Venice and Carnevale

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I think it’s deductive reasoning to say if Italy is the number one tourist destination in the world then Venice is the number one tourist destination in Italy. We are about to discover why.
There are no cars in Venice - a good thing as our apartment faces the street on three sides and I doubt if you could stretch a tape measure out to the eight-foot mark before you hit any the neighbouring buildings. Every second cross-street is a little canal over which is an elegant stone bridge with marble steps. Four, five and six storey buildings looming over a patchwork maze of narrow walkways and canals.
The train tracks to Venice end where the water begins. We got on a waterbus and headed for the Rialto Mercato stop where we were met by Chiara (keeyara) and led through a narrow warren of streets to our apartment for the week. It’s on the third floor and rather spartan compared to Rome or Florence. The apartment is a bit dark although it has seven windows and a tiny balcony...it’s just that the neighbours are so close. Honestly, you could read a newspaper in the next apartment across the street (alleyway).
We dropped our bags and went out to explore the town. We made our way to Piazza San Marco - the heart of the town at the docks where, in her past glory days, ships arrived from all corners of the known world. As mentioned earlier, we had no thought of Carnevale when making the reservation...well, we were the only ones not thinking of Carnevale. The word for meat in Italian is ‘carne’ and carnevale means ‘without meat’ the deprivation of Lent. The streets are full of people and hundreds upon hundreds are strolling about in full, head-to-toe, elaborate costume with an expressive mask. The style of costume ranges from eighteenth century fancy ball gowns to some rather boffo avante-garde concoctions. There are groups of more than half-a-dozen dressed in matching outfits parading around posing for photos. Carnevale provides an opportunity for those with exhibitionist urges.
We found a little supermarket and bought enough supplies for a day or so - juicy blood oranges from Sicily, fresh lettuce, fresh carrots, a couple of local cheeses and some pasta. Next door we found a wine store that would fill your bottle at some $3 per litre...now that’s my kind of wine store. Turns out the wine was made yesterday but it ain’t bad at all!
It started to get dark and we barely discovered our way home in the gloom. There are simply no main streets in Venice and to us newly arrived they all looked the same.
We made a simple pasta and cheese dish with some simmered carrots, garlic and oregano along with the salad. Darla nested in the apartment putting her stamp on the place. Seems even in the top hotels in Venice many rooms are small with windows facing out onto bleak alleyways.
The next day I slipped out early to see the Mercato Rialto which is mere steps away from our apartment. There were almost two dozen fish merchants with great long tables of ice and every fish in the sea fresh-caught over the past night. I bought a beautiful slab of tuna for about $8 for our supper and then some fresh arugula, slices of ham, a tomato and a couple of flakey buns so Darla could make us some sandwiches for lunch as we walked around exploring.
The shop windows are alive with Carnevale masks, furs, fashion and colourful Murano glass. The glass is made on the Island of Murano a short boat ride away. The glass works were originally in Venice but were moved to Murano years ago for safety. The constant fires to keep the glass molten became too much of a threat to the city.
One is limited in the kitchen with a stove top, a microwave and about two pots. However, it is only meant as a challenge to a serious chef trying to impress his bride of 34 years. Boiled new potatoes with garlic butter, tuna seared in butter and an arugula and tomato salad kept her around for another day. The tuna was extra special because it was the first time we have ever cooked it for ourselves...and it won’t be the last. It was some 3/4 of an inch thick, salted and peppered like a steak and flashed in bubbling butter. ‘It was like the most tender steak you have ever tasted’, said aforementioned, well-fed bride.
In the evening we walked back to Piazza San Marco for a ‘demonstration’ of tango dancing. Many couples danced on the pavement next to the stage vieing for the honour of performing on the large stage in the square. There were a surprising number of excellent dancers!
Darla discovered a library where we registered and were allowed free access to computers and wifi. So the next day, after the market, we got caught up on our email and then in the afternoon jumped on a vaporetto down the Grand Canal and across to the island of Lido, which is part of the long spit of land that protects Venice from the storms and surges of the Golfo di Venezia and the Adriatic. We looked around and made plans to come another day and rent bicycles for a peddle along the shore. Then it was back on the vaporetto and then back across to Venice.
Fish again in bubbling butter - haddock I think - egg noodles with some fresh peccorino and a salad: “Best restaurant in Venice”, said the same bride as last night.
On Thursday we took the vaporetto to the island of Murano and wandered through the glass shops and toured a couple of glass foundries. We had seen some impressive pieces of glass on the mainland but nothing prepared us for the beauty and artistry that they have developed here. It was fortunate we are on an extended trip and cannot carry packages as we could have easily succumbed to temptation. Although the air was cold, we had a picnic on a sheltered bench next to a canal in the blazing sun and watched the pigeons and the terns fight over our crumbs.
We headed for the island of Burano, some 40 minutes further away on the vaporetto. This little gem is famous for its lace. Up and down the streets the stores are urging you to come in a buy some intricately hand-stitched piece of whatever. We were engaged in conversation (the polite way of saying ‘hustled’) by a very attractive fifty-something shopkeeper who showed Darla some king-sized bed linens with an 800 thread count. It felt like silk and was so beautifully embroidered. The set could have been ours for a little less then C$1000. Needless to say, we carried on unencumbered. Burano’s houses are all brightly-painted in different colours - it felt like a Newfoundland outport with the friendliness and cleanliness. It was children’s day in the Carnevale and all Mums, lugging way-too-large bags of confetti, were escorting the cutest of kids toward the centre of town where the celebration was to be held.
