VENICE, ITALY: Glittering Jewel at the edge of the Sea

Venice, Italy. Campanile and domes of Saint Mark's Basilica. View across the Grand Canal from Punte della Dogana on the Dorsoduro.

Visiting Venice is a little bit like going to Disneyland--the crowds, the rides, the spectacle, the assault on the senses--the difference being that everything in Venice is real and in many cases hundreds of years old. In late September, my husband and I spent three days in Venice and it was still just as magical as on our first visit 25 years ago. Between the food, the art, the music, the boats and the bridges we felt like we had been immersed in a painting by Turner or Canaletto.

A gondola traffic jam in one of the smaller canals.

The weather was perfect--sunny and warm, but not too hot--and although there were crowds of tour groups in the popular tourist spots during the middle of the day, they thinned out by evening.

Venice is an island, part of an archipelago that includes the main large island of Venice plus numerous smaller islands. You can see the Campanile in Piazza San Marco sticking up above the red roofed buildings.

Our first view of Venice was from the airplane as we approached the airport on the mainland. After landing, we followed a long walkway to the docks, where water transport was waiting to take passengers to the island of Venice. In our shared water taxi we sped across the lagoon, waves splashing across the bow, until we arrived at the entrance to the canals, where the boat slowed to a more sensible pace.

The Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal is the oldest bridge in Venice

We were one of the last to be dropped off, so our ride served as a mini-tour of the city and the web of canals that are the main streets of Venice.

One of the 400 bridges and 150 canals that connect the islands of Venice

Our hotel, Pensione Seguso, in the Dorsoduro neighborhood, was a two minute walk from the Zattere boat stop. After checking in, we took a walk along the Zattere promenade where there were various restaurants, many with tables on platforms over the water.

Waiting for pizza at our waterside table. On the other side of the channel we looked at the narrow island of Giudecca.

Our hotel was out of the way of the main tourist traffic in Venice, but it was only a short walk to the Accademia bridge over the Grand Canal and to the central part of Venice and the magnificent Basilica San Marco. (The easiest way to get around Venice is by walking, although the maze of squares, narrow walkways, bridges and canals make a map essential.)

View of San Marco and the Campanile (Bell Tower) from the loggia surrounding Piazza San Marco. The bell rings twice a day, at noon and midnight.

The Piazza San Marco is enormous, easily accommodating the thousands of tourists who visit it each day, not to mention the flocks of pigeons waiting for offerings of breadcrumbs. With its glittering mosaics and multicolored marble columns, the magnificent basilica is the perfect backdrop for all this activity. 

The Basilica di San Marco.

To the left of the Basilica in Piazza San Marco is Torre dell'Orologio (the Clock Tower) with its beautiful 15th-century blue and gold leaf clock.

The 24-hour clock on the Clock Tower.

Besides visiting the Piazza San Marco, highlights of our time in Venice included an afternoon at the opera (we saw the Barber of Seville at the Teatro de Fenice, the famous opera house where Maria Callas got her start), a Vivaldi concert at the Church of San Vidal, and visits to two art museums, the Peggy Guggenheim Museum and the Accademia Gallery (to be the topic of another post.)

Posters on a palace along the Grand Canal advertise the Biennale.

We never got to the Biennale, the bi-annual international art exposition at the Arsenale–not enough time in our short visit. 

Art by Jean Dubuffet was on display at the Palazzo Franchetti.

But the streets were filled with smaller ancillary art exhibits, dozens of art galleries, and the display windows of the high-end fashion shops in the streets near Piazza San Marco had their own spectacular art creations.

Carnival masks on display in a shop window.

Other shops featured typical crafts of Venice--elaborate masks, marbled paper, glass sculptures from the island of Murano, and much more.

Gondolier shirts are among the many souvenirs one can buy at pop-up stalls on Piazza San Marco

On our first trip to Venice we met a architect professor who had brought his students to see and draw the intersection of buildings, bridges, and water that make the city of Venice unique.No other city is like Venice, with its mix of churches, palaces, plazas, towers, bridges and waterways.

Sunset on the Giudecca Canal, viewed from the Zattere promenade. After dark the lights come on and the city sparkles in the night.

We were lucky on both trips to Venice to enjoy good weather. (It can be foggy and rainy.) This trip was short and we only had time to sample a few of Venice's pleasures. One day was a trip to the outer islands, a chance to get away from the tourist crowds--to be the subject of another post. Altogether our visit to Venice was a magical three days--and we wish we had had time to spend more.

