talking to it though.
St Marks was filled to the brim with tourists. I think Jay Chou filmed his MTV for the Black Sweater song in his previous album cos it looked mighty familiar. Man, he must have woke up early.
The main draw of St Marks is the Basilica di san Marco, Palazzo Ducale (Dracula's Palace. No. I'm joking) and the Campanile which is an uber tall tower opposite the Basilica. There are almost as many tourists as there are pigeons there man. No wonder Venice is sinking. And thats a lot. There are people selling packs of corn for 1 or 2 Euro a pop, I cannot remember. After you buy the corn, you've have to defend yourself against the legions of pigeons who will ravish your hand while you kick yourself for wasting money on these ungrateful pests.
This is the symbol of Venice.
Back then, when Venice was big, they wanted a symbol. I did mentioned that Venice is damn guai lan right? They wanted to distance themselves from Rome as they think that they are kinda big shots themselves. So they chose the symbol of St Mark to side with the Vatican. They chose St Mark because of something he did in the Bible, about him being quite guai lan or something. I really don't care. I read that St Mark's corpse was smuggled into Venice to be housed there. Again, don't give a shit.
St Marks was partly flooded in the morning and these little creatures went for a dip.
Just in case you thought the dog was headless or something.
See the winged lion on top? Below it is a clock with all the 12 star signs. On top of the lion is a bell flanked by two bronze man with hammers. Every hour, the two statues will strike the bell. The striking action was not as fluid as we might have hoped it to be but it was nevertheless charming.
We see line, we queue. Ended up in the Basilica. Entrance is free but there are areas with entrance charge. Siao. We just strolled through the freebies and made our way out. Photography was not allowed but we managed to sneak a few picts.
Shown here is the pimp golden mosaic. It is quite nice but I'm glad they realized that no one will pay to look at this shit.
There is a very pretty cast iron chandelier inside which, unfortunately, I failed to take a picture of. It is like many huge 3D crosses intertwined.
Lunch was pizza. We found this gem of pizza place called Punto Pizza. Babelfish told me 'punto' means 'point' pizza, which makes the name 'Punto Pizza' totally meaningless. A huge slice of pizza cost around 2 Euro. The place is totally swarmed with expensive restaurant and 2 Euro is really the cheapest you can find there. Considering Macdonald starts from 6 Euro.
Business was great and flour is being moved in constantly.
They even do deliveries to the islands in the lagoon.
Next stop, Palazzo Ducale.
This is the inner courtyard of the Palazzo. There, we saw this interesting family.
All of there have a sketchbook and are casually sketching the facade of the Palazzo. How pretentious. LOL.
One ugly baby. My guess is that this is baby Jesus. In the pre-Renaissance era, all images of Jesus, be it in a painting or a sculpture, the face of baby Jesus is always that of a grown man, sans the beard. I guess a bearded baby is a bit hard to tahan. That is to show respect for Jesus. Can't have Jesus seen as an actual baby in the arms of Mary right? That would be so... em... normal and putting a third hand or a second head on him would be a bit over-the-top. But the baby head in this sculpture is a bit outta place. Maybe some ninja sculptor sneaked in and reworked the sculpture.
One of the most famous sight in Palazzo Ducale is the Bridge of Sighs.
It is an enclosed bridge linking the prison in the Palazzo to the interrogation room. And we all know what kinda of shit goes in there. The name of the bridge comes from the fact that the prisoners will glance out of the holes in the bridge and sigh before entering the world of pain. If I remember correctly, Casanova escaped from the prison before and had a cuppa at a nearby cafe before he skipped town. I'm not making shit up about the coffee-after-prison-break. I really read it in the book.
The picture I took looked EXACTLY like the one in wiki. How long has that REPLAY ad been there?!
Inside the Palazzo, there is an exhibition of weapons. 2 particular weapons caught my eye. An old skool gatling gun and the gunblade. The gatling gun is HANDHELD by some big ass Venetian soldier. I've always thought the gunblade was something straight from the Final Fantasy Series. But man was I wrong. Though not as dramatic looking as Squall's in FF8, it is unmistakably a sword and a pistol/rifle fused together. Cool. But I really don't see the need to make it so intricate. I mean... its a weapon to kill right? Making it a piece of art won't make the killing prettier. What. You want your victim to admire the intricate carvings while being cut/shot down?
Inside the Palazzo, we saw looked out of the window and saw
That is the area where you hitch your ride to the islands in the lagoon. There are also a few gondolas there too if I remember correctly.
Near the exit of the Palazzo
we have the Giant's Staircase. The name is prolly derived from the two statues at the top . Neptune and er... some other dude. Neptune is pretty big in Venice for obvious reasons.
And we saw this pair of birds too. Stuck on a low wall. They are pretty much sedated and you can touch them and they won't do shit. Unlike some bird living in Balam Road... Anyone has any idea what they are? The only birds I see there are pigeons and swallows. They look like vultures to me but that is very out of the Venice theme. Shuyi insisted that they were in trouble, abandoned etc and must be saved. I'm not smuggling birds back into Singapore. So I dragged her out of there.
In the cluster of shops around St Marks, we came across this wine shop. It sells fresh wine that is cheaper than those from previous years.
The wine sell by the litre and the shopkeeper pumps them into 1.5l mineral water bottles which looked pretty used and I'm not even sure if they are clean.
I have no idea what this means but it is so darn cute!
But before we reached St Marks, we saw
The Crawling Baby! This little crawling machine can walk but insisted on crawling on all fours to pursue the unlucky pigeon which was just minding it's own business.
Next, we saw the super sian looking dog lying across the street.
