July 21, 2004
My first afternoon in Venice was largely spent trying to get food, laundry, and internet. It's just as well: the sun is hot, and the droves of tourists are annoying. (I am aware of the irony in my complaints.) Once these needs were met, I went on a quest: to find a particular bridge in Venice.
The reader may be aware that there are many bridges in Venice. This particular one stands out, though. First of all, it only exists for approximately two days out of every year. Second, it's longer than a football field. I will explain: this is the bridge associated with the Fest di Redenttore (apologies for poor Italian spelling), which is a celebration occuring on the third Sunday of July every year. Way back in the 1500's or so, when Venice was struck by the plague, the doge pledged to build a churge on the neighboring island of Giudecca if God would lift the plague. When the first stones were laid, the plague began to abate. A bridge was made out of boats so that the doge could lead processions out to the church during its construction. The bridge is now made out of pontoons, and the church is complete (and very nice), but the celebration is still quite a thing. It opens (I only read this, since I was still in Milan at the time) with fireworks the night before, followed by wild partying, and then everyone goes out to the isle of Lido to watch the sunrise. I missed all that, but I was here on the one day you can get to La Giudecca by foot, and got some photos that I think should be quite nice.
I wandered around, half-lost, for the rest of the evening. Being lost is something that one should just accept while in Venice. The streets are winding and narrow, are poorly marked, and often dead-end without warning. Furthermore, the addresses are not given by street (which would not necessarily help anyway, see above). There are six districts to the city, and in each district the doors are marked with the numbers 1 to about 6000, in no very clear order. 283 is probably next door to, or across the street from, 284, but that is about the most logical you can expect it to be. Result: you can either follow the main streets, with all the other tourists, and wind past all the major landmarks, and thereby know where you are most of the time, or else you can set off in a general direction and hope for the best. I understand the second is what many Venetians do. It works well if you're not in a hurry, because the island isn't that big and you can't get that lost. But it sure does make it hard to find particular places. (On the other hand, you can find some great things you weren't expecting.)
I slept in the next morning, awoke with the intent of a nice shower, and was instead accosted by an irritable cleaning woman. With very little linguistic communication, she made it clear that she wanted to clean the room, and I had better be scarce by the time she came back. (She threw out my water bottle while I was gone, I suspect out of spite. Two other water bottles in the room were left intact.) This is the first time I have been tagged by a hostel lock-out, and I tell you it is no fun. Perhaps it's just as well: merely added incentive to get an early start, so as to beat both the heat and the crowds.
So, turned out of my room earlier than expected, I made my way to the supermarket (one of the bigger ones I've seen this trip, perversely enough), and made a very nice canalside brunch of bread and cheese. Then I wandered more or less easterly, hoping to make it out to the public gardens on the southeast tip of the island. Instead I got lost in the scenic Castello district, which is farthest from the train station, and thus has the highest Venetian-to-tourist yield. Wading through tourists on the way back to the hostel -- I really wanted that shower -- was much less pleasant. The rest of the afternoon was basically a siesta, followed by a dinner with one of my fellow hostellers. We went to one of the little generic trattorie that line the main streets, and ordered the "typical Venetian cuisine" set menu. I sampled the spaghetti flavored by anchovies, which I liked better than expected, and the black cuttlefish, which is squid flavored with squid ink (hence black). This last I liked less than I had hoped.
A word about Italian food. First, yes, they do seem to eat buckets of noodles and pizza. (Contrary to what I have been told more than once, pizza was invented in Naples, not America, and they supposedly still do it better than anyone.) Breakfast might as well not exist: if you want to eat in the morning, you will need to hunt high and low to find anything more than a pastry and a cup of capuccino. Lunch is the main meal of the day, but tourists never know this, so every restaurant is open in the evening too -- but you still see most stores close for an hour or two between lunch and dinner. A full meal consists of appetizers (antipasto), two courses, a side dish, and possibly dessert. The first course (piatta prima) is pasta or soup, and the second (piatta seconda) is meat or fish. So in my typical Venetian meal, it was the anchovy spaghetti for prima and the black cuttlefish for seconda.
Also, there is gelato. This is important.
The following day I was to meet my friends I. and S. at noon, so I set off early to stand in the line to the Basilica San Marco. This is by far the most heavily touristed site in Venice. The church opened its doors at 9:30, and by the time I got there at 9:10 there was already a line of several hundred people. There are two important reasons to go to San Marco in the morning: first, the line, amazingly, gets longer later in the day; second, in the morning the shadow of the palazzo ducale next door falls on the line, but points the wrong direction in the afternoon. But there is a reason that San Marco is so popular: it's the richest and most beautiful church in Venice, which was the richest and most powerful city in Europe for hundreds of years. It's a harmonious blend of colorful marble and gold mosaic, and on top of that it houses the remains of St. Mark the Evangelist. Even if it is the worst crowd in the whole city, it would be a crime to skip it.
At high noon I met I. and S. at the Ponte di Rialto, one of the three bridges that span the Grand Canal, and not nearly far enough from the Piazza San Marco to accomodate backpacker budget dining. So I proposed that we get pizza at a pizzeria that my guide book lists as excellent. Nearly one hour later (remember how Venice is confusing?), and after more than one dead end, I successfully guided us to the place, at it was excellent pizza; mine was shaped like a flying saucer. Thus fortified, we trekked back to San Marco to visit the doge's palace, the palazzo ducale. This palace is notorious for having almost no explanatory text, not even in Italian, so I. brought along a chunk of a Rick Steves book. The palace, unfortunately, is not fully describable with words. Suffice it to say that it is enormous and enormously opulent, with walls that are covered from top to bottom with paintings by the great masters like so much Renaissance wallpaper. Particularly intriguing to me were the map room -- featuring surprisingly accurate depictions of large swaths of each continent (several were oriented with north sideways or down, and took a moment to recognize) -- and the biggest room in the palace (whose function I forget), which showed a painting of Paradise by Tintoretto (I think), depicting 500 saints and having, in the words of Rick Steves, "more square footage than my apartment." Normally I hesitate to shell out 5.50 euro for a museum, but this one was worth the investment.
After a shower and siesta, I. and I met up in the evening to "do something." This "something" turned out to involved wandering for over an hour in search of the oldest wine bar in Venice, which seemed not actually to exist. The actual situation, perhaps harder to believe, is that the place closes every day at 8:30. What kind of wine bar could this be? I ask you! To console ourselves we stopped at La Boutique de Gelato, which serves ludicrously large cones, and listened to the ubiquitous string quartets in Piazza San Marco.
Next and final day in Venice: we began by meeting for a bread-and-cheese lunch at the old Jewish Ghetto, remarkable because it is in fact the original ghetto: centuries ago, one of Venice's doges forced all the city's Jews into a corner of the city that had once been a cannon foundry -- getto in old Italian. Afterwards we spent the afternoon exploring the nearby island of Murano, famous for the glassblowers that have worked there ever since a different doge kicked them off the main island because their kilns started fires. Some of the shops are open to spectation. At the first one, clearly designed specifically to wow tourists just off the water bus, a bored-looking glassblower shaped a lump of molten glass into a small horse statuette in about two and a half minutes. This remained impressive, even when we saw the hundred or so horse statuettes for sale in the showroom next door. More careful searching led us to a glass factory with one work floor open for observation. We watched a team of three men for about twenty minutes, as they created a large, multicolored, ridged glass bowl. It was fascinating stuff.
After another pizza dinner with gelato chaser, I saw I. and S. to the train station and spent the remainder of a quiet night resting my feet. Next up: Verona.