More pictures of Venice

Monday in Florence consists of me doing grading and prep work for my classes.  Maria and the boys do school work.  The weather was warm today – upper 60s and sunny – so we worked in “recess” at a park about five minutes from our apartment.  Of course this park does not have basketball hoops like parks do back in the U.S.  Instead, there are two fenced-in soccer fields with artificial turf.  The boys played with Gabriele and Giovanni – not big Giovanni – but a friend of Gabriele’s.  Then we went to lunch with Amy, Caterina, and the boys at a great family-owned restaurant that we hadn’t discovered yet.

After lunch, we went back to our school work until soccer practice this evening.  A fairly typical day for us here in Florence!

So back to Venice…  On Saturday, we went with Angela back to Piazza San Marco to get a tour of the Doge’s Palace and the Basilica di San Marco.  The Doge was the leader of Venice from about the year 700 to the late 1700s.  Both the palace and the basilica were beautiful, but of course, no pictures were permitted.

Here is Angela talking about the Doge Palace.

Nicholas and Thomas under the arches.

This is the only picture I was able to take in the Doge’s palace.  This would be the bed in your cell if you weren’t nice to the Doge! 

Outside in Piazza San Marco.

 A mosaic on the outside of the Basilica di San Marco.  The entire ceiling on the inside is just beautiful – about 4,000 square meters of these gold mosaics. 

So I leave you with my favorite pictures of the Boats of Venice!