Days 53 to 58: Venice

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We've been in Venice for one week now, with no internet at our house, so we're having lunch at Restaurante Biennale on Via Garibaldi near our house and using their free Wi-Fi. There are LOTS of photos here so scroll down and go thru the pages if necessary to see many, many scenes of Venice.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

We started our morning in Zurich with a quick coffee and pastry in the room before walking the short block to the train station. The station is huge and well organized with good signage so we easily found our train to Venice.

We climbed onto coach #07 to find our reserved seats #86 and #88 but the numbering system was all mixed up. Some seats together were paired liked #40 and #42 and others were like #50 and #61. We found ours at the end of the car; one aisle seat on one side of the train and one window seat on the other. Unlike the train from Basel to Zurich, there were no reserved notes on these seats so we just sat together in seats #86 and #82. When the couple came along with the other two seats in our row, they discovered the same strange numbering system so they would have also been seated apart. None of us were into wife-swapping so we all happily sat with our spouses in the wrong seats. Other than the bizarre seat numbers, the train trip through the Alps was great.

The trip through Switzerland was like going from one ski village to another. It’s obvious to me now how Canadian ski resorts like Whistler are just poor imitations of the real thing. The scenery was beautiful with alpine meadows and villages tucked along lakes and set up on hillsides. The train went in and out of tunnels and each time we emerged from one we would suddenly be hit with another spectacular view. After about an hour, we entered a very long tunnel and when we eventually came out the other end, all of the architecture had changed and then we saw all the signs were now in Italian; our Italy adventure had begun!

Although the ride through the Alps was great, I found the end of the trip the most exciting, as we approached Venice across the causeway. Everything was as beautiful as I remembered from our one night here fourteen years ago. As we exited the station the Vaporetti docks and ticket booth were right there as described to us by our home exchange host. Unfortunately the ticket machine wasn’t working so everyone was lined up for one booth with the real person. The customer at the front of the line was buying tickets for a large student group and didn’t know what kind to buy so it took her 40 minutes! After that delay, each customer only took about 60 seconds each so we finally boarded our Vaporetto after about an hour delay.

The signage was good with timetables and routes displayed similar to the tube stations in other cities. It was a long and slow journey of about an hour with many stops with dozens of tourists getting on and off at each one. But most of the ride was along the beautiful Grand Canal so we were already having our first tour of many of the highlights.

When we arrived at the Giardini docks we easily found our way along the narrow “roads”, sidewalks really, across little bridges over canals and back and forth around the many corners, until we came close to our corner when we discovered none of the roads in that neighbourhood had street names posted. I re-read the directions we had and knew we were very close but then had to resort to a photocopied photo I had of the front of the house, walking along until it matched and we found the correct house number to go with it. The keys were hidden as described and we entered our Venetian home for the next two weeks.

The house, like most in Venice, is 2-storey, and part of a long row house. It is very old with exposed wood beams, with small rooms and a narrow staircase. It was perfect! The windows open with heavy, wooden locking shutters, and you look across straight into the neighbour’s windows just ten feet away, through all of the laundry hung outside on lines tied between the buildings.

We went for a walk to discover our neighbourhood a little and buy a few supplies then back home to wait for Garth and Sue to arrive a couple of hours after us. Garth also made it to our corner then texted me and I popped out the door to call him from just 50 feet away. We all headed out to try a guide book recommended restaurant nearby (with free wifi),Trattoria Giorgione. Our home has no internet so we decided that free wifi was going to be an important feature in our restaurant choices for the next couple of weeks. Well the wifi worked great but the meal was just average, a little expensive and poor service. So we headed back to the house to drink some of the wine our host left for us and get some rest for a full day tomorrow.

