Venice

We had a lovely weekend in Venice.  Sunny with highs in the mid 60s. Took the waterbus from the airport (it's a long walk from the airport building -- I can imagine that this could be a somewhat disillusioning start to a vacation if the weather were in the 90s).  The directions our hotel gave us were to get off at the Rialto stop, go along the canal a bit, turn on Calle Bembo -- which turned out to be an extremely narrow little passageway.  I estimated it with my foot, and it was probably less than 5 feet wide.  We continued down for a while, turning into an equally small passageway that was our hotel.  It was a great introduction to the "twisty turny passages" that make up Venice.

Jay, in the narrow alley in front of our hotel.  Note the classic Venetian streetlamp.

The hotel, really a B&B, was charming, and the hotelier was a great source of recommendations  (see food, later on).  We did the obligatory touristy stuff, plus a lot of random walking, because that's what we do.  We got advance tickets to the Basilica, saving time in line (but skipped the view from the Campanile, since we didn't think it would be worth standing in line), got a great tour of the Doge's Palace from a private tour company (a way of again skipping the line, but the tour was well worth it), and an "official" tour called the Secret Itineraries tour, that gave us a backstage view of the prison, torture rooms, etc.  We saw where Casanova was housed and where he escaped from.  I actually read his (multi-volume) journals when I was about 11 (shall we say, they were interesting -- he is not graphic, but his detailed discussions of things like how to remove a nun's habit, for obvious purposes, did shock this sheltered preteen).  

I'm not much for pictures -- too busy enjoying the sites, but here are a few obligatory views

The golden staircase of the Doges Palace.  Meant to impress, and it does.

 The clocktower in St. Mark's Square

Gondoliers at night

We went to two museums -- Ca' Pesaro and the Peggy Guggenheim.  Both turned out to be a bit too modern for our tastes (we thought they had some late Impressionists), but they were more appealing than all the medieval art elsewhere.  We took a water bus down the canal to see the front facades of all the Palazzos.  We went to the Rialto market.  We didn't get out to Murano, because the glass factories we wanted to see were not working on the weekend, but we did find some high end glass shops in the Dorsoduro, so we got to see plenty of well made stuff.  We also got to see a little "acqua alta" coming through the drains (and making it hard to get around St.  Mark's Square) due to the high tide.  We did enough walking in some parts of town that we could get around with only occasional glances at the map. 

I think the part I liked best was walking around in Cannaregio early Monday morning.  Even in October, Venice is full of tourists, though I am sure it is much better than in high season. Sometimes we really couldn't move, and once Jay got jabbed by someone who wanted to go past him, enough so that his shoulder hurt a day later.  But on early Monday there were very few tourists out, you could imagine this was a "normal" town, with people going to work (all walking, of course).  We saw how trash pickup works (large carts are taken off a barge on the canal, and the trashmen walk the streets picking up the plastic bags people have left out.  The carts are designed to be able to go up and down the steps of the various bridges without spilling their load.) We found that some Italians sit outside in cafes having their croissant and coffee for breakfast, while others sit outside having somewhat different mid-morning snacks a few hours later, the latter more often with friends. (all with warm coats and scarves on, but definitely outside.)  We even saw the kinds of stores that normal people frequent -- Tabacs, butcher stores, fruit stands, dry cleaners, etc.  We never saw any of these in the tourist areas -- just restaurants and high end clothing and tchotchke shops.

I was happy to see this evidence of normalcy, because my overall impression of Venice was of an old, decaying city that is (somewhat by necessity) living in its past.  It clearly exists primarily for the tourists -- I read that something like 90% of the residents are somehow involved in the tourist trade.  It was wonderful to visit it, to see some of these amazing buildings, and to see a city that really does exist surrounded by water at every step, but I found it somewhat more sad than thrilling.

Oh, the food.  We found three different places (two on the recommendation of our hotelier) to eat Venetian food.  Not Italian, but specifically Venetian.  The first night was at Cantina Do Spade, where the building at least, not sure about the current restaurant, is historically culinarily significant.  We had sardines and polenta as a starter, I had swordfish and Jay had pasta bolognese for the main course.  Some Venetian cookies and some local dessert wine were a great ending.  You can tell these people live on fish.  The second night we went to CoVino, a tiny "modern Venetian" place that got written up in the NYTimes (the map in the article also shows Cantina Do Spade).  It's a 3 course prix fixe, which started out with the maitre d' (guy who did everything from seat to serve to clear) giving us a glass of his father's "homemade" prosecco, that was head and shoulders above any other prosecco I have ever drunk.  I had a traditional Venetian dish of bigoli (pasta) with sardines and caramelized onions that was superb.  The third night was Osteria Antico Giardinetto, which while the least amazing of the three, was still an excellent meal. The mixed seafood appetizer -- about 8 different small tastes of every kind of seafood you can imagine -- was unique.  We loved very part of it.   So while Venice is not supposed to be a particularly foodie town, we certainly did OK. Note: none of these places are in a particularly touristy part of time -- I suspect that matters.

Now I can say that I have seen Venice.  I have read Judith Martin's No Vulgar Hotel -- a very funny paean to and sort of history of Venice by the woman who writes the Miss Manners columns -- but I didn't get Venetian fever from this visit like she has.  I also read another of the Donna Leon books (Commissario Brunetti) before this trip -- Acgua Alta, by coincidence -- and she always depresses me about the corruption and the Italian "that's the way it is" attitude that she so clearly demonstrates.  Oh well, apparently I don't have the right appreciation of the finer things in life.