Land of liquid highways

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What can one say about Venice that hasn't been said a million times? Magical, fascinating, like nowhere else...a floating city of history and culture.

There is one thing we didn't think through about visiting Venice though, even after many hours searching for a perfect but affordable place to stay. We chose a canal view suite in a small family run hotel right in the centre of the San Marco area- what is the point of a few days in Venice if you cant look out over a canal sipping a glass of prosecco?

The room was lovely - a comfortable mix of old Venice and modern conveniences and did indeed look directly over a canal with picturesque bridges from both the bedroom and living area. However the bit we hadn't thought of was that Venice has no roads or cars - the canals are their transport routes. This makes it a delightfully quiet city at night...until the water taxis and delivery barges start up in the early hours of the morning and every few minutes you have a boat chugging past your bedroom window.

This can be slightly unnerving when you are not quite awake and have momentarily forgotten you are in Venice.

What is thing most discussed by travellers in Venice? ...the beauty of San Marco Basilica?..the glamour of the gondolas? More likely the best way to get from the airport, which is on the mainland. You can go by bus then vaporetto, train or several types of boat - some very expensive,
some merely a bus on water. Then there is the mystery of deciding how to get back to the airport.

After you've been in Venice for a few days and think you understand their idiocyncratic water transport system, there is the confusion of turning up at what one of you thinks is the right pier, deciding that the other one of you was right and going to another pier, but being told by the ticket person that you need the next pier along, then being told at that pier that you don't want the orange line to the airport at all, but the blue line - the boat that has just pulled into the first pier you went to.

Then this boat goes in the opposite direction you think it will so you don't get to see the Cannareggio canal at all because it was dark by the time you came down it a few days ago.

Other than confusing boat timetables and confusing maps because it's a city designed around water not land, Venice is tourist paradise - the locals are helpful and charming, you can buy cheap souvenir tat or the most expensive fashion labels, the food is delicious and wine abundant. You can spend your time indulging in the highest culture - opera, Vivaldi, museums, architecture and rennàisance masterpieces, or you can just wander the city like we did, getting lost then found again, coming to picturesque dead ends on the Grand Canal, moving from one district to the next without realising we'd gone that far, never actually getting where you thought you were going but finding a beautiful church to gaze in wonder at instead, finding a bar looking out over the lagoon in the watery sun where a carafe of prosecco wasn't going to cost us more than our meal that night. Eating cuttlefish spaghetti with black ink sauce (me) and seafood risotto (me).

Walking round venice is like being in a virtual MC Escher world. Is this the street we walked down before? ..let's go up here. ..round the corner...up the steps...over the bridge. ..down, round, oh...this is the piazza on the other side from where we want to be...

Venice in winter is cold. Really cold. But it was relatively empty. No queues for the Basilica, an empty bridge view for your own atmospheric photo. It wasn't smelly at all. But it's a strange, watery way of life. And you can't help but wonder what's going to happen to Venice when the sea levels rise just enough to come over the walls which have protected it for so long...

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Comments

[nancic123]

Embracing being Lost...
We absolutely loved Venice. You really have to embrace being lost (we wrote a blog about it, also) and just go with what you find. It really is a city designed to travel by water and not land. Hopefully you had a chance to visit Burano, a colorful island in the Venice lagoon. Very nice pictures of one of my favorite cities!