Monday was a beautiful, sunny and hot day; perfect for walking the Venice neighbourhoods. The four of us started out by walking along the waterfront towards St. Mark’s Square to get a good feel for the touristy aspect of Venice. And boy were there a lot of tourists! I thought by late September it would be a little slower around here, and it may be, but there are THOUSANDS of tourists here still and the closer you get to Piazzo San Marco the more crowded it gets, especially crossing the bridges over each canal.

We wandered through St. Mark’s square, past the Doge’s Palace and then through the maze of little streets full of shops and restaurants in the area behind the square. Every other shop is selling masks or gelato or both and in-between them is a restaurant. Prices on everything here is definitely less than in Paris and the further you get away from St. Mark’s, the less expensive everything is.

We ate outdoors at a restaurant in a little square north of St. Mark’s and again, pretty average food for the price. Restaurant meals have been a bit of a disappointment here so far and it may be that you have to spend a lot more than we are willing to, to get a good meal here.

On the way home we walked through part of the park at the east end of Castello neighbourhood that we’re staying in. It’s a beautiful waterfront area, heavily treed with lots of benches; perfect for picnics. We stopped at a butcher on Via Garibaldi on the way home and bought some beef and Chris cooked up some steaks for dinner which was a lot nicer, and cheaper, than any of our restaurant meals so far.

Tuesday morning Garth & Sue left at 8:00AM to meet their water taxi to begin a five-night tour of Florence, Sienna and Rome. Chris and I started the day with a walk through the markets on Via Garibaldi to buy some produce, then after dropping the groceries off at our house we headed out for the park again and on past that to the Santa Elena quarter and Isola di San Pietro, beautiful park and residential neighbourhoods on the east end of the island. Lots of it was not accessible as it’s used by the armed forces.

We explored a large part of the Castello district through the day and we also walked from our house to Teatro la Fenice (the opera house) which is a little past and north of St. Mark’s square, to time how long it will take us tomorrow evening as we have seats for La Traviatra. So we wandered around the streets in that area a bit, finding a lot of photo ops, great little restaurants and bars. We walked through to the famous and heavily photographed Ponte di Rialto bridge at the beginning of the San Polo district before heading back towards home.

The famous Ponte di Rialto bridge superseded a succession of wooden and fragile structures. One of them was destroyed by the army of Benjamonte Tiepolo as it retreated from the Piazza in 1310. Its replacement collapsed in 1444 under the weight of the crowd gathered to watch the wedding procession of the Marquis of Ferrara. This was replaced by a wooden drawbridge and in 1524 a decision was made to build a more reliable bridge but it took over 60 years of proposals before they hired Antonio da Ponte to build the existing bridge, top heavy and lined with stores along both sides, originally used as houses. This was the only bridge over the Grand Canal until the first Accademia bridge was built in 1854.

We finished the afternoon with a stop at El Refolo bar on via Garibaldi for a drink. They have free wi-fi, cheap booze and snacks, friendly service and free crisps!

Wednesday morning we hit the markets early on Via Garibaldi and bought fresh trout for supper. Dropped that off at home then off to explore more of the Castello district that we’re living in. We found the Aspedale Civile (City Hospital) and toured the attached San Viovanni e Paola church. The first church on this site was built in 1246 after Doge Giacomo tiepolo was inspired by a dream to donate the land to the Dominicans. That initial version was soon demolished to make way for the current much larger building, started in 1333 but not consecrated until 1430. The two Bellini brothers are buried here and paintings by Giovanni Bellini are inside. Dominating the end wall of the transept is an incredible fifteenth-century stained-glass window. This is extremely rare in Venice due to the instability of the buildings making this type of work unlikely to last.

We walked through the district and part way into Canneregio district and San Marco again. We stopped in the lovely Campo San Maria Nova square in Canneregio to eat our sandwiches. This is one of the most attractive and atmospheric squares in the city. A few fruit and vegetable stalls are pitched here and a number of elegant buildings border the square. After lunch we bought 2 Euro espressos at a stand up bar so we could use the bathroom. After another long day of walking we headed home for our trout dinner.

