Venice

Cute pigeons.....or flying rats - pigeons in St Marks Square, Venice
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Venice - where to start?  I write this on our last evening and thinking back over the last couple of days it is difficult to pick out one highlight, there are so many.  As always we've managed to pack a lot in, and it feels like we've walked a couple of marathons doing it!

So we arrived around the middle of the day on Sunday and thankfully found the hotel very easily.  Compared to the location of some hotels we've come across over the last couple of days, finding the Hotel Giorgione is a piece of cake.  After dropping off our bags we decided to head out for a wander and orientate ourselves.  The afternoon was very easily spent just exploring some of the streets and taking a couple of rides on the vaporetto along the Grand Canal and out to Morano (where all the glass blowers do their thing), as well as exploring the Jewish quarter.  We also found St Marks square and were blown away by the number of people there, as well as the pigeons.  While we had heard about the huge numbers of pigeons in the square, you really do have to experience it to believe it.  Not only that, but there are vendors in the square selling birdseed to feed to them - so they are actually encouraged to be there!  By early evening we were about had it and ready for an early night, once we had had a yummy dinner of pizza.  As we had read, the toppings on the pizza are nothing like home - quite basic in comparison, but delicious.

Rule number 1: Don't walk around Venice without a map!

Dwayne and St Marks Basilica, Venice
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We were up with the sparrows (or should that be pigeons?!) on Monday morning - Toni had Dwayne up at 6.00am to go out for a walk and again we went over to St Marks square.  At this hour of the morning the place wasn't so overrun with people or birds and so we managed to get some photos taken without a thousand heads in the way.....  We headed back to the hotel for breakfast which was a really nice buffet of chocolate and fruit-filled danishes, bacon and scrambled eggs, ham, cheese, rolls, etc.  Just as well there's plenty of walking happening!!

Gondoliers passing by, Venice
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After breakfast it was back to St Marks square to try and get in to see St Marks Basilica.  The doors hadn't opened and there was a huge queue so we headed across to the Bell Tower where you can go up to the top (around 12 storeys high) and get a great view over Venice.  Again, the camera got a good workout.....  By the time we came down the queue for the Basilica wasn't quite so bad so we joined in and spent a couple of hours looking around the inside of the church and the museum.  Difficult to find words to describe the interior - the ceiling and walls completely covered in huge mosiacs comprising tiny tiles of around 5mm square each.  The detail was just stunning.

Venice
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The afternoon was spent completing one of our key tasks - purchasing a genuine Venetian mask.  We had scouted out the various shops in our travels and eventually settled on a mask from the shop which made the masks for the film "Eyes Wide Shut".  After much deliberation we decided that a feathered mask (while spectacular) would be too difficult to post home, given MAF's dislike of feathers, so we selected one which will hopefully make it home without too much drama....

The balance of the afternoon was spent exploring yet more undiscovered streets and taking yet more photos, oh and no day would be complete without some shopping.....yes, Toni couldn't help herself...  The shoes here are just amazing and one pair has managed to find their way into her suitcase.  We also sampled a ride in a traghetto, which is simply a gondola ride from one side of the canal to the other.  It is a common way for locals to quickly get across the canal, costs Euro 0.50 and you stand up in the gondola - great fun!

All supplies must come in by boat...
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Dinner comprised lasagne at a local cafe and gelato for dessert - not at all difficult to eat.  We then headed out to the designated meeting place for a guided walk - a Ghost Tour.  It started out well enough but soon after it started Toni decided she wasn't feeling too flash and decided to head back early.  Unfortunately she also decided not to take the map with her and proceeded to get lost.......!  It is certainly easy to do - you just head right instead of left and before you know it you're at the other side of the island.  After about half an hour of wandering aimlessly through the night she finally found a hotel where she got a map and managed to find her way back to the hotel, literally seconds before Dwayne got back from the finish of the tour.  Rule number 1: Don't walk around Venice without a map!

