Rats on the Dining Table


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Europe » Italy » Veneto » Venice
September 8th 2016
Published: June 14th 2017
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Issy's very tired and wants to rest up this morning, so I set off on my own. The queue to climb the San Marco belltower yesterday looked to be hours long, and I remember reading somewhere that the views from the belltower at the monastery on San Giorgio Maggiore Island are just as good if not better. This is only one water bus stop from the apartment. I get there before the doors open so I kill some time wandering around the waterfront which is lined with expensive looking yachts. It seems that you're not allowed to climb the belltower; you have to go up in the lift. I'm glad it's not the other way around. I'm third in the queue and there's no one behind me, and I'm not sure that's really a queue at all because the lift can take six people. I wonder why there are so few people here. We're only one water bus stop from San Marco, and as I'd noted previously the queue at the San Marco belltower is usually hours long. You have to walk up the San Marco belltower; you go up this one in a lift. The cost to go up this belltower is six Euro; it costs eight Euro to go up the San Marco belltower. I keep waiting for the catch. Maybe there are no windows at the top of this belltower, so you can't see anything. The views from the top are in fact beyond spectacular. I can see all over the lagoon, and it puts the whole of Venice into perspective. The only downside is that the bells ring while I'm up here. There are signs to warn you about this, but I forget to keep my eye on the time. Fortunately I'm there on the half hour so the bells only ring once. I'm temporarily deafened and have a mild heart attack, but this seems a small price to pay for the view. I assume the San Marco belltower has bells in it as well. I suspect that all belltowers probably have bells in them, otherwise they'd just be called towers. The Monastery church is very big and old and was apparently built in the sixteenth century by Benedictine monks. The area for the congregation is huge, but there are no pews. This seems a bit odd. I wonder if they make everyone sit on the floor. You're not allowed to sit on church steps in Italy, so I doubt you'd be allowed to sit on a church floor. Maybe they make everyone stand up. If so I hope the sermons are interesting.

I catch a water bus along the Grand Canal to the next stop, the Basilica Di Santa Maria Glorioso Dei Frari, which is apparently known locally just as the Frari, presumably because it's a bit less of a mouthful. It's apparently a minor basilica, although I'm not entirely sure what that means; it's still massive. One of its main features are the huge carved wooden beams spanning in both directions between the main support columns. There's a very large Titian painting above the altar, and Titian is buried here. They want visitors to be quiet. It's not the visitors they should be worried about. There's a man setting up lights, presumably for a performance here, and he seems to manage to drop large solid objects on the marble floor every few minutes, and each time he does this the noise echoes right through the building.

Next stop is the Scuola Grande Di San Rocco, just around the corner from the Frari. This was the headquarters of the Confraternity of St Roch, which was established in 1478 by a group of wealthy Venetian citizens to try to protect the city from the plague. It seems that they weren't all that successful. We read that about a third of Venice's population was wiped out by the next major plague outbreak in the 16th century. Nonetheless they still get marks for trying, and the building is spectacular. It's on three levels, and almost the whole of the second level is a large and very spectacular hall where the Confraternity held its meetings. The ceiling is covered in paintings, and the walls are lined with very detailed wood carvings of mysterious unidentified figures. There's a very large and impressive painting of the Crucifixion in an adjoining room.

I leave the Scuola and make my way towards the Rialto Bridge, which is currently undergoing restoration. There are shops on the bridge, and it's very crowded. There seem to be gondolas with luxurious seating on almost every canal that I cross. I'd always thought that gondola rides came complete with one or more musicians, but music seems to noticeably absent on the gondolas we've seen, until now. I hear an accordionist playing a rendition of Waltzing Matilda. It sounds totally embarrassing and out of place, and I really hope that he's not playing it because some Australian tourists on board requested it. I decide that if anyone nearby asks me where I'm from I'm going to say New Zealand.