We could not stay as we had a date at home with a dozen, fresh-caught, four-inch long scampi we had bought at the market that morning for a mere 5 euros. Flashing them in garlic butter (about our only cooking method, but who’s complaining?) they shared the plate with rice, sauteed mushrooms - that were pure-white and the size of baseballs - and the nightly salad. Being from Prince Edward Island we have heard way too much from the chefs of France about the superiority of scampi over our lobster. This was our first chance to compare it for ourselves. We have heard that scampi is the more delicate and tender cousin...that lobster can be tough. We didn’t really compare apples to apples as we have never had four-inch long lobster, however, we think it can easily hold its own. The scampi was delicious but oh-so-fragile as one’s fingers mushed it trying to get it out of the hard shell. Perhaps we will get a chance to try some very large ones similar to the size of lobster to which we are accustomed...stay tuned.
Our neighbour to the west is a laundry demon. There is a constant parade of clothes and sheets on her line. The lines are short because Italian washing machines are small. We finally got one to work for us here in Venice as our Rome and Florence machines were unfathomable. They sound like a cross between a pencil sharpener and a blender and when they work, they work very well. We actually got to say hello to our laundry neighbour last evening as I had the balcony door open which is next to the dining room table. The table was set and I was uncorking a bottle as we were about to sit down. She opens her window to take in the laundry and there I am about twelve feet away wrestling with a bottle. It struck me as a rather intimate moment. ‘Bonasera’, I said and ‘Bonasera’, she said...now what do we do as she is taking in the laundry and we are sitting down...? She was so close I could have passed her a glass across the ‘street’. But she didn’t have that ‘I’d-like-to-have-a-glass look’. She had that ‘I’m-taking-in-the-laundry look. We delayed supper by a couple of minutes, then casually shut the door, drew the curtain and carried on with the party. I looked out after supper and there was a fresh line out to dry overnight. Whatever is on the line when we go to bed has been replaced with another load when we wake up.
Over breakfast (rolled oats simmered in milk) on Friday we were remarking on just how delicious are one’s everyday staples: the milk tastes so rich; the bread, in its many forms, so fresh; the coffee so pungent, the butter, totally in a class by itself, is divine - only salt-free available. They sell Danish butter in a fancy foil wrap. Beside it, looking a bit like a poor Mediterranean cousin in only waxed parchment, is the Italian butter. Naturally, we always choose the Italian butter... ‘almost like cheese’, Darla says. Fresh baguette with flakey crust and ever-so-soft crumb plied with the creamy, saltless Italian butter... we succumb regularly!
Friday night, for a splurge, we went to a ciccetti bar which is kind like happy hour with some scrumptious appetizers. We took the traghetto, a gondola powered by oarsmen fore and aft, across the canal to a pleasant little place in a back alley. People were spilling out the door with little glasses of wine and food on plates or stuffed into napkins. We stood in the crowd at the bar and elbowed our way in until we were noticed and served by a tall, handsome, friendly bartender We each had two glasses of fresh, pleasant, cold vino rosso poured out of large round jugs on the counter. For food we blindly pointed at trays and ended up with: hot deep-fried crab cakes; cold sliced calamari, wrapped in pancetta, drenched in olive oil and smothered with parmesan; and a hot deep-fried, slightly battered herring filet. Total cost for the half-hour was about C$13. We realized later we should have stayed for supper but we had other plans that were not so successful. We ended up eating spagettis bolognaise (so-so) and carbonara (delicious) in a trattoria.
The one-minute trip to the market on Saturday morning, our last as we leave early Monday, was almost nostalgic as we have been buying our food at the same vendors all week. We were pleased to get that extra nod or smile reserved for a regular customer. As Sunday is not a market day we were buying for two days plus sandwiches for our six hour train trip across Italy to the Cingterre. For about C$25 we got a fresh slab of tuna, 400gr of shrimp, two extra large scampi (gotta try them again), a baguette, two buns, two litres of milk, 100gr sliced ham, a tub of mixed olives, two pears, two apples, a head of lettuce and two large mushrooms. Blessed are those that live a short walk from a market and get to shop daily. We were home in less than half an hour.
Today is the Saturday before the big celebration of Carnevale on Tuesday. We are in the middle of the biggest Halloween party ever. I said hundreds were dressed up...? Change that to thousands with many more thousands watching. The streets are swollen rivers of people so tightly packed that one almost is carried along in the crush without having to walk. Everyone from Grannies and Grampas down to babies in strollers was dressed up in costume. Without any exaggeration, there must be five hundred thousand masks for sale at all the various vendors across town. ‘They’ say that Piazza San Marco, the main square, will hold over 100,000 and it will be jammed. Our friend Sebastian, who has been to Venice many times, says there are usually 250,000 people in Venice for Carnevale. Venice has created a huge industry on the coattails of Lent. The cacophony of languages in the streets is so exciting as people from all over Europe...all over the world... are here with only one idea in their head - PARTY!
We tried to avoid it all today by taking a ferry to Lido and walking on the beach...Darla pronounced the water, ‘...as cold as Panmure’, which we all know is slightly below freezing. For those not familiar with swimming in the ocean off Prince Edward Island, Darla was referring to a local Island beach famous for its beauty and its very cold water even at the best of times.
Returning to Venice we took back streets to the apartment...even more people now. Feeling safe at home we peeled our shrimp, boiled our rice, uncorked a couple of bottles of excellent Chianti and had a quiet evening - quiet inside as below us even in our narrow street there was a party that sang and danced outside the restaurant until the wee hours. I looked out at 8:00 am Sunday morning and the street was spotless except for the ubiquitous confetti which sparkled in the sunrise.
Tomorrow we are off to Cingterre and another small apartment. Our time in Venice has been very special thanks to Carnevale and the unique nature of this city that is like no other. Ciao!

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