St Marks Square from the Bell Tower - there are no people around only because it is relatively early in the morning...
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Today we spent the day with yet more walking - found the birthplace of Casanova, a couple of beautiful churches and yet more photo taking.  We've taken around 280 photos so far.....!  We also tested the advice of the guidebooks and experienced coffee like the locals - standing up.  We had headed into a cafe and ordered coffee, but the trick is to stand at the counter to drink it.  That way the cost is around half the advertised price (and it tastes just as good).   Oh, and did I mention shopping?  Yep, we did a bit more of that too, with Dwayne getting himself some italian silk ties and a zippered jumper and Toni succumbing to the stands of italian silk and cashmere pashminas, and italian leather gloves...   Oh, and some Murano glass and silver jewellery is also on its way back to New Zealand.

Bursts of colour, Venice
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Finally, no trip to Venice is complete without a gondola ride.  Yep, we had to do it, although it almost didn't happen.  It has been raining most of the day and we decided that it wouldn't be much fun getting wet in a gondola.  However by early evening the rain had stopped and the gondolier we had seen many times on our travels backwards and fowards was available.  No, it isn't cheap, but it was definitely worth it.  Our gondolier sang to us the whole journey (around 40 minutes) and he pointed out various places of interest along the way.  We headed out into the Grand Canal and then back through some of the smaller back canals and it was magic.

Taking a traghetto across the Grand Canal, Venice
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OK, so that was Venice.  It is everything we had read about, and more.  It certainly has to be experienced to fully appreciate and hopefully the photos we've taken will do it justice.  Will post some up as soon as we can, but will also bore you to death with the rest on our return!

Tomorrow morning we are off to the train station, destination Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre, where we meet up with Brent and Claire.  Looking forward to it.

(A few days later we collected some more thoughts on our experiences in Venice, the experiences of a first-time visitor:

Riding a gondola down the Grand Canal, Venice
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What sort of life must the locals lead in a city surrounded by water? Compared to New Zealand, gardens in Venezia are virtually non-existent. You get to see the odd garden enclosed by courtyards, but they are few and far between, and are therefore quite a novelty. The most striking views are the baskets hanging outside windows, full of flowers and providing the most amazing displays of colour. These are often several stories high, overhanging the canals or streets.

Access to your washing line is also out the window and lines frequently hang across canals or outside the window, again, several stories high – I wonder how many clothes end up in the water below…

The rare sight of a garden in Venice
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The reason for the lack of gardens becomes clear once you get a view of the city from the Bell Tower. Every bit of space is taken up by buildings, usually several stories high, and streets/pathways are minimal – an unnecessary luxury it would seem. Buildings rise out of the water and in some instances it seems like a miracle that they haven’t yet collapsed. Plastered walls show evidence of decay from salt water and often the plaster has fallen away revealing the brickwork underneath. In some areas the walls are far from straight and you can stand next to them and watch the curves looking up. Extensive restoration is evident everywhere, a massive task.

The main road (aka Grand Canal), Venice
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Venice is not the place for those who aren’t comfortable walking. It also isn’t the place for those who don’t like crowds. This might have been an “off-peak” time, but there were people everywhere. The only time you can be sure to have the street almost to yourself is early, early in the morning when you will only come across the street cleaners, sweeping the streets with traditional (witches style) brooms – no electric sweepers in sight, and the delivery men and their barges, getting ready with new supplies. Once you get to around 9.00am the streets start filling up and you get the feeling that 90% of the people around you are fellow tourists.

You can walk absolutely everywhere, and you need to be prepared to walk most places - it isn’t a huge island. Wandering around the streets is a real experience. The streets are enchanting and you never know what you will find around the next corner, or over the next bridge. The streets range from large squares, usually fronted by a church, to little streets, about the width of two footpaths with 4 or 5 storey buildings on either side – the bottom floor taken up by little shops, the upper floors containing apartments and the inevitable flower boxes out the windows. I say large squares, but this is by Venetian standards – the largest square would be St Marks Square which would be no more than 50m by 100m in size. Many streets are little more than alleys, so narrow you literally scrape your umbrella on the walls on either side, and you have to walk single file.

Having said that, no matter how tiny and convoluted the streets seem, you never feel unsafe. There are no people loitering, no shady characters hiding in dark corners.