Issy's rested up so we set off for lunch. We haven't seen much greenery since we've been here so we head towards the Venice Giardini, which is a a small public park only a few stops east of San Marco. There are two soldiers on the water bus armed with machine guns. I try not to look suspicious, but I think I've failed. They get off at the same stop we do. We stop at a small cafe in the park; fortunately the soldiers don't follow us. Our waitress is short, stout, blonde and scary. Issy says that we should try to stay on her good side. I think I preferred the soldiers with machine guns. We order vegetarian sandwiches. She comes back a few minutes later to tell us that they've run out, and that they only have ham and cheese sandwiches left. We tell her that we'll have these. We're too scared to say anything else. She could have offered us raw chicken and we would have agreed to eat it. We continue walking through the park to the eastern tip of the island. In stark contrast to central Venice it's very quiet and there are very few people around. Issy says she's decided that she doesn't like crowds. We'll be in Hong Kong in a couple of days; I don't think she's going to like it there too much. We pass the Venice soccer stadium. I'm not sure I remember Venice being famous for having a strong soccer team, and perhaps unsurprisingly the stadium looks quite small.

We find our way back to the waterfront, and follow signs through a maze of narrow alleys to a public toilet. It costs 1.50 Euro each to use. It was only 0.50 Euro in Greece, so it seems we're right to think that Venice really is expensive, well compared to Greece anyway. To get in we need to put money in a slot and go through a turnstile, and the slot machine doesn't give change. Fortunately we have the right money, but this exercise has still cost us the equivalent of about five Australian dollars.

We decide to keep to the back alleys rather than going back to the waterfront. This proves to be a big mistake. We wander around for a long time, hopelessly lost. Issy needs some face wipes so she asks me to keep an eye out for a chemist. We find one, but it doesn't sell them. We follow signs to the Rialto Bridge so at least we now know where we are. This is shortlived. We quickly get lost again. Our aimless wanderings continue as does our search for the elusive chemist. Issy spies one and goes in to ask for face wipes. After a few minutes we realise it's the same chemist that we were in about an hour ago. Our internal compasses are clearly in need of some recalibration.

Next stop is the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca' d'Oro, which houses frescoes, sculptures and other artworks mostly by Venetian painters from several hundred years ago. I wonder how they managed to get the frescoes here. They're mostly from a monastery. I hope that they didn't have to tear it down to retrieve them.

We catch the water bus back to the apartment. The water buses are quite slow, but the system seems to work efficiently nonetheless. We've rarely had to wait for one for more than a few minutes, and they're in and out of the stops in about twenty seconds. They effectively use their mooring ropes as brakes. The ropes always look and sound as if they're about to break, but we haven't seen one snap yet, which feels like a minor miracle. The force that the rope must need to withstand to suddenly stop a boat with a couple of hundred people on it must be massive. There's an Asian tourist on board wearing a Carlton Football Club tee shirt, and I don't think he's got any idea of the emotional effect that seeing this is having on me. I suddenly feel very homesick. I suspect that he probably bought it when he was a tourist in Melbourne without having any idea of its significance. I think you should need to prove that you've got a strong emotional attachment to the Carlton Football Club before you're allowed to wear any of its gear.

We head out for dinner and decide that we'll eat near the gallery that we visited this afternoon. There seemed to be quite a few restaurants around there, including a Macdonalds which looked very out of place. We spot a restaurant that serves, amongst other things, Japanese food. I think I've been tricked. I didn't see this when we were here earlier, but I did notice that Issy seemed to put up very little resistance when I suggested coming back.

As we wait for our water bus back to the apartment we see a rat scurry across the deck in front of us. We'd read that rats are a problem in Venice, and Issy says she read a review of a Venice restaurant where a rat had climbed onto the reviewer's table while he was eating. The restaurant then very generously agreed to deduct twenty percent from his bill. If that was me I'd be into the restaurant for thousands of Euros to compensate for me never being able to eat in a restaurant ever again. Issy says she can't remember the name of the restaurant, which is a bit worrying. I hope we don't inadvertently go to it.


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12th September 2016

Great photos....and the rat ewwww!

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