Venice in Winter 1

My first visit to Venice was in the spring.  Since then Frieda and I have visited 4 times, twice in the spring and twice in the fall, and in all of them the weather was pretty good, except for the first time, in the fall, when it was pouring and we had a taste of acqua alta (but that didn’t dampen her enthusiasm for the city).  So our recent visit was the first in winter, and it just happened to coincide with the worst cold snap in Venice in nearly 30 years, with ice in the canals, snow, and temps well below freezing. 

The concept of the trip was to spend a week in Venice during the lowest season, when it would be as empty of tourists as it ever is, and then get a 3-day taste of Carnevale at the end.  When Frieda first suggested it, I was skeptical, but I checked the average temps and they were only about 20 degrees below what we were used to in California, so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad.  Boy, was I wrong.  Instead we got temps 40 degrees below our norm.  At the airport the regular Alilaguna boat to the city couldn’t get up to the dock because of the ice, so we had to take a bigger boat over to the Colonna stop on Murano and catch another from there into the city.  The cold was numbing.  It seemed we had landed in Iceland instead of Venice.  (Americans, myself included, tend to underestimate just how far north Europe is.  Venice is at the approximate latitude of Portland, Oregon.) 

From our apartment

We’d rented an apartment in Cannaregio, a quiet, middle-class residential area on the northeast side of town, away from the maddening crowds, the same one we’d had on an earlier visit.  We got there around 5:30 Saturday evening, dropped off our luggage, took a quick inventory of the kitchen supplies, and then headed north across 3 bridges, 2 of wood, 1 of metal, over ice-clogged canals to the Billa supermarket.  Unlike the more permanent stone bridges, the wood and metal ones have gaps between the steps through which you can look down at the swirling water below.  In films shot in Venice, falling into a canal usually has a comic note.  Of course, we know the water isn’t the cleanest and if you were to swallow any it could have ill effects.  We also know that if you were to drop anything into a canal—your sunglasses, digital camera, wallet—you can count on it being gone forever.  But in this season the canals took on a more sinister aspect.  If your heart didn’t stop immediately from the shock of hitting that freezing water, you would certainly be quickly dragged down by the weight of the sodden layers of clothing you were swaddled in.  In other words, in this season, falling into a canal meant almost certain death.  And I thought about that whilst crossing those bridges and looking down at the dark, icy water through the gaps between the steps. 

Back at the apartment we closed the shutters and cranked the heater.  Fortunately it had a good one, so we thawed out, made some dinner and polished off a bottle of Sangiovese.  Unpacking, Frieda realized she’d forgotten her skinny jeans, so that set the agenda for the morning: we would have to head over to Campo San Lucas where there was an H&M (sort of like Ross in California) so she could buy another pair. 

Free food & wine

On the way, along the Fondamenta de Cannaregio, we found ourselves in a crowd of people eating off plastic plates and sipping wine from plastic cups.  It turned out the largesse was a preview of Carnevale.  We’d already had breakfast at the apartment, but sampled some of the wine at least, and it and the bonhomie of the crowd cheered us up, despite the frigid temps. 

After scoring a pair of  black jeans for Frieda we crossed the Rialto bridge into the neighborhood of some of our favorite little eateries, among them Do Spade, a place found by accident on a previous visit, where we had a couple glasses of the house white (each) and some cicchetti: sardines, calamari, prawns, croquettes, and octopus.  On the way back to the apartment along the Strada Nuova, a walking thoroughfare created in the 19^th century by filling in a canal, we stopped at a café for espressos and fritelli, pastries like cream puffs made for Carnevale.  Back at the apartment we checked the 10-day forecast on the iPad, but there was no good news for us.  The last time we stayed in Cannaregio we’d had a romantic dinner at a place nearby called Al Bacco where we’d had a table on the edge of the canal and my spaghetti al vongole (with clams) had been delicious.  Obviously, there was no question of dining al fresco this time, but we still wanted to go back there, and it turned out the vongole was still excellent.  But after dinner Frieda needed to use the rest room and discovered she had to go outside to get to it, and it was unheated, which was a thrill; nothing like getting bare-assed in sub-20 degree weather to make you appreciate central heating.  We began to get the impression the Venetians themselves weren’t prepared for this cold. 

From Ca' d'Oro

The next day, having learned our lesson, we bundled up.  I put on underwear, long thermal underwear, sweat pants, and jeans on the bottom.  On the top, a tee shirt, a long-sleeved thermal undershirt, a long-sleeved tee-shirt, a crew-neck wool sweater, a turtle-neck zip-up wool sweater, and my heaviest winter coat.  On my feet, two pairs of socks, one cotton, one wool, and boots.  Plus my Russian hat with ear flaps.  Then we set off for Ca d’Oro, a beautiful Venetian-Gothic palace on the Grand Canal that is now an art museum.  It was a short walk down the Strada Nuova, which provides relatively easy access from northern Canneregio to the Rialto area.  We had little interest in the art on display, but the view of the Grand Canal from the terrace is superb.  Then we went on to Rialto and crossed to our usual stomping grounds in San Polo.  We first went to Do Mori.  I love the house white there, but Frieda thought the cicchetti looked stale and picked over, so we moved on down the street to another place we’d visited before called Osteria alla Ciurma where, on our last visit, we’d had excellent bacala mantecato (a paste made of cod and garlic, served on bread) and it didn’t disappoint this time.  To wash it down we had a couple of spritzes, a popular Venetian drink made of prosecco and either Campari or Aperol.  We prefer Aperol, it’s not as bitter as Campari.  Then we trotted back to Do Spade for sardines and scampi.  We’d intended to visit Ca’ Pessaro, a little modern art museum (we’d been to the excellent Peggy Guggenheim museum on an earlier visit), and Palazzo Mocenigo, the costume museum, but it turned out they were both closed on Mondays, so we wandered northwest through areas new to us in Santa Croce, crossed the bridge to the train station and then strolled down Rio de Spagna, picking up pastries and pasta sauce along the way.  A wine seller on the Fondamenta de Cannaregio, who filled a plastic bottle with red for us, said he hadn’t seen so much ice in the canals since 1985.  We stayed in for the evening, not up for braving the cold after dark which even our many layers could not fend off.