Venice

Ahem.

Sorry about the prolonged silence. (Did anyone notice?) There's no better reason than to say that I had lots to do and didn't really feel like spending time writing. You may get an idea of why below.

I seem to recall in my last post that I said something about how Venice occupied a place of mythical, fairy-tale-epic status in my mind, and I was sure that the real thing wouldn't live up to it--classic Jennifer optipessimism. Well, let me tell you definitively, I was absolutely right and totally wrong. All cleared up? No? Then read on and I shall explain in a garbled and disjointed fashion.

The City
Somewhat incredibly, from above Venice resembles nothing so much as it does a first-grader's attempt at diagramming the digestive system of a perch. The island itself looks like a large fish with its head pointing west and its tail covered in parks; the Grand Canal twists through it in a backwards "S" shape, beginning near the "head" at Piazzale Roma and Ferrovia (bus and train stations) and ending out the bottom (*cough*) at Piazza San Marco. I encourage you to look up Venice on Google Maps, 'cause it's honestly true. Some basic geographical knowledge will be helpful in understanding my ramblings, but mostly I'm telling you this because I think it's delightfully amusing.

I walked into Venice with a huge grin plastered on my face. My hostel was on a different island very near the main island of Venice, just a short vaporetto ride around the head of the fish, so the first thing I did on arrive was plunk myself down in a boat and watch the city drift by. Vaporetti, by the way, are not flavors of gelato (as my sister believes) or drugs (the word reminds me of "vapor rub") but Venice's version of buses: big, lumbering boats to ferry passengers around the city's main waterways. Wonderfully, in contrac\st to the Brits, who are always reminding you to "mind the gap" and "watch your head", the Venetians get their vaporetti close enough to yellow-banded floating bus stops, loop a rope to hold the boat (vaguely) in place, pull the sliding barrier back as the boat thuds into the dock and bucks and rolls in other boats' wakes, and stare at you impatiently as you prepare yourself for the step from moving boat to moving dock over a foot of canal water. It's fantastic. I never saw anyone fall in, but the vaporetti drivers varied widely in the amount of grace with which they handled their craft. Some executed beautifully gliding manoeuvres and barely touched the dock, while others seemed to rely on the collision to stop the boat's motion.

Anyway. You could, I guess, get around Venice without using a boat at all; all the canals are bridged by anywhere from little concrete arches leading just to someone's front door to graceful spans of stone, like the Rialto, or steel and glass, like the newfangled bridge to Piazzale Roma, to wood, like that outside the Accademia art gallery. There are as many sizes, shapes, and styles as there are bridges; each one is different, and just about all of them are ridiculously picturesque and beautiful. So, you could get about entirely on foot, but although the island is small, it would be tough. The buildings are set close together, so most of the "streets" are more like alleyways, and since there are no really tall monuments at all (except, possibly, the Campanile near San Marco) it's impossible to navigate by landmarks. You can get a map, but most don't list the names of every one of Venice's tiny alleyways, which are just as likely to lead into a main square, a canal, or a dead end. The only real way to get around is by looking at the signs stuck on the sides of buildings reading things like "RIALTO -->" You just head that direction and trust that, since you're on an island after all, you can't wander too far without either a) finding something or b) drowning.

So, the best way to get around is on the boats. The vaporetti are great, but they only do the main drag and connect with other islands in the lagoons. For the small canals, you need either your own boat with an outboard...or a gondola. I didn't ride a gondola because I'd feel stupid sitting in one on my own (I didn't see any other single passengers) and they were generally very expensive. It was wonderful, though, to see the fabulously blinged-out gondolas float by with their dignified, graceful shape and bladed prows, as silent and regal as black swans, carrying slightly sheepish passengers and paddled along by a precariously perched man in a striped shirt.

However you get there, there are two main areas of interest: the Rialto bridge and surrounding markets, near the first major bend in the Grand Canal; and the Piazza San Marco and surrounding, including the basilica, the Doge's palace, and several museums. The two are connected by alleyways full of tourist shops (expensive clothes and handbags, jewelry, masquerade masks, trinkets, etc) swarmed by tourists. In this respect, my gloomy predictions seemed correct: like Prague, the tourists had taken over, turning a beautiful and historic place into a fakey shopping mall. But like I said, this was only half right.

The First Night
After I'd dropped my stuff off, I jumped straight back on the vaporetto to San Marco. I'd made a rule for myself the first night: no maps, no plan, no trying to find or identify anything. For the first evening, I was determined to simply experience Venice for itself.

This mainly involved getting away from the crowds, so I set off into the alleyways; whenever I found one of those "-->" signs I mentioned above, I'd pick whichever alleyway it wasn't pointing to that looked most interesting. In short order, I had no idea where I was--but that was fine, since the --> signs are everywhere. In this way, I found a wonderful place: Paolo Olbi's store.

Paolo and his sister run two stores, selling handmade books and paper. Paolo is a bookbinder who does hand-printing, leather tooling, binding, and all other kinds of beautiful, woundrous things. I couldn't just walk by, so I got sucked into the store and wandered into the room where Paolo was putting together some boxes. We tried to communicate, but he had next to no English and I next to no Italian (I tried to make it up with some halting Latin, which only sortofnotreally worked), so we stumbled along for a bit before his sister, who spoke some English, helped translate. When I told him I'd studied some bookbinding at university, he got excited and had me write down the name and address of my bookbinding teacher, telling me that he wanted to bring book arts students to his workshop to study and work under him. He was an absolutely delightful man. I hated not being able to talk to him myself. Now, at Western, my friend Dani and I often teased each other about our chosen languages--she was studying French and I German. I've never been too fond of French, but Paolo's sister spoke French as well as Italian, and right then, aesthetics of language and all that other stuff didn't matter. I'd have given a lot to have been able to speak to them in Italian or French instead of having to fumble around in English.

