[ Apr.2017 ] On the second day of our stay in Murano island in Venice, we went to the main island of Venice by water bus.
Actually our hotel was running the fast free shuttle taxi, but we did not know that at that time.
From the bus stop called Museo just in front of the hotel, it took about one hour to get to San Marco.
Because it stopped at many times, it took so long.
And in San Marco where we finally arrived there were too many tourists to cross over to the other side, so we turned around and went back to the harbour and took another bus to San Giorgio Maggiore island across the sea.
Our theme for this holiday was island hopping, so this was another good experience.
The church of San Giorgio Maggiore is the one we took pictures of many times from San Marco, but this was the first time for us to visit the church itself.
Inside was spacious.
It just happened that a sun beam was on the halo of a painting which made me feel awesome.
The carvings of the choir and the floor there were magnificent.
But our main purpose was to go up the bell tower.
Fortunately there is a lift to go up to the top whose height is 60 metres.
Regarding the charge, our guide book which was published in 2014 said €3, but in fact it cost €6, double.
The Italian consumer price index had hardly gone up in the last few years.
What a cheek!
But it was worth going up.
It was fantastic to see the view of Venice from this side and also I could see that small islands scatter the sea around there.
That reminded me of a conversation in the water bus on the way here.
A middle aged woman from Rome used the expression, ‘the lake of Venice’ and a child who was probably her son was correcting her “It’s a sea!”.
By the way, this San Giorgio Maggiore island is supported by the Cini Foundation which was established by a father and a son of Cini who escaped from Dachau concentration camp of Nazis during the second world war.
Here there used to be a convent which was destroyed by Napoleon and the foundation restored the place and now they keep all sort of important documents related to modern Italian literature, theatre and music.
One of the materials is apparently about D’Annunzio whose villa we visited a few years ago.
San Giorgio Maggiore is also famous for having held the G7 Summit Meeting.
