Venice

Well Hello Again. It has definitely been a while since my last (and only) blog entry. I guess its about time I shoulder some of the responsibility of informing you of what we’ve been doing. In the interets of saving time on the computer, I will be writing a bit about what happened after we left Naples and found ourselves heading back North.

True to form, heading North brought cold weather and when we arrived in Venice after an arduous overnight train journey, we were glad to have our jackets with us. Oh wait. I have mine, but where is Heather’s? As we found when we were attempting to leave our bags at the luggage storage at the train station, Heather left her jacket in the dark train compartment when we changed trains in Bologna at 5:30am. Not only is it cold outside, its also raining fairly hard. Thus, our adventure in Venice begins.

Venice is a fantastic city to visit in terms of being a tourist. Its small enough to walk around the entire city, the transit system is excellent (and, being boats, quite novel), and unlike Napoli, there are no swarms of scooters making you feel like you have a large target painted on you. In fact, in the city of venice proper, there are no cars whatsoever and goods are brought to the various stores by men with large carts. It makes navigating the city a real pleasure.

We began the day by looking for a replacement coat for Heather. We got into the city at about 8:30am and were not to meet up with Carlo (a long-time friend of my mother’s), who’s house we were staying at, until after 5pm. Going shopping actually provided us with the perfect excuse to wander most of the city and by the end of the day, not only had we found her a new coat, but we had seen many of the sights that we had heard about.

The main sights to see in Venice are, of course, the canals. Venice is actually a series of hundreds of tiny islands that are now so built upon that it looks as if the buildings are simply rising out of the water. The Grand Canal, the remnant of the river that created the islands, winds its way through the city and is the largest canal by far. Many boats cruise this canal and the vaporetto, the bus/ferry system is based along it. The majority of the gondola stops are also along there and the men are quite serious about this business. We had already heard about the high prices of rides so did not even bother, but I was surprised at how many people were taking the plunge, so to speak, and paying up to 200 Euros for it. There are only three bridges that cross the Grand Canal, so at various points, if one is so inclined, you can take a traghetto, an old gondola that is no longer being used across the canal for about 50 cents. They pile as many people as possible into the gondola and then paddle across with everyone standing. The trip takes only about a minute but is quite the experience and highly recommended.

The final sight to mention is St Mark’s Square. You might have heard that Venice experienced record flooding last week. This happenned on Monday. Luckily, we arrived on Friday. Everyone was still talking about the fact that the sea level raised by over 1.2m. Regular flooding does occur in Venice but it is not of that magnitude and they have sirens that alert shop owners about 2 hours before so they can take the necessary precations. Another thing that happens with the sounding of the alarm is that raised walkways appear and make it possible for the lower areas of Venice to be navigateable with a good set of gumboots (or plastic bags over your shoes, available at your nearest random guy on the corner for a ridiculous price in times of need). Luckily, we missed this event by a couple of days and we able to witness a relatively flood-free Venice.

We met up with Carlo at about 7:30pm at his house on the Lido (Lee-Doh), one of the two islands that protects the lagoon of Venice. To get there is about a 45min ferry ride from Venice central and enables one to see the majority of Venice. The Lido is an island of about 20,000 people and has cars and proper buses. Carlo’s house was quite near the ferry stop so it was easy for us to get there with our packs.

Carlo was an incredible host. When we got there, he immediately set us up in the guest room and made sure we were comfortable with a glass of wine while he set about preparing a fantastic pasta dinner. He made the sauce with very few ingredients, mostly olive oil, cherry tomatoes and garlic. Hungry and tired, it was a fantastic dinner for us and set the tone for Carlo’s cooking over the weekend.

The next day, Carlo took us on a tour of Venice, showing us the highlights in his own way: the Gastronomic Tour of Venice. We saw a couple of really nice churches and some out of the way spots that we would never have been able to find on our own (Venice is the most maze-like city I have ever encountered). We also had a baccala pate on fresh made bread with polenta on the side and a glass of wine, we had a fresh piece of fried mozzarella with anchovies at a place that has been around since Carlo’s grandmother took him there as a kid, and we had a cup of the best expresso (machiato) that I had in Italy. We also visitted the fish and vegetable market with him to get the ingredients for that night’s dinner, one of my most memorable of this entire trip. The first course was octopus served the spanish way with smoked ground red pepper. The second was tuna sashimi (much to Heather’s delight) with some sort of spice and oil on it. The third was a pasta with monk fish. All served with a very nice wine and Carlo’s neverending, very informative commentary on Venetian history.

We also did a fair amount of our own wandering and I found Venice to be one of my favourite cities we have seen. Our final day with Carlo, he toured us around the Lido but it was incredibly foggy. We walked along the beach at the southern end, attempting to find the end of the island, but the fog made that next to impossible and a very cold walk. He then took us to Padua, a University town about 40km away from Venice, where he lives with his family during the week. He walked us around Padua and showed us some of the sights (the University founded in the 12th or 13th Century and the incredible church with one of Donatello’s sculptures out front) and then we caught a train to Nice via a night with Claudio in Milano again.

Italy was an incredible country to see and I am sure I will return as soon as I can. The main highlight was the food but it included many ruins and incredible experiences. It was non-stop action from the time we stepped off the train in Milano to when we got back on at nearly the same platform three weeks later to leave for France. I was made to feel at home, both with family friends and at some excellent hostels. The North and the South are almost two different countries within the one and it seems as if they both don’t think much of each other, but if you get the chance, I would highly recommend you visit as much of it as possible.

Well, this entry has gotten about as long as it needs to be. Maybe I’ll get the chance to write another entry before we go home in a week. I can’t believe its almost over.

Thanks for reading.

Ciao,

Zevi