Venice with the International Women's Club

This is not the narrowest street in Venice!

The International Women's Club of Treviso went on a guided tour of Venice last week. We took the train down together & the guide showed us a lot of things that you can't find in guidebooks. For instance, in each piazza or square there is an old well - there are drain holes on the ground near the well, which let rainwater flow through sand & clay below into a big basin which collected the water for drinking. I had seen the wells before, but never noticed the drain holes!

Also, there was a triangular shaped carved stone that you have to walk under at Ponte del Paradiso. It was put in place to join the houses of two families that were linked when a son from one married the daughter from the other.

We visited a church that looked large, but plain on the outside, Franciscan Gothic style, called the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa. Inside, Titian is buried (even though he died of the plague & nobody who died of the plague was to be buried inside the city, they made an exception for him). His painting, the Assumption of the Virgin, is above the altar and the largest altarpiece in Venice. There is a monument for him inside the church, designed by Canova and also a monument to Canova (whose body is buried in his hometown of Possano, but Canova's heart is in an urn inside the monument in the church).

I also found out that at three spots along the Grand Canal, you can take a gondola "ferry" across the river for only 50 euro cents! What a deal for anyone who wants to ride a gondola but doesn't want to empty their bank account.

At the end of the day, I went off to the Jewish Ghetto (the first ghetto) with an Israeli friend of mine. She picked up some kosher meat & I ate an amazing bowl of matzo ball soup. Then, we ran all the way to the train station, just to see it pulling out as we arrived. Luckily, trains depart from Venice to Treviso every 20 minutes. We weren't even late to pick the kids up from school!