Ca'Pesaro

This baroque Place is pretty hard to find, if not to see. While obvious form the other side of the Canal. there are no signposts to it when walking until you actually are going down the alleyway to it.

Its a curious place, given it contains both a modern art gallery and a museum of Oriental Art, but it is well worth tracking down. It was good choice as my final destination on my last day in wet weather.

Museo Correr

Luckily, unlike the tour parties, I can choose where I want to go when it pours. So I just went to the museum at the other end of St Marks Square, which should by rights have been full of people escaping the rains. But it wasn't at all, because the museum is not on the tour itinerary. Which is a pity as its wonderful, even with one wet foot squelching around in it, Its actually a combination of features, grand state rooms prepared for Napoleon, archaeological museum with some good if restored Roman statuary and a museum of Venetian life/history. A very pleasant and interesting diversion.

Canova's Icarus and Daedalus

One of the oddities here is they felt the need to exhibit some contemporary art in amongst the real stuff. Does a room full of ancient marble busts really benefit from a floor-full of casts of Osama Bin Laden?

 And this hall has an even more distracting artwork down the middle of it

St Mark's cathedral and the deluge

After three lovely November days, the rains returned on the day I was leaving. With a vengeance.

As I said earlier, the hotel hands out disposable wellies so their guests can escape the front door when the
waters rise. Fetching don't you think?

 And as you can see you really do need them. We are not talking puddles here. So imagine my despair as half way along the road with water above my ankles, my right wellie sprang a leak. There is not much you can do in these situations. I just had one foot which had been up to the ankle in its own little goldfish bowl of water all day. Uncomfortable.

I decided this was the day to go into St Mark's cathedral. At least its indoors. But also very gloomy unless lit up more than when I was there, and also very much in the course of restoration work. All the gold mosaic should glitter, but it requires a lot of light to make that happen.

Pala d'Oro 10th century alterpiece

 By far the most impressive sight in the cathedral are the Quadrigia - the four ancient gilded bronzes of horses that were nicked from Constantinople. They once stood outside bit replicas are there now - see below. These are just exquisite pieces of workmanship.

 Tapestries as well as mosaics

 Now outside on the balcony. with the replica horses. If you think this is a slightly odd angle for a photo...

 pull out a little and you can see why.A lot of restoration work ongoing

 But a nice view of the deluge down below. As you can see not many people in the Square

 For good reason

 The tour guides however still lead their little parties across the duck boards to their inevitable doom (well sound soaking anyway).

 Back down at ground level I found myself trapped. While up on the balcony they had shut the cathedral doors due to the floods. Eventually a priest relented and let a little group of us out a back exit on to dry land. Out front, well as you can see it was quite wild.

 Bridge of Sighs. When will it stop raining? Sigh

 No takers for morning coffee in the Square