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Published: August 10th 2008
The Worlds Most Beautiful City?
If it isn't, we'd love to see the one that's nicer.A largely aquatic theme for this penultimate blog of the ACDC World Tour 07/08, and, despite our year out drawing to a close, there were still some fantastic experiences in store for us. We’d mused long and hard about which route to take back home through Europe and the best places to visit along the way. Of course, it’s impossible to know what we missed out on by selecting the path we did, but it’s hard to believe anything could have bettered the one we chose. We were in for some real treats, none more so than the few days we had in the amazing “City of Bridges”, Venice.
Getting there wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Firstly, we were very low on fuel and needed to fill up urgently at what turned out to be the last petrol station in sub one Euro a litre Croatia. Fuel shoots up by more than 50% once you leave so we joined the back of a very long queue at the petrol station, not really because it was cheap but more that we couldn’t have got much further. A short stretch through Slovenia and we were heading back along the busy Italian
A Unique Place
We had very high expectations of Venice and it exceeded them all. toll roads. Everything was going well until we neared the pay station and found ourselves in a very, very slow traffic jam trying to squeeze itself through the inadequate number of booths. It turned out our re-entry into Italy had coincided with the start of the national holidays and for over an hour we baked in the searing heat with what appeared to be half of the country, as we waited to pay.
Eventually, we battled our way through and made our way to Mestre, one of the gateways to Venice. For someone who considers himself a potential candidate for Bolton Trivial Pursuits champion , this year out has highlighted some worryingly large gaps in my general knowledge and never more so than here. I knew Venice was a city of canals but not that it is situated three kilometres off the mainland and getting onto it requires a fair amount of forward planning. You can actually drive onto it over a narrow causeway and leave your car at Tronchetta, Europe’s largest car park. However, we’d heard horror stories about traffic jams getting on and off the islands so left the car on the mainland and got the train
The Grand Canal
The city's main canal flows through the centre and passes right by St. Marks Square. Make sure you don't get off and buy a small Heineken!! over.
Nothing can prepare you for seeing Venice for the first time - there simply can’t be another place in the world even remotely like it. As the train approached the station and we got our first sighting, I leaped to my feet to video our arrival for posterity. I shouldn’t have done this whilst eating lunch on the move though as I tipped a full bottle of Coke all down myself - cool entry or what?
It’s when you walk down the train station steps you start to understand just how different things are in Venice. There have been a few occasions during our sabbatical that I’ve found it just about impossible to pull together a blog about a place with my admittedly limited writing skills simply unable to do them justice. I’m casting my mind back to the madness of Havana and Vegas or the silent majesty of the Yosemite National Park to name but a few. I fear Venice may also fall into this category (you have to keep reminding yourself this is a living city, not a huge, surreal aquatic theme park) but here goes. It’s probably easiest to start with a few facts.............
Traffic Is Moving Freely Under The Rialto Bridge.............
The canals have speed limits, one way systems, parking restrictions etc to keep traffic moving freely. Watch your speed though as there's lots of police about too!! Venice (Venezia) was founded when hunters and fishermen settled on mud banks off the Italian coast and has now evolved into what is now widely regarded as the most beautiful city in the world (it’s a stunning place in its own right but being water based takes it to another dimension). It is made up of 118 islands linked by canals, over 400 bridges and, at risk of stating the obvious, there’s no roads. All transport, public or otherwise, is water based and its 150 canals are teaming with taxis, ferries, gondolas and, at their widest points, an occasional cruise ship. Everything operates smoothly thanks to one way systems, no entry signs, parking restrictions and even police boats that enforce speed limits.
Talking of gondoliers, these guys (we didn’t see even a single female one) have to be seen to be believed. They seem extraordinarily arrogant and strut around (maybe that should be punt around) as if they’re film stars and own the place. Thinking about it, that could actually be the case as the pleasure of a ride in one of the city’s iconic boats costs a small fortune. A fifty minute trip around the streets will set
It's A Hard Life!!
I'm not sure how you get to be a gondolier but I'm thinking of asking for an application form!! This guy woke up shortly after this photo and took 100 Euros off some Japanese tourists for a 50 minute punt round the canals. Easy life!! you back over a hundred Euros and even more if you want them to serenade you. They seem to be making so much money they don’t mind if they’re not hired for a few hours as it gives them time to either sleep in their boat or overtly ogle passing women.
Once an important trading point, Venice is now really just a centre for tourism now (it receives 200 times its population in visitors every year) and we’d been told how expensive it was to visit. In actual fact, we were pleasantly surprised that, once you got away from St. Marks Square where a small bottle of Heineken costs 10 Euros, it wasn’t much dearer than any other Italian city. It is, however, without doubt the most difficult place to find your way around we’ve ever been to - by a long way. Thousands of tiny streets crisscross each other, often coming to an abrupt dead end or leading you to a set of steps down into a canal. A map is largely useless too as you can, if you’re lucky, find your way to a place only to discover it’s ten feet away on the other side of
"What Time Is Breakfast?"
Let it never be said that romance is dead!! This is shortly after my badly timed comment - here I'm repeating under my breath "Must listen more carefully. Must listen more carefully........" the water but there’s no bridge nearby. We went round in circles many, many times and, ironically, the only place that came near in the getting lost stakes was when we stayed in Vegas - at The Venetian hotel!!
