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10 May 2009
I’ve just spent three days in the most amazing city yet. Venice is one of those cities that everyone knows of (and it seems like everyone was there), but it’s definitely one of those ones that you just have to go to and absorb for yourself. I spent my time wandering the streets, searching for the ultimate photograph to take. To take such a photo, I think you’d have to stay for a year, so that you get to be part of the furniture and part of the incredible history that is wrapped around you.
I don’t understand how the place still exists, to be honest. The buildings are hundreds of years old, jammed in cheek to cheek, with brick and plaster walls bowed, cracked and eroded. And yet just inside the crumbling facades and weathered window shutters are marble interiors and double glazed windows for many of them. And of course, half of these buildings are standing with their feet permanently wet in the canals. As you round another tiny laneway, it opens up to a square with yet another beautiful old church, most in astounding condition, and built on such an enourmous scale for
such a cramped city.
Venice is the place to get lost in. Deliberately. There is a main tourist strip located around St Mark’s square, where you can drown yourself in Gucci and Prada and any other designer label you can care to mention. There is a “track” that loosely follows the Grand Canal all the way to the station that is also lined with shops. Yet venture off in any other direction, and you’re soon immersed in the equivalent of (inner city) suburbia. This is where the real heart of Venice is to be found, with small alleyways and locals going about their business.
Being on Venice’s waterways felt strangely like being on a bus going down George St, Sydney. Not for the harbour views, but for the ferries that were everywhere. There must have been a timetable, but it seemed they were always waiting for another ferry to leave the berth before we could stop. When they were waiting, the captains were busy gunning the engines, first in forwards, then in reverse, just because they were wishing it was a Ferrari instead. Gondolas slowing up traffic , water taxis delivering those that could afford it (I didn’t
ask), delivery boats loaded with everything from fridges to fruit, all jostling for space, and a clear path ahead.
Across the smaller canals, there are lots of bridges of all shapes and sizes and age. Each one began and ended with a tiny alleyway between buildings, but to someone at sometime, it must have made perfect sense to build one there, and not one laneway in another direction that may have been more open and inviting. Must have provided a shorter path to Mamma’s house. Across the Grand canal, however, there is only three bridges. If you want to cross anywhere else, you can take a ferry across, as they zigzag from bank to bank, just to add to the confusion. Alternatively, for 50 cents you can stand up in a vaporetto, which is an even longer than usual gondola. Ten or twelve people all standing up in a long thin boat bobbing across the water; a certain recipe for disaster, but it worked.
Plan a visit to Venice. But please make it for more than just one day, which was all quite a few people we met had planned. It deserves far more of your time.
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Liz McGrath
non-member comment
Marvelous
I think you're right - you would need more than a day, if only to get the hang of the ferry schedule. Your cousin Matthew went to Tuscany on a school trip last year and spent a night and a day in Venice. He loved it as well. Happy Trails!