Wednesday evening we walked to Teatro la Fenice opera house to see La Traviata. We bought the tickets online before we left home for 70 Euros each. This is a beautiful opera house that has endured three fires, the last one in 1996 burned it to the ground. So although it’s a fairly new building, both the exterior and interior appear very old. It is lavishly decorated and we had great seats in the front of a box on the fourth level towards the back. The opera La Traviata was written by Verdi, based upon a story written by Alexandre Dumas. It’s world premiere was right here, at Teatro la Fenice so it was great to see it in this theatre. The production was quite exciting and the sound quality in this building is spectacular. They run both Italian and English subtitles over top of the stage which helps a lot to follow the story. The three acts took three hours and it really didn’t seem long at all; I was sorry to see it end. The acting and singing were all fantastic. Depending upon which night you attend, the three main characters may be played by the main singers or any of two or three understudies and we were lucky enough to have the main singers for all parts.

We left the theatre and starting walking through the crowded streets past all the high-end stores, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, etc. Throughout all the tourist areas in Venice there are guys from Senegal with brand-name knock off purses set up, one after another, in the middle of the sidewalk and if you make the mistake of making eye contact, or glance at the bags, they are all over you, jabbering and harassing you and even grabbing your arms trying to give you their sales pitch. And they are even set up right in front of the Prada store. So as we walked by and made the mortal error of glancing down at the bags and they were ready to pounce on us. But suddenly a few guys came running full speed down through the crowd at us and like a set of dominos, these guys all along the street grabbed up all their bags in their arms and ran full speed back the way we had come. Selling these bags is illegal and they are constantly on the lookout for cops. So we assumed cops were on the way, but then we noticed, our guy had left two “Gucci” bags behind, right at our feet. Both Chris and I stared at them for a couple of seconds, both thinking the same thing; we need to grab one of these! But we thought about it just a second too long as more of these guys came thundering down through the crowds like an avalanche. After they went by we looked down again and saw that they had grabbed the remaining bags as they ran past us. A few seconds later two other guys, not Sengalese, ran by and around a corner, looking like they were being chased. And another couple seconds later some private security type guys ran after them then three military types came along also running after them. So none of the “cops” were after the Sengalese after all it seemed. So they were safe for another few minutes at least and Chris missed getting a free bag!

So on we walked towards home, stopping off at El Refola for a nightcap on the way.

Thursday morning we decided to head straight out to the Dorsoduro district on the SW part of the island, furthest from us. As soon as you cross the bridge over the Grand Canal from St. Marco, you come to the Gallerie dell’ Accademia which apparently has one of Europe’s finest specialized art collections, including currently an exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci drawings on display. We checked out the cost, 8 Euros, and decided to leave it, to go with Ken and Karen who are arriving tomorrow.

We walked through the typical zigzagging streets to reach the Santa Maria della Salute church at the west tip of this part of the island. In 1630-31 Venice was devastated by a plague that killed 1/3 of the population; nearly 95,000 people. In 1630 the Senate decreed that a new church would be dedicated to the Virgin Mary if the city were saved and the result was the Salute, meaning “health” and “salvation”.

Resting on a platform of more than 100,000 wooden piles, the Salute took half a century to build. The 26 year-old architect, Baldessare Longhena lived just long enough to see it completed. The most notable paintings in the Salute are the Titian pieces brought from the church of Santo Spirito in Isola in 1656. We had our lunch on the steps to the water in front of the church with a view across the Grand Canal towards St. Mark’s square.

Walking through the Dorsoduro district we came across the squero di San Trovaso, which is where many of the cities gondolas are built. In 16^th century Venice ten thousand gondolas operated and were the standard transportation around the city. Today it is primarily the tourist trade that sustains the approximately 500 gondolas and the two “squeri” as the gondola yards are called.

We also walked through Campo Santa Margherita, one of the most appealing squares in the whole city and the social heart of Dorsoduro. The church that gives the campo its name was closed in 1810 and is now a university property.

