The watery city of Venice is the setting for many scenes in my novel Awakening, as well as The Time Travel Journals of Sahara Aldridge.
If you haven’t read these novels, there are no spoilers in the travel journal below. Enjoy!
Venice!
After spending a couple of days in Rome, (see my Rome travel journal here), my daughter Rachel and I head to Venice early in the morning. We catch the Venezia Express bus over a long land bridge to the edge of the floating-island city. It will be the last vehicle we see for two days. Venice is a city of tiny streets and narrow alleys, with canals criss-crossing all through it, and one “Grand Canal” snaking its way from one side to the other. The entire city is navigated solely on foot or by boat. From the bus drop off, we take the equivalent of the public bus – a waterboat – to the stop nearest our hotel, and get our first glimpse of this elegantly decaying city as we float down the start of the Grand Canal. Indeed, the city seems to be rotting into the strangely opaque blue-green water, and the facades of the grand houses show the wear of hundreds of years, but it is enchanting.
View from our room in Venice
We reach our stop in about fifteen minutes, pull our luggage through the cobbled streets and locate our hotel, which is really a small door in an even smaller alley. In fact, our room is not even in this small alley, and after check-in, the desk clerk takes us on a walk through a few more streets to the building that houses our room.
Off to sightsee
It is chilly and rainy, but we’re eager to explore. We abandon our room quickly to find San Marcos – the square that holds St. Mark’s Church, and the start of our audio tour. The rain is a steady drizzle, but we put up our hoods and get out there, determined to see as much of Venice as we can in spite of the weather. It would be nearly impossible to find our way through Venice (even with our map), without the signs on every corner that say “Per Rialto” (to the Rialto Bridge) or “Per S. Marco” (to San Marcos). The city is an absolute maze of streets and alleys, many of which dead-end into a canal. Some take you over bridges, others open onto squares that hold another half-dozen options for which way to go next. We just keep following the signs to San Marcos.
Shop windows
I find that already I cannot stop taking photos. Every turn is a discovery of some quaint alley, picturesque bridge, or colorful shop window. Venice is a city of colors. The island of Murano just across the lagoon, technically part of Venice, is famous for glass-making, and indeed Venetian and Murano glass have been prized for centuries. We see shop windows filled with this beautiful glass jewelry. Beside the glass, the shops boast collections of brightly-colored masks (a symbol of Venice and its yearly carnival), colorful pastas and candies, and baked items iced with pastels. In the dreary weather, these displays seem to glow with an inner light, and Rachel begins to laugh at all the pictures I’m taking
City of Water
Many of the narrow streets have long, low tables set up down the length of them. We soon find out why. When we reach the huge, historic square we find it partially flooded. The tables are actually walkways above the flooding, as this happens often in November
Piazza San Marcos
We make our way down through the center of the square, where it isn’t flooded. The water gets a bit deeper but we press on toward the church. Then somehow we find ourselves stranded on a fence around a huge iron column, with the water ankle deep everywhere. It’s actually quite funny, and we perch there for several minutes, unsure what to do. Finally there is nothing but to make a run for it, and the water pours into our sneakers before we reach the first platform walkway.
St. Mark’s
We take this walkway around to try to get into the church, inching along behind the crowds, but soon realize the line ahead of us is making a u-turn, as the church is apparently closed. Now what? We listen to our audio tour for a few minutes, until the guide tells us to walk in a direction that is impossible, given the flooding, and then we turn it off and decide to abandon the plan. We are wet and cold and tired, and suddenly nothing sounds better than a hot shower and a nap. Back to the hotel!
Rainy night
It is late afternoon before we venture out again. Nearly dark, and raining fairly hard. We read in the guidebook that there is a cinema nearby. We find it eventually and duck out of the rain, only to find that all the American movies they are playing are dubbed in Italian, with no subtitles. There seems to be some irony in that. So, what does one do in Venice in the rain? We have no idea, and in fact go and get my laptop and head down to the hotel’s check-in building to get a wireless signal and search the internet for advice. We find nothing. In Venice, you walk the streets, you shop, and you ride the canals. Hmmm…. I begin to despair that we are doomed to an evening in our tiny, no-so-comfortable room
Opera?
There is a poster facing me, though. An advertisement for a concert in town, baroque and opera with costumed performers. In this city that opened the first-ever opera house in 1637 and hosted such great composers, it seems like a fitting way to spend a rainy evening, though admittedly not my daughter’s first choice. She is agreeable, though, and so we find some good, hot pizza, and then head toward the concert hall. (It occurs to me that at this point that besides McNuggets, we have had only had four actual meals in Italy with lots of snacking between our travels, and those four meals have been: lasagna, pizza, pasta, pizza. Neither of us is tired of it yet!)
Aaahhh… Hot Chocolate
The performance is held in Venice’s most prestigious concert hall. We buy our tickets, then wander off to kill some time before the performance. A hot drink sounds good, and we find a bakery that serves hot chocolate. In Italy you order at the counter and then stand at the bar and drink your coffee, so we ask for some hot chocolate and stand nearby waiting for it. When it’s served, it’s no Swiss Miss. Our cups are filled with what looks to be a bar of melted dark chocolate. Amazing! We sip it slowly, thinking it might be the best thing we’ve ever tasted, then head back to the concert hall.
Opera = Love
It’s not a large place, and the seats are basically folding chairs set up on the floor, but the acoustics are fantastic, and the concert is wonderful. I love operatic music, and the soprano, baritone and tenor that perform are delightful. They and the musicians wear eighteenth-century costumes, and sitting in this old concert hall, knowing I’m in the center of Venice, I can almost pretend that it is the eighteenth century. It is mainly Puccini, Verdi, and Rosselini tonight. I absolutely love it. I take a few pics, and even use my camera to video, indulging my fondness for tenors.
Relaxing after the concert
After the concert we’re still in the mood for wandering, even though it’s late. The rain has eased, and it’s fun to see the city at night, with its rain-slicked cobblestones and murky alleys. We are soon cold again, and decide that we really must have another cup of hot chocolate! We find a sit-down café and enjoy a slightly different, but still wonderful cup. It’s been a different day than I would have planned, and greatly affected by the rainy weather, but still it’s been grand, and we return to our hotel, ready for sleep.
Wandering Venice
The sky over Venice is a bit brighter this morning, and I’m hopeful we can get in some more sightseeing before leaving after lunch for our flight to Naples. In fact, we are able to take in quite a bit. Lots more wandering, our audio tour, some shopping, a gondolier ride, a few dozen more pictures taken, and lunch in an adorable place beside the canal (pizza and ravioli, what else?).
On the Rialto Bridge
The pictures tell the tale best. Venice is a city to be seen, not read about.
Grande Canal
We finish the morning by walking back to San Marcos, then out to the canal. We are at the end of the canal here, and we get the water boat for a cruise all the way back to the beginning. We do make one stop about 2/3 of the way along, to dash to our hotel, retrieve our luggage, and dash back to the water boat before our one-hour tickets expire. Our last views of Venice are from the Grande Canal.
