Venice
September 9th
We have left the mountains behind and are travelling to Venice via Milan. Milan Centrale is a huge busy station built in a grandiose style in the Fascist era.
The local train from Lecco to Milan was a stopper with only a few passengers. The Venice train is an express that we needed a reservation for, and it’s full.
I started getting excited when we crossed the causeway from Mestre, passing a huge oil refinery. The causeway was built by the Austrians in the mid 19th century, which changed Venice forever by giving it a connection to the mainland.
After arriving at San Lucia station we tugged our cases over 7 different bridges and along numerous alleys before reaching the plain green door of our rental room. They should get some British town planners to fill in the canals with old pasta and wine bottles and make some proper roads that you can drive a Range Rover down, it would make it much more convenient for tourists.
Our room is the best so far, it’s huge and has a ceiling about 10 feet high. We share a massive Common Room with the other residents that used to be a dance studio. The accomodation is in the San Croce district, about 15 minutes from the Rialto Bridge.
After getting our act together , we walked to the Rialto Bridge and across the island to San Marco piazza. It was, of course, heaving with tourists wanding around clutching gelatos in one hand and a phone in the other. Rain was promised but didn’t arrive. All the posh cafes in the piazza have a little orchestra of 4 or 5 musicians to entertain the guests. I enjoyed their arrangements of Careless Whisper, and the Wedding Theme from the Godfather. There must be some sort of special event on, because there were several very tall glamorous women in stilettos being pursued by photographers. They all seemed to be 6 feet tall and were unfeasibly good looking in clinging dresses. Wood woof Nursey !!!(as Flashheart would say).
Venice looks great from every angle, even when buildings are decaying they look good. A bit like me.
Everyone was taking photos of their girlfriends, there was a huge amount of posing and pouting going on. It’s actually great fun to watch, God knows what they do with all the pictures.
On the way back to our AirBnB we stopped at a cafe for a Spritz and chose a Select Spritz rather than an Aperol. It was red and more bitter than Aperol, but I have a sweet tooth so it wasn’t for me.
September 10th
I slept like a log, such a relief after three nights in a Lecco oven. Our host Antonella provided breakfast, croissants in plastic wrappers and instant coffee.
In our lounge there was a Venice guide book which we borrowed, and followed one of its itineraries. The city is a maze of calles (alleys) and the book I borrowed from the Common Room was useless for navigation so we relied once more on Google Maps. The most fun was watching a narrow section of the Grand Canal near Piazza Roma where water taxis, gondolas, delivery barges, and even Amazon deliveries all fought go space perfectly. The drivers/pilots/captains are very skilled and their vessels are very manoeuvrable. They steer with one finger on the wheel and talk on radios or smoke a fag at the same time. It is a great spectacle.
There are no motorised vehicles on land, and dustmen fill barrows with trash which then gets transferred to barges. Delivery men take everything on trolleys, and that involves goong up.and down stairs at every bridge. No wonder they eat lots of pasta.
Along one canal path (fondamenta) we watched workmen repairing the stonework in front of a big house. They had a crane on a barge to lift the huge stones.
The guides walk took us to Ca’ Rezzonico, a palazzo built on the 18th century for a family of the same name. We arrived just as the weather turned nasty, so perfect timing. It is a huge mansion full of frescos, paintings and sculptures, and the place where poet Robert Browning died. My favourite works were early paintings by Canaletto, which are different in style to those in the National Gallery.
The best sculpture was an incredible veiled head of a young woman, its hard to believe it is solid marble.
Outside a considerable rainstorm had started, so when we got tired of culture, we went to the lovely cafe in the mansion and had an Aperol Spritz which came with a bag of crisps, perfecto! By the time we had finished our aperitivo the rain had almost stopped. So we rolled our trousers up a bit and skipped over the puddles. I negotiated the maze, but stopped at a gift shop to buy a stripey teeshirt like the gondolier’s wear.
At 7.30 we went for dinner at Murovenezia, just a few minutes away. I had the best seafood risotto I have ever eaten. It was creamy and perfectly cooked, full of delicious seafood that I think was lobster. A perfect end to the day
September 11th
After breakfast (croissants in plastic and instant coffee again) we had a short “domestic” about my lack of decisiveness regarding what to see today. I settled (under pressure) on the Basilico San Marco, and failed to book it on my phone. So I got the Chromebook out and finally succeeded without being beaten up.
Our booking was at 14.30, so we followed another of the walking tours in the guidebook, this time in the district of Canareggio. It was beautifully quiet in the morning, the biggest joy of Venice is the total lack of traffic. On land everything is moved by muscle power, and the porters have to shift the trolleys up and down all the steps at bridges.
Our first stop was the Ghetto, the Jewish district of Venice that gave its name to other ethnic concentrations around the world. It looked like other districts in the city, but had some bronze plaques on the wall showing some of the horrors heaped upon the community during the war. Mussolini sent 20,000 Italian Jews to German concentration camps
At 2.30 we had entry tickets to the Basilica of San Marco. It was once the private church of the Doge (Duke) of Venice, but is now the cathedral for Venice. It was started in the 11th century and has been added to over the last 1000 years. The interior is covered with golden mosaics of all the usual subjects: Jesus, Madonna (not that one), assorted regular saints and in pole position Saint Mark. Somewhere in the basilica are relics of St Mark, which must be a bit shriveled after 2,000 years.
In the museum of the basilica are four bronze horses that the Venetians stole from Constantinople during the 4th Crusade, which probably came from the Hippodrome (race track). On the balcony over the entrance of the cathedral are copies overlooking the piazza.
In the evening we went to the eastern district of Castello to a street of restaurants called Via Guiseppe Garibaldi. To keep the evening symmetrical we ate at Trattoria Garibaldi, and I had some extremely good sardines. I love oily fish.
Venice at night is just as gorgeous as Venice is the day.