We walked north from here to San Polo and the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, the twin gothic giants of Venice. We paid 3 Euros to go into this church but unfortunately no photos were allowed. The Franciscans were granted a plot of land here around 1250 but no sooner than the first church was completed in 1338 than work began on a huge replacement, which took well over a hundred years to complete. Titian has a few paintings here including his great “Assumption” which hangs over the high altar. Giovanni Bellini’s “Madonna and Child with Sts Nicholas of Bari, Peter, Mark and Benedict” was painted in 1488 and hangs over the altar in the sacristry. The entire church is full of spectacular paintings and marble sculptures, monuments, tombs and relics.

From here we gradually wound our way back home again, crossing the Ponte di Rialto bridge again, and made note of a few stores we hope to get back to again.

Friday, September 27, we headed out early to walk to the San Polo and San Croce districts, across the Ponte di Rialto on the west side of Venice. Our first stop was at the Rialto market where Chris bought some fresh dates and herbs. We met a woman who manages a few apartments for rent near where we’re staying and we exchanged contact info as her sister has an apartment here that they may be interested in doing a home exchange with. She was really helpful in recommending certain market vendors for produce, spices and bread.

We gradually followed the main route through the San Polo district, taking detours here and there to go inside of interesting churches or for photo ops. We crossed the San Croce district the same way crossing the bridge at the end of it that takes you right to the front of the train station. As we turned right into the Cannaregio district, we immediately came across the hotel that we stayed in when we were here about fourteen years ago.

Heading north from the train station we came across Campo San Geremia e Lucia and the church of San Geremia, where Saint Lucia’s remains are on display in a glass case behind the altar. She is the patron saint of the blind and those with ocular ailments. She died on December 13, 304 and was stolen from Constantinople by Venetian crusaders in 1204, then moved to this church when the church of Santa Lucia was demolished to make room for the train station. She was also stolen from her current residence in 1994 but was soon returned.

After saying goodbye for Saint Lucy, we crossed the bridge into the Venetian Ghetto, the Ghetto Nuovo, which became Venice’s Jewish quarter in 1516. They were all forced to move onto this small island and the Ghetto was sealed at night by gates. There is a Holocaust Memorial in a corner of the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo. We bought some Pane Mama Mia bread from a Kosher bakery then continued on our walk through the Cannagegio district, including a walk across some of the newer reclaimed land that has helped extend Venice’s border into the sea over the last one hundred years or so.

We stopped in a small square for lunch just before leaving this district then gradually made our way home again through the maze of streets, trying to avoid the busier tourist traffic, staying a few blocks north of the waterfront.

We had a late supper and did some laundry while waiting for our friends Kenn & Karen to arrive. Around 10:30 we walked down to the Vaporatto stop to wait for them as our house is difficult enough to find in the daylight, we thought it would be nearly impossible to find for the first time at night. They arrived a little before 11:30 and we stayed up drinking and talking until about 1:00AM.

Saturday morning we all headed out, walking across Venice, retracing our steps for Chris and I, but introducing much of it for the first time for Kenn & Karen. We stopped at a clothing shop where I’d seen a jacket the other day and I ended up buying a lightweight linen jacket, much more suitable for travel than the heavy black blazer I brought with me.

We walked across Ponte Rialto and around the Rialto Market then on through San Polo and into San Croce to find the stove repair shop we’d seen the other day. We found it but unfortunately it’s closed on Saturday and Sunday so we’ll try again next week. We had lunch right near there in San Giacomo dell’Orio square then continued on into the Cannaregio district to explore the Jewish Ghetto area before gradually walking home again.

We stopped for a drink at El Refolo on Via Garibaldi to cool off and use the free wi-fi to get our emails and facebook messages caught up, then home for fresh pasta and some wine.

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Comments

[milton]

Venice
Fantastic commentary and photographs. Thank you Roger Milton