A visit to Italy is not complete without seeing the beauty of Venice. Arriving at Venezia di S. Lucia Stazione, we are ready to navigate this romantic, and world-famous destination without a map (a mistake). Our first mission is to find San Marco Piazza but just getting out of the station, you can't help but to start taking pictures of the sights, since the Chiesa di San Simeone Piccolo Dome is right in front. We crossed the bridge at Calle Lunga - stopping to take some pictures of the Grand Canal , of course.
We followed the sign that say's S. Marco but for some reason, we kept on going around and around. We crossed another bridge and thought, " Are we back from where we started?" Second Monkey is a good navigator so I trusted her skills and kept following her. Finally, navigating through this tiny alley, we come out onto the Pizza and by the look of those thousand's of tourists, I knew we had found San Marco. The interesting part is lining up to get into the Basilica in pouring rain with thousands of others who had the same purpose: to see San Marco, Christ's disciple, whose body, legend says, was transported from Egypt to Venice by his followers.
After almost two hours and with some divine help - we were able to get in. Everyone seemed to be taking pictures and it was very crowded. I noticed the Treasures section was empty, so we decided to get in there after paying Euro 3 each. That was a good idea as you cannot believe how much those treasures could be worth, most are made of diamonds, gold and silver. Sorry, we are not allowed to take pictures.
The other portion of the Treasures Section had an altar with a simple crypt with no name, so I assume, that it must be a relic of San Marco. There are also some centuries-old bones outside that belonged to some Kings. I'm not certain of their significance.
We had another problem finding our way back to the train station following the Grand Canal as our guide, we ended up at a dead end. We kept on meeting "Paolo Sarpi" so we decided to just follow the crowd, which ultimately lead us to the Calle Lunga bridge. We found our way back so we decided to go along the canal west to check out more sights.
At Santa Lucia Stazione on our way back to Bologna, we decided to buy a map just to see where we had been - which didn't really matter anymore as we had eventually found San Marco on our own.
How to find your way to Venice, Italy