November 2, 2010: Venice Day 2 (the Ghetto, CPO Santa Maria Nova, S.S. Giovanni e Paolo, and S. Juan Formosa)

November 2, 2010: Note: I'm stunned! I don't know why I even tried to do this, but I was able to upload my pictures from my home computer!!! This means I won't have to upload pictures from school anymore. How convenient is that. I guess one of those updates I allowed to be installed on my computer made this possible. And now, back to my blog....

Unfortunately, the rain did not stop over night. Ric and I walked to meet Jack and Deb at their hotel. On the way, I took these pictures.

San Marco Square (Campo San Giorgio in background)

• San Marco Square 
• (the second floor comprises a portion of the museum of the Doges Palace)

Doges Palace

Basilica at San Marco Square

Basilica at San Marco Square

It continued to dribble most of the day. We met Jack and Deb and set off for the ghetto. As I mentioned yesterday, "ghetto" comes from the Italian word meaning "foundry" and the Ghetto is the area where the Venetian foundries were located when the government decided to force all Jews to live on the two islands that formed the foundry. Jews were allowed to leave during the day but had to be on one of these two islands from midnight to the morning. Also, when they left the island, they were required to wear a yellow hat identifying them as Jews. Also, they were only allowed to work in one of three careers: money lending, medicine, and selling second hand goods. Because of their affinity to do the first of these extremely well, the Jews became known as very money savvy, a characteristic that seems to be true in modern times as well. The Jews that were forcibly moved to the ghetto were one of three types: Sephartic (coming from Spain and Portugal in 1541), Ashkenazy (coming from northeast Europe), and Levinthian (coming from east of Italy across the Adriatic Sea). We decided to join a tour which took us through the Jewish museum as well as the three synagogues that were built for each of three communities: a German synagogue built in 1528, a French synagogue built in 1531, and an Italian synagogue built in 1575. The tour was very interesting and the guide continued the trend of other Italian women we'd met on the trip thus far -- she scolded a gentleman for resting his hand on one of the pews in a synagogue as he listened to her.

The Ghetto -- notice water well in front

After the ghetto, we decided to visit some other major cathedrals in the area. First was CPO Santa Maria Nova.

CPO Santa Maria Nova

A short distance from CPO Santa Maria Nova was S. S. Giovanni e Paolo.

S. S. Giovanni e Paolo

S. S. Giovanni e Paolo

  Another short walk away was Santa Maria Formosa. 

Santa Maria Formosa

For dinner that night, we decided to eat near Jack and Deb's hotel. There were three restaurants whose menus we were studying when one of the hosts called to me "Hello, young man! If you come to my restaurant, I'll give you a basket of garlic pastry as an appetizer for free". This seemed to be all that Jack needed to hear before we were seated in front of that restaurant. We started with our drinks and Deb seemed to be really enjoying herself by introducing herself to people at all adjoining tables and in the restaurant. Before long, people from around seven tables were jabbering with each other, at one time even singing together. The people who joined in were from Australia, Ireland, the US, Brazil, Belgium, and England. Needless to say, we had a great time. Here's a picture of Deb with the waiter who seated us.

Deb and Restaurant host

The following pictures were taken during our stay in Venice to show the very classy and expensive shops that crammed all the alleys of the city. There were so many high end shops it would have been difficult to decide which one to shop at. Therefore, I did no shopping during my stay. But the shops continued to attract others in our group of four.
Pictures of shops in Venice

Mask shop - they're everywhere you go!

Murano glass shop -- also everywhere