Anyway, I left Paolo's and broke my rules briefly to find an RFS-recommended gelateria, where I got a heaping coneful of delicious gelato before setting out again. This time I found another bookstore, tucked away down a quiet alley, that to my consternation I was never able to find again. The books were organized by topic, but that was about it; they lay on shelves, in stacks, in heaps and piles, from floor to ceiling, but the best part was that the open spaces between the walls were taken up by boats--gondolas and rowboats--all piled full of books as well. It was a glorious sight, and once again I was smarting that I couldn't speak Italian. I did buy an Agatha Christie novel--"Sparkling Cyanide", and if you just giggled, you're a Whovian. Anyway. Directed only by whim and imagination, I headed down a long, narrow, dark alleyway that deposited me, quite without warning, on a small dock that extended about ten feet into the Grand Canal just above the second bend. I took off my shoes and splashed my feet into the murky water, waved at passing boats, and soaked in the sunlight.

I wandered around until dark; I was footsore and exhausted but ridiculously happy, and this is why: I'd discovered that I'd been wrong about Venice. The bright lights and the tourist kitsch were there, yes. But just a few steps beyond--just a few turns down quiet alleyways, beckoning with an intriguing glimpse of color or the slant of the golden afternoon light--lay a city of unbelievable beauty and peacefulness. Still, deep turquoise canals, reflecting the reds and yellows of the walls above them and a splash of purple from a windowbox; the soft slapping of tiny waves against the hull of a lazily listing boat; the graceful arch of a deserted bridge illuminated by lanternlight; cobbled alleyways leading to anywhere, with a new flash of something fantastic catching your eye just around the next corner--it was utterly enchanting. It's like no other city I've ever seen. It's wonderfully safe and heart-achingly beautiful and hopelessly romantic. It's better than I could've imagined.



Some of the sights, in brief:

San Marco
I took RFS' advice and got into the basilica straightway, bypassing the long queue standing out in the rain the morning of my first full day in Venice. The interior looked rather like the aftermath of an explosion in a mosaic factory: every inch of every surface was coated in mosaics depicting biblical stories in amazing detail against a background of glittering gold, although the colors were hard to discern properly in the dimness. When we came in, our tour guide explained that this was "authentic" to how it would have originally looked with just a few candles for light. After a few minutes, though, the floodlights slowly warmed to life, and the slightly shiny shapes lurking in the murky darkness were illuminated. The whole church glowed with brilliant colors; in every direction, there was a story being told, symbolism to decipher, colors to admire. It'd be easy to put a crick in your neck in there.

There are many fascinating things in that church, but the beauty and intricacy of the mosaic decorations was far and away the best bit. The dedication and resources it must have taken are definitely worth the glittering, awe-inspiring result. I left feeling like I'd been wandering about inside a treasure chest.

Rialto Bridge
The Rialto itself is absolutely lovely. For a long time, it was the only bridge over the Grand Canal, so it's unsurprising that it's enormous, covered in shops, and swarmed by tourists. Despite the overwhelming rush of gelato-licking crowds, the bridge itself still manages to be graceful and poised. Perched at the top of the arch, you have a good view down the canal and the brightly colored, lavishly decorated houses that line it, assuming you can elbow your way past the other people trying to get a good picture.

The Doge's Palace
Felt like an enormous maze, and rightly so: the basilica was originally the Doge's private chapel. Far as I can tell, the Doge was the most powerful man in Venice, even given that he couldn't make any executive or judicial decisions on his own, couldn't recieve foreign dignitaries alone, and couldn't even leave the city without written permission. Anyway, his house is still quite impressive, looking like an overdone wedding cake perched right on the edge of the lagoon and the entrance to the main square. Inside are lots of paintings, ceilings decorated without any knowledge of the words "restraint" or "over-budget", and lots and lots of space. It's very impressive, but I can't even vaguely imagine living there.

And that's really all I have for you; I also visited the Correr Museum, but as a museum, there's not much to describe that you can't learn from a good encyclopedia. Like I said already, the real value and magic of the place was just the experience of wandering through the back streets and hidden bridges, marvelling at the history and beauty.

My last day, my plane to Liverpool wasn't scheduled to leave until past 10 pm, so I had the whole day in Venice. I got packed up and checked out of my hostel, but it turned out that I had nowhere to leave my bags for the day's wandering. This meant that I got to schlep all my stuff with me the entire day, which was frankly exhausting, especially since I was determined to follow my original plan, which was to walk basically across the city. By the time I was halfway there, I was tired and sore, and I really, really didn't want to leave that magnificent, magical city. When I stopped to order a cappuccino at a tiny little cafe in a back alleyway, the waitress noticed my distress and let me have the drink for free. It was only a Euro, but it was touching.

The flight to Liverpool was typically Ryanair: crowded, uncomfortable, and bursting with consumerism, but thankfully over quickly. Unfortunately, we were also delayed (not On Time!), so by the time I got my bags and emerged into Liverpudian air, it was a quarter past midnight and the last bus had already gone. I, somewhat nervously, took a cab into the city and finally arrived safely at my hostel, much to my relief. (The cabbie was really quite nice.) The guys behind the counter just handed me my key, telling me that they'd check me in in the morning, and I gratefully staggered up to my room and crashed.