Venice

Venice is the most beautiful city in the world.  That’s a bold statement, I know, but what’s the alternative?  Paris?  San Francisco?  Barcelona?  These cities have their charms, without doubt, but Venice is on a whole other level of pulchritude.  If I were to attempt to assemble a list of the top ten most beautiful cities, at least 3, and maybe 4 would be in Italy (Rome, Florence, maybe Sienna), but Venice is a cut above the rest.  In the 1^st place, it’s utterly unique.  To get around, you walk or catch a boat.  Aside from the Lido, there’s no wheeled transport.  That, in itself, is mind-blowing.  Then there’s the architecture, a genre unto itself.  Then there’s the history.  In the States we think it something extraordinary if someone is living in a 100–year-old house, but in Venice people are still living in 500-year-old houses.  Venice was founded in 421.  Lining the Grand Canal are mansions that were there before the United States was born. 

People complain about the tourists.  Because it’s the most beautiful city in the world, 150,000 people visit every day.  But the tourists don’t bother me much.  They’re just another aspect of the city, and add vibrancy and an international flavor.  And they’re mostly concentrated around St. Marks Square (Piazza San Marco), the Rialto Bridge, and the train station.  As you venture away from these hubs, they quickly thin out.  And many of them, the day trippers and cruisers, leave in the early evening.

Via Garibaldi

For this short visit (my 4^th) we stayed in the Castello area on the eastern side of town, in an apartment just off Via Garibaldi, a broad shopping street that cuts diagonally away from the Canale di San Marco (where the Canal Grande and the Canale della Giudecca come together) just east of the Arsenale vaporetto stop.  (The vaporetto is the water bus that forms the backbone of Venetian transportation.)  This mostly residential area was one I had only slightly explored before.  Staying in a different neighborhood each time you visit a city is a good way of gradually getting to know it.  On our last visit we got an apartment in the sestiere (district) of Canneregio, a middle class residential area on the north side, a long way from here.  Castello offered the advantage of being close to St. Marks, but not too close.    

Arsenale on Riva Schiavone

Because the Arsenale stop is at the opposite end of the Grand Canal from the train station, we took the boat from the airport, the first time I’ve done that.  I thought it would be faster than taking a bus to the station and then catching a vaporetto all the way down the Grand Canal, but I don’t know if it was.  The ride seemed to go on forever, but that could be just because I’d gotten on the plane at 7 PM after having been up since 7 AM and it was now noon of the following day, California time, (although dark in Venice), and I got only a couple hours sleep on the plane.  Fortunately there was a trattoria next to the apartment that, although they were packing up, agreed to serve us, so I got some spaghetti alla vongole (clams) and my wife had pizza crudi, which provoked the question: why is the prosciutto you get in the States stringy and tough while the stuff you get in Italy melts in your mouth?  At least we were now convinced that we were, indeed, back in Italy. 

In the morning my wife went grocery shopping at the little shops along the Via Garibaldi and when she returned we had breakfast on our terrace (renting an apartment enables you to save some money by eating in some of the time), then strolled over to St. Marks to say hello to it.  It has become like an old friend.  There was a lot of scaffolding around the perimeter, the worst being a hideous barrier around the base of the Campanile.  Apparently they are strengthening the foundation.  Also there was an unsightly wrap around the Bridge of Sighs advertising Toyota.  It costs a lot to maintain this city and they’re looking for money wherever they can find it.  We wormed our way through the hordes jamming the narrow streets to the Rialto Bridge, crossed it, and found the wine bar Do Mori, where we had some cicchetti (Italian tapas) and the house white, utterly delicious, for 2 euro apiece.  Then, just for the hell of it, we went next door to another place where we had some more house white (not as good as the wine at Do Mori) and some excellent baccala mantecato (a paste, made from salted cod, olive oil, and garlic, spread on toast).  Riding a buzz from the wine, we walked northeast and took a traghetto (a gondola that takes you across the Grand Canal for half a euro) to Canneregio (our old neighborhood) to do some shopping along the Strada Nova, another broad shopping street like Via Garibaldi, where I bought my wife a purple belt made of ostrich leather.    

The band at Florian

After dinner we strolled down to St. Marks to listen to the dueling bands at 2 cafes on opposite sides, Florian and Lavena.  These bands are essentially the same, consisting of a piano, a stand-up bass, a clarinet, a violin, and an accordion.  They play show tunes, tangos, polkas, and, while we were there, Boléro.  The crowd tends to wander back and forth, depending on which tune strikes their fancy.  Instead of walking along the Riva to get home, we took the streets behind the basilica and, of course, got lost.  Roaming through the maze of Venetian streets at night is a bit eerie.  You come across cafes lit up and full of laughing people, and then you find yourself in dark, narrow, deserted passageways that are a little spooky.  Sometimes they dead-end into a building or the dark water of a narrow canal and you have to backtrack.  Because of the constant twists and turns it’s hard to keep your bearings but, of course, that’s what makes it fun.  Eventually, we emerged safely onto Riva Schiavone. 

Crossing the Ponte de le Tette

The next day we took the express vaporetto up the Canale della Giudecca to the train station to buy tickets to Milan and Varenna, on Lake Como, where we were next headed. (The trains in Italy are mostly excellent and will take you almost anywhere you want to go.) Then we crossed the Ponte dei Scalzi and wandered through San Polo. We’ve seen the main tourist sites so what I now like to do in Venice is just amble around discovering fabulous new vistas and sampling unknown eateries. I wanted to visit a small neighborhood called the Carampane which was once the red light district but now is a quiet residential area in San Polo. It’s the only place I have found in Venice, so far, where a bridge, Ponte de le Tette (the Bridge of Tits) leads directly into the side of a building. It’s called the Bridge of Tits because the prostitutes used to lean out of the windows of the building. When you crossed the bridge, their bare breasts were hanging in front of you like ripe fruit.

The traghetto stop at San Silvestre

From there we picked our way through the tangled streets, heading toward the traghetto stop. Some of the streets toward the end tunneled under buildings, and that made it all the more stunning and magical when we suddenly emerged into the sunny vista of the Grand Canal near San Silvestre, with gondolas parked along it and grand mansions on the opposite side. I had started Donna Leon’s first novel, Death at La Fenice the night before, so I wanted to see the opera house of the title. Donna Leon is an American who has written a series of detective novels set in Venice that are fun if you know and love the city. She’s quite well-known in Europe and there are tours organized around her books. La Fenice is in the center of San Marco, and from there we made our way down to the Grand Canal and took a traghetto to Dorsoduro, yet another sestiere, so by the time we eventually got home for dinner, our feet were throbbing.

Consequently, our last day we tried to take it easy with a stroll to San Elena, a district very different from the Venice we had been exploring: no tourists, no canals. Instead we found quiet parks, kids, playgrounds, and old people. It was a respite from the hustle and bustle of the city. We sat for a time resting our sore feet at an outdoor café on the Riva Shiavone, drinking beer and eating potato chips and olives, and watching the boats and the people passing. In the evening we went to Florian to listen to the music and, for the first time, actually sat down and ordered. I had a white wine and Frieda had an espresso and the bill was 30 euro (more than $40).

In the morning we caught the train to Milan. As always when I visit Venice, I was reluctant to leave. Every visit I make new discoveries and am enchanted all over again by this ravishing city.