Venice often referred to as “Queen of the Adriatic”, “City of Water,” “City of Masks,” “City of Bridges,” “The Floating City,” and “City of Canals.”might also be referred to as “City of the Tourist hell bent on taking you head off with a smart phone on a selfie stick”

After several hours of touring the city on foot three things became apparent:

1. It is very easy to get lost in Venice. The narrow streets canals and convoluted walkways quite easily have you back where you started when you are actually looking for St.What it’s Basilica.

2. It is so much easier to get around on foot because, a.Its dead flat except for the odd bridge and b.There are no cars to run you over. (The down side to having no cars is that many more tourists with selfie sticks survive as their natural predator, the motor vehicle, is missing from the environment.)

3. Venice is very old and could use a bit of plaster here and there and maybe a good coat or two of “Solagard Semi Gloss”. (Being water based the bushes and rollers would clean up like new with a quick rinse in the canal.)

The Word Cup of Churches

Seeing as how its all about the art in these parts and in particular the “church art” I feel compelled to compare Gaudi’s church of the SagradaFamília in Barcelona with Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, however………….this would take forever, be very boring and probably end up in a penalty shoot out at the end. Gaudi’s church wins hands down in my opinion being unique in every way. Saint Mark’s strikes me as being more of a monument to repetitive excess, column after column dome after dome spire after spire angel after angel. Let’s settle for a one goal each draw and leave it at that.

St. Whatsitsnames.

Stock Venice picture.

Local opinion of the tourists perhaps.

Leonardo da Vinci

We stumbled across an interactive da Vinci exhibition highlighting some of his mechanical inventions including hang gliders, tanks, submarines etc.

The Last Supper, Mona Lisa and The Vitruvian Man are Leo’s best known works however he also recorded countless thousands of other ideas in journals sometimes writing backwards and including shopping lists and other notes to himself like;”Is Mona Lisa smiling or is it just me? She better not be smiling, I pdistinctly remember telling her not to smile. Damn it, she is smiling, well I’m not starting over…….(note to self: build hang glider before Sunday)”

By the way the building the da Vinci display was in was the church used in the Indiana Jones movie. That’s at Scoletta – Complesso Monumentale Scuola Grande di San Rocco 3052, Campo San Rocco, 30125 Venezia VE if you’re in the neighbourhood.