Along the way, we saw a pet accessory shop. We seen lots of pet dogs in Italy but have yet to come across a pet shop selling pets. Dunno where they get all the dogs from. Mail order? Sell-a-vision? Inside the shop is this little birdy who can say 'bonjour' and other greetings. It speaks with a deep manly tone. Quite creepy.The little boy was pretty fascinated by it. Not as much as Shuyi who kept talking to it though.
St Marks was filled to the brim with tourists. I think Jay Chou filmed his MTV for the Black Sweater song in his previous album cos it looked mighty familiar. Man, he must have woke up early.
The main draw of St Marks is the Basilica di san Marco, Palazzo Ducale (Dracula's Palace. No. I'm joking) and the Campanile which is an uber tall tower opposite the Basilica. There are almost as many tourists as there are pigeons there man. No wonder Venice is sinking. And thats a lot. There are people selling packs of corn for 1 or 2 Euro a pop, I cannot remember. After you buy the corn, you've have to defend yourself against the legions of pigeons who will ravish your hand while you kick yourself for wasting money on these ungrateful pests.
This is the symbol of Venice.
Back then, when Venice was big, they wanted a symbol. I did mentioned that Venice is damn guai lan right? They wanted to distance themselves from Rome as they think that they are kinda big shots themselves. So they chose the symbol of St Mark to side with the Vatican. They chose St Mark because of something he did in the Bible, about him being quite guai lan or something. I really don't care. I read that St Mark's corpse was smuggled into Venice to be housed there. Again, don't give a shit.
St Marks was partly flooded in the morning and these little creatures went for a dip.
Just in case you thought the dog was headless or something.
See the winged lion on top? Below it is a clock with all the 12 star signs. On top of the lion is a bell flanked by two bronze man with hammers. Every hour, the two statues will strike the bell. The striking action was not as fluid as we might have hoped it to be but it was nevertheless charming.We see line, we queue. Ended up in the Basilica. Entrance is free but there are areas with entrance charge. Siao. We just strolled through the freebies and made our way out. Photography was not allowed but we managed to sneak a few picts.
Shown here is the pimp golden mosaic. It is quite nice but I'm glad they realized that no one will pay to look at this shit.
There is a very pretty cast iron chandelier inside which, unfortunately, I failed to take a picture of. It is like many huge 3D crosses intertwined.Lunch was pizza. We found this gem of pizza place called Punto Pizza. Babelfish told me 'punto' means 'point' pizza, which makes the name 'Punto Pizza' totally meaningless. A huge slice of pizza cost around 2 Euro. The place is totally swarmed with expensive restaurant and 2 Euro is really the cheapest you can find there. Considering Macdonald starts from 6 Euro.
Business was great and flour is being moved in constantly.
They even do deliveries to the islands in the lagoon.Next stop, Palazzo Ducale.
This is the inner courtyard of the Palazzo. There, we saw this interesting family.
All of there have a sketchbook and are casually sketching the facade of the Palazzo. How pretentious. LOL.
One ugly baby. My guess is that this is baby Jesus. In the pre-Renaissance era, all images of Jesus, be it in a painting or a sculpture, the face of baby Jesus is always that of a grown man, sans the beard. I guess a bearded baby is a bit hard to tahan. That is to show respect for Jesus. Can't have Jesus seen as an actual baby in the arms of Mary right? That would be so... em... normal and putting a third hand or a second head on him would be a bit over-the-top. But the baby head in this sculpture is a bit outta place. Maybe some ninja sculptor sneaked in and reworked the sculpture.One of the most famous sight in Palazzo Ducale is the Bridge of Sighs.
It is an enclosed bridge linking the prison in the Palazzo to the interrogation room. And we all know what kinda of shit goes in there. The name of the bridge comes from the fact that the prisoners will glance out of the holes in the bridge and sigh before entering the world of pain. If I remember correctly, Casanova escaped from the prison before and had a cuppa at a nearby cafe before he skipped town. I'm not making shit up about the coffee-after-prison-break. I really read it in the book.The picture I took looked EXACTLY like the one in wiki. How long has that REPLAY ad been there?!
Inside the Palazzo, there is an exhibition of weapons. 2 particular weapons caught my eye. An old skool gatling gun and the gunblade. The gatling gun is HANDHELD by some big ass Venetian soldier. I've always thought the gunblade was something straight from the Final Fantasy Series. But man was I wrong. Though not as dramatic looking as Squall's in FF8, it is unmistakably a sword and a pistol/rifle fused together. Cool. But I really don't see the need to make it so intricate. I mean... its a weapon to kill right? Making it a piece of art won't make the killing prettier. What. You want your victim to admire the intricate carvings while being cut/shot down?
Inside the Palazzo, we saw looked out of the window and saw
That is the area where you hitch your ride to the islands in the lagoon. There are also a few gondolas there too if I remember correctly.
Near the exit of the Palazzo
we have the Giant's Staircase. The name is prolly derived from the two statues at the top . Neptune and er... some other dude. Neptune is pretty big in Venice for obvious reasons.
And we saw this pair of birds too. Stuck on a low wall. They are pretty much sedated and you can touch them and they won't do shit. Unlike some bird living in Balam Road... Anyone has any idea what they are? The only birds I see there are pigeons and swallows. They look like vultures to me but that is very out of the Venice theme. Shuyi insisted that they were in trouble, abandoned etc and must be saved. I'm not smuggling birds back into Singapore. So I dragged her out of there.
In the cluster of shops around St Marks, we came across this wine shop. It sells fresh wine that is cheaper than those from previous years.
The wine sell by the litre and the shopkeeper pumps them into 1.5l mineral water bottles which looked pretty used and I'm not even sure if they are clean.I have no idea what this means but it is so darn cute!
Posted by weelian at 11:17 AM
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