ANGEL ISLAND IN SAN FRANCISCO BAY: a Trip Through Time

View of Golden Gate Bridge from Camp Reynolds on Angel Island, San Francisco Bay

Several weeks ago, I went with my husband and granddaughter to Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, taking the ferry from Tiburon for the short ride to Ayala Cove.

Ferry to Angel Island--about a mile from Tiburon and three miles from San Francisco.

Angel Island, a California State Park, is a great place for hiking and watching wildlife and a chance to explore and learn about the island’s unique role in California history.

Angel Island. At 1.2 square miles Angel Island is the largest island in San Francisco Bay.

After leaving the boat, our first stop was the Visitor Center, where several rooms of displays gave an overview of the many facets of the island. 

Historic plaque near the picnic area and visitor center at Ayala Cove. Headquarters of the park are also housed in the old U.S. Public Health Service Building.

For thousands of years Native American Miwok Indians from the mainland visited the island, hunting, fishing, and gathering acorns and other wild plants. Today, native wildlife includes birds, squirrels, deer and a species of mole unique to the island.

A young mule deer stopped by, seemingly unafraid, as we ate our picnic lunch.

The first European to land on the island was Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala, who moored his ship in the small cove on the north side of the island in the fall of 1775.  Following the tradition of naming discoveries after the closest feast day, he named it Angel Island in honor of the Feast of the Angels, celebrated on October 2nd.

From 1910 to 1940 hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly from China, were processed at the Angel Island Immigration Station.  We did not have time on this trip to go to the Immigration Station but plan to do so on another visit. 

Angel Island has had many uses over the years. Among other things it has been a cattle ranch, military base, immigration station, and quarantine station.

The rocky platform at Point Knox where the lighthouse once stood. Only the fog bell remains. In 1960 a new, more modern lighthouse and fog station was opened at Point Blunt on Angel Island and the Point Knox lighthouse and fog station was closed and removed.

The first lighthouse on Angel Island was a fog station, built in 1886 at Point Knox, a rocky outcropping on the southwest corner of the island. A light was added in 1900. One of the keepers was Juliet Fish Nichols whose heroics after the 1906 earthquake I wrote about in an earlier post on this blog.  On foggy days and nights, her job was to set the fog bell machine in motion. The 3000 pound bronze bell at Point Knox was operated by a Gamewell Fog Bell Striker machine, in which a heavy weight suspended below the mechanism powered a mallet that struck the bell.  Once the mechanism was wound, it ran for several hours.  Gamewell mechanisms were used widely at lighthouses along the coasts of the United States for many years, but were known to be temperamental.  Juliet Fish Nichols reported in her log at least eight failures of the Point Knox bell machine.  Eventually, (after the 1930's) the fog bell at Point Knox was replaced by a much more reliable compressed air siren.

Fresnel lens on display at the Visitor Center; a photo of the Point Knox Lighthouse is behind it.

The light at Point Knox was a type known as a Fresnel lens.  The glass rings of a Fresnel lens are prisms that concentrate light from inside the lens (originally provided by an oil or kerosene lamp, later by an electric bulb) making the light visible for 20 miles or more.  The lenses came in various sizes. The light at Point Knox was a 5th order red lens, one of the smaller Fresnel lenses, but sufficient for distances in San Francisco Bay.

The barracks of Camp Reynolds, the West Garrison of Fort McDowell

The remains of Fort McDowell, both the earlier West Garrison (Fort Reynolds) and the larger East Garrison are found on the island. Thousands of soldiers left from Angel Island during World War I and II. After World War II, the military bases were closed. A Nike missile site was installed on top of the island; after it was removed in 1962, the U.S. government gave Angel Island to the state of California. It is now Angel Island State Park, a fascinating place to spend the day and to relive a bit of California history.

Facilities on Angel Island include a cafe, tram tours, and Segway and kayak rentals. For more information about Angel Island and links to ferry schedules, click HERE.
For more about the history of the island and activities, go to the Angel Island Conservancy site.

For more about Juliet Nichols, her log, Angel Island, the Point Knox Lighthouse, 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and more go to https://carolinearnoldart.blogspot.com/p/extra-material-for-keeper-of-light.html .