It made sense then for us to take some professional help and enlist a tour guide. We got a very enthusiastic lady who took us on a two hour walking tour of “Hidden Venice” which focused on the historical development of the city and how people have lived over the years. She explained that the population is less than half of what it once was and it continues to dwindle rapidly. The reason for this is that property on the island costs about the same as in Manhattan but the Italian wages come nowhere near to those earned by Americans. We were taken to visit the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari which was spectacular but just one of countless exceptional buildings in Venice. There, we saw original paintings by Donatello, Bellini and Titian amongst others - much better than the modern art of Spoleto but we still couldn’t get as apoplectically excited about them as our guide did.
Out On Lake Garda
This thing went really quite fast. I believe they're called Speed Boats...................... She got so energized and animated when explaining the detail of a particular painting that at one point I was sure she was going to burst.
Our sky high expectations of Venice were exceeded and it’d be a tough character that doesn’t fall instantly in love with this magical city. On our final evening there we were dining on a canal side terrace, the sun setting and an occasional gondola drifting past. There was a gentle hum of conversation as Angela waxed lyrical about the beauty surrounding us and how very romantic it was. I was day dreaming but eventually realised she had paused and was waiting for me to say something. With hindsight, “What time is breakfast on until in the hotel tomorrow?” wasn’t a good choice - talk about killing the moment!! She’s been teasing me about it ever since and I think it’s a sentence that’s going to stick.
Venice was always going to be a tough act to follow, so it was probably a good thing we were driving from there straight to Lake Garda. This is another truly stunning region and was formed by glacial activity between five and six million years ago.
The View From Our Balcony
We stayed in a small town called Malcesine by Lake Garda and it was a great choice. It was big enough to keep us occupied whilst at the same time not spoiled by being too busy. As with Venice, water features prominently but in a completely different way as it’s one massive expanse rather than many narrow canals. Over 52km long and as wide as 17km in places, Garda is Italy’s biggest lake and is a popular destination with tourists from all over Europe. Many of them sunbathe all day on its rocky shoreline (as with Croatia it doesn’t have any beaches as such) whilst taking views of the imperious mountains that surround it.
We’d based ourselves at the small lakeside town of Malcesine and the best fun we had there was when we hired a speed boat and took to the water. Just after we’d set off I could see the young lad who’d rented it to us gesticulating for me to push the throttle further down. This I did and it resulted in both Angela and I being knocked off our feet as it really did go very fast (perhaps that’s why they’re called speed boats..............).
It was time to bid Italy a fond farewell now and head up into Austria. This was a particularly scenic drive as we climbed the snow covered Alps and got exhilarating views of the verdant valleys
On Top Of The World
We took two cable cars up into The Alps and it was an exhilarating experience. That's Seefeld down below which has hosted events in two Winter Olympics and was a lovely place to stay. and chocolate box villages below. We were into skiing country now (not at this time of year, obviously!!) and we stayed in the impossibly quaint town of Seefeld near Innsbruck, location for two Winter Olympics. In glorious weather we rode the cable car to the top of two of the nearby mountains and it felt like being on top of the world. Wild horses and cows with bells grazed on the wide expanses of grass (ski runs no doubt) that interspersed thick pine forests and the air seemed as clean as it’s possible to get.
Our long, leisurely journey continued into Switzerland next and, as we should probably have expected from a country which has four official languages, we had a couple of quite weird experiences there. We were only in the country for one night and picked a lovely place to stay called Stein am Rhein (it is, as you probably guessed, set on The Rhine). Being in Switzerland, a fondue seemed the order of the day for our evening meal and we had an excellent one in a local restaurant. Whilst we were eating, a couple of young soldiers sat at the next table and were dressed
Scenic Seefeld
A typical Austrian skiing resort which probably looks even better when covered in snow. in full combat gear, boots and all. This got me thinking as a) they looked a little out of place and b) this is a country that hasn’t been to war since 1815 when Napoleon stated that cuckoo clocks were rubbish (I actually made that bit up in an attempt to make the Switzerland sound a bit more interesting).
It occurred to me that there can’t be many cushier jobs than being a soldier in Europe’s safest country, other than perhaps being in their Navy...............(?) They probably don’t get issued guns as they’re so unlikely to need them and I kept having visions of what would happen if these two soldiers ever did get involved in a confrontation. I imagined a deadly assailant attacking them whilst they grabbed their Swiss Army knives and desperately tried to find the right blade to defend themselves. “Nail clippers.........., Philips screw driver..........., fish scaler............. - oh blimey, where’s the knife bit?!!”.
Our second surreal experience in Stein am Rhein happened when we were politely moved off the set of a Bollywood movie - honestly!! We were walking down a shopping street when a little Indian bloke ran over and ushered us into
Bollywood Comes To Switzerland
One of the film crew must be an excellent salesman.
"You know what this movie really needs? A dream sequence shot in some of the worlds most beautiful locations.........". a doorway so we were out of shot and filming could continue. There was a whole crew from Bangalore there and, apparently, they were flying to various destinations around the world to film two young lovers in a dream sequence. Nice work if you can get it - sounds an even better gig than being in the Swiss Army.
And so this penultimate leg came to an end. A journey that began in Croatia and ended in Switzerland via Slovenia, Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein perfectly illustrated the rich diversity that Europe has to offer in such a relatively small area. It started in a city of canals, ended up in a small town so pretty it defied belief and provided a huge variety of wonderful contrasts in between. Into Germany’s Black Forest next for the leg that will eventually see us back into the UK...................
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Ed
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Non dovevo mai
It doesn't seem to have mattered which route you have taken on this trip, you have still not been able to shake off Matt Le Lissier. And he's taking real liberties putting his arm round Angela like that..... the cheeky, persistent devil.