St. Mark's was absolutely beautiful inside! The entire ceiling was made of gold with mosaics (I think) of different saints, the twelve apostles, Mary, and Jesus. It was absolutely stunning. The Mass was entirely in Latin so I really had no idea what was going on although I managed to pick up on the Catholic aerobics cues (when to sit and stand haha). The music was exactly what I think of when I think traditional Catholic basilica choir - grand, almost opera-like and perfectly harmonized. It was just beautiful and when you're standing in a majestic cathedral and the music is perfectly echoing through the vestibule and people are there from all different places and cultures together worshiping the same Lord, it's quite surreal. I loved every minute.
After Mass, we took our time going back to the hotel, stopping in stores and window shopping until we finally got back to change into something more casual. It ended up being a girls' "treat yo self" day in Venice! We basically spent our entire day shopping, both for ourselves and for friends and family back home. Our first stop was a crepery where I had a crepe filled with nutella, topped with vanilla gelato, strawberries and whipped cream. It was a dream in a dish and the best part was that I could walk around to shop and eat it at the same time! That's the way to do it, lemme tell ya. Over the course of the day, we saw beautiful, original pieces of work made in Italy, sometime exclusively in Venice. They included Murano glass jewelry and home pieces, cameo jewelry, wax seal stamps, marble paper notebooks, resin protected food decorated kitchenware and of course, delicious Venetian food! Several of us bought most of our souvenirs for ourselves and friends here so shout out to Venice for the bomb shopping!
We also stopped at one point to get pizza, and I chose salame piccante (Italian pepperoni) that was good! It was thick crust so it was more like the pizza I'm used to. The pepperoni was more like salame so it was different but I liked it! Right next to the pizza place was this gourmet chocolate and food shop that had free samples! Obviously we stopped. We ended up trying these amazing lightly flavored cookies with the icing in the center rather than on the outside! We also tried chocolate covered candied orange peel, limoncello drops, cappuccino almonds and dessert spreads. They also had savory cooking spreads but by this point I was ready to buy everything I had just tasted so my wallet stopped me from going to that section.
The craziest part is that I feel like we barely made a dent in everything that Venice has to offer, and we spent ALL day looking at things. I was constantly amazed by the beauty in Venice and family dedication to different art crafts. It seemed that everyone had a story to tell about their shop or their products, and we felt so welcome throughout the day!
I also loved that most of Venice is walking paths so everything is easily accessible and usually you don't have to walk too far to find what you're looking for. I think Venice may be my favorite city in Italy...but the jury's still out! Tomorrow we head to Milan (which I've heard might have some good shopping too). Stay tuned!
Inside St. Mark's Basilica - look at the ceilings
Outside St. Mark's
There's a crepe in there somewhere...
Le salame piccante pizze
One of the many canals here!