All supplies for the island come by boat, and it was fascinating watching the boats come in during the early hours of the morning laden with food, wine, building supplies, anything and everything. Even McDonalds has its own refrigerated barge.

The skill of the Venetians handling the boats was something else. Many canals looked barely big enough to accommodate the width of one boat and yet often two would need to cross paths and not once did we see any collisions or even touching between boats or gondolas. The precision and maneuverability of the boats and those piloting them had to be seen to be believed. A vaporetto or taxi sidling alongside a gondola would come within millimeters of each other, but never did they touch.

Life around water is obviously second nature to the locals. Not once did we see a life jacket being used. Children would be taken to school by boat, there may be standing room only on a vaporetto, and locals would stand in a traghetto (gondola) for the short trip across the canal, and yet no one would wear a life jacket, and it is mentioned in various books that if you took a traghetto ride, the gondolier would not allow you to wear a life jacket…..! I wondered how many people drowned in the canals each year and expect it would not be many – a far cry from New Zealand’s approach.

Dogs – no dirt, and no grass for them to play on. Their lives revolve around paved areas, but of course they know no different and seemed to be well cared for. The dogs come out for walks with their owners early morning and in the evening, and come into the shops, restaurants, vaporetto, everywhere. Their owners are pretty good at cleaning up after them and while there was the occasional doggie present left on the pavement (I think we maybe came across 3 piles in all), it was definitely the exception rather than the rule, and really not a problem.

The canals are Venice’s roads and, as such, you don’t see people (or dogs) swimming in them. In fact you probably wouldn’t want to anyway – they look pretty polluted and probably not surprising given the number of motorboats and vaporetto plying the waterways.

One of the treasures we came across was a tiny shop selling handmade notebooks and photo albums. The woman who owned the shop also made the books and they were absolutely exquisite. Every one was a work of art in itself and no two were the same. We came away with a small book which we will use to hold our best photos of Venice. The cover of it is particularly special – a print of the first known map of Venice on it and will be a wonderful reminder of our stay.

There are over 100 churches, most of which are in regular use. Discovering them was a real adventure and the architecture was amazing. Considering the age of these buildings the detail and craftsmanship was incredible. The marble was extensive and Dwayne got a new appreciation of the “marble-effect” finishes we get in New Zealand. These are so close to the real thing we often stopped to look at the churches and initially thought the finish looked fake, simply because we were so used to looking at the fake effect back in New Zealand.

We lost count of the number of bridges crossed – there are apparently over 400 of them! Whatever the number, though, they are not seen as an obstacle. Rather, they are simply a means to get to the destination. Most had their own individual features and all offered a new view of the canal and surrounding buildings, which offered multiple opportunities for photos!

Venice seems to have a love-hate relationship with its pigeons. On the one hand, vendors are set up in St Marks Square selling food to tourists to feed them, while on the other hand many structures had a collection of vertical wires protruding from them to stop the pigeons landing. Dwayne called them flying rats, but they are also very pretty birds, with a lovely purple/green colouring – if only there weren’t so many of them! It looked like St Marks Square got water blasted every morning and it would seem that it is probably necessary, just to clean away each day’s worth of pigeon poop…

I’ve mentioned the traghetto briefly, but this is definitely a must-do. If you want to cross the Grand Canal you either have to walk to one of the bridges (there are only three), catch a vaporetto or, for 0.50 Euro, take a traghetto. A traghetto is basically a gondola without seats and locals use these frequently as a way to be ferried cross the canal. The locals stand for the trip, which takes about a minute, and on our journey we probably had around 10 people, all standing. For those of us used to wobbly dragon boats, it was a breeze. Others may find it a bit disconcerting!

If you don’t do anything else in Venezia, you must do a gondola ride. Yes, it’s expensive – it cost us 80 Euro – but it was worth it. The gondolas are the most exquisite boats, obviously the gondolier’s pride and joy. The one we went on was called Gloria and was lovingly trimmed in red and gold. Our gondolier took us out onto the Grand Canal and then a loop around some of the smaller canals, and sung to us the whole way around. Very romantic! It was also a very tranquil way of getting around and provided a whole new view of the buildings which you don’t get from the bridges and pavements.)