Round The World: Venice - city of water

First view of Venice

Arriving in Venice is a bit like arriving in an impossible dream world from centuries ago. It is the most beautiful, impractical, dramatic, water-logged, alley bending, constantly getting lost city I have ever been in.

My hostel was much better in Venice. I was sharing with 3 other people. Our room was decorated with bright purple walls with pictures of roses, babies and Marilyn Monroe. It had a bright purple plastic glass chandellier in the room too. Rather bizarre. But it was clean and no complaints.

My hostel - talented taste!

Venice is notorious for the tons of tourists and getting lost in the alley-ways (many of which I am sure have never been plotted on any map.) It’s a very common sight to come across clumps of tourists on top of bridges who (after taking photos from every possible angle) pull out a really scrunched up map and spend the next 5 minutes animatedly debating where they are with a fellow traveller (lots of pointing and muttering involved, half walking one way and then back tracking).

Alternatively you also get those tourists that just go for it and walk about the alley-ways with a constant look of puzzlement slightly tinged with hopefulness that they may actually recognise the next street corner. The trouble is that the many bridges start looking alike after a while and tiny alleys opening out into church squares with 4 other joining streets to choose from does not make it easier. First impression is that you can just follow the river, but that would imply that there is a road that runs along the river’s edge which is mostly not the case.

View from Rialto Bridge

Some tourists try to be smart and actually bother the local shop owners and bar tenders to point out where they should be going. For that reason alone you can understand why over 1000 Venetians a year are leaving the city, making way for more tourists. (Extremely high cost of living, unfriendly stairs over every bridge and complete impracticality for the modern era may also have a bit to do with that though. There are no cars in Venice and a toddler in a pram would be a major issue as there are a lot of bridges, with a lot of stairs.)

Rialto Bridge

I think that I only asked directions from people about 3 times while in the city which I’m actually pretty proud of – it could have been a lot worse. Luckily, when I learnt to look up, I found that if you can get into the general area of a big tourist sight there are signs pointing the direction that you should take to see the particular sight. So base yourself around those big signposts and don’t you dare miss an arrow once found, else you may never find it again.

View at night

One time I asked directions of a shop to try ensure that I could find it again (it had some beautiful stuff in it). The lady looked at my map and laughed at me. “You want me to tell you where we are in Venice?” I was a bit startled that not even the person working there really knew. She ended up pointing to two different church squares marked on the map. “We’re either here or here”, she said, smiling at me as if this was the most useful piece of information I had been given all day. So at that point I virtually gave up knowing where I was and tended to go with the general gist of it. I was either here, here or here but in the vague vicinity of this area.

Masks

Ice cream and masks on the streets of Venice

When you think of Venice you think of gondolas and romance and tiny bridges and canals and grand houses that border on canals. Well, it’s all true. It’s all there and I was really excited to arrive in this most written about, most romantic of cities. A number of travellers have asked me what my impression of Venice was. It’s a bit hard to pin down. I would say – and this is purely an impression so don’t get mad – Venice is a city that is desperately trying to keep alive a culture and time that died a long time ago. It’s a little like a puppet show. It’s a dead city trying to remember its hay-day as this is all that it has left. People drive gondolas and perform theatre and play in orchestras at cafes on the main square to keep alive the idea of Venice for tourists. I found the city rather depressing in this way. Beautiful – I loved it – but sad because it will never be what it once was. It is now becoming an amusement park for tourists. You can still catch glimpses of old Venice through stories though.

St Marco square

I generally pitch up in a city with no idea about its history or anything much of significance about it. So it’s always fun trying to find out what there is to do and the history of the place. One of my room-mates suggested a free audio guide for Venice – the Rick Steve’s audio tour, which (after he’s promoted his book) is rather good. I listened to the one about the Grand Canal which he had timed to the water-busses (local transport, like a bus but on water). It enabled you to at least imagine what the city used to be like with palaces on along the canals. The bottom floor of most palaces was given over to trade and possible flooding and the top floors were a lavish place where the rich lived.

Basilica di San Marco

The Doge's palace

I was finding it a little hard to find out about the history of this area but I then spotted a sign next to the road about a play in English telling the history of Venice on that night. I even managed to pull off a student discount only for those under 26 by admitting to the lady at the desk that I was 27 and not a student currently but I was from South Africa and on a gap year and that I did study last year and earlier this year and that I really wanted to see it but didn’t have the money to splurge on the show. Well, she graciously allowed me in as a student (halved the price) and I got to see a play. I love plays.

View from the palace

So, there were 4 people performing and they used changes of costume and projections on the walls and ceiling to tell the story of Venice.

The golden staircase in the palace

I have to say that I really enjoyed this and as simple and tourist geared as it was it was the highlight of my Venice trip. There were so many stories that they recounted, from the debauchery that was hidden behind masks, to the secret police, to the special post-box in the palace that you could slip a letter into, secretly accusing a person of a crime. In this way one of their Doge’s was found guilty and decapitated (All the Doge's had their faces painted all the walls of the great hall in the palace, but his face was painted out and instead a painting of a black cloak took his place. A reminder of the consequence of treachery).

I think one of my favourite stories was how Venice was founded and the story of Basilica di San Marco (the Church of St Mark). They told the story about how the Venetians snuck into Alexandria to steal the bones of St Mark. They succeeded one “dark and stormy night” and arrived back in Venice in triumph carrying the bones. At one point the bones became too heavy to carry and it was on that spot that the Doge of the day promised that they would build a church. And so that is where the Basilica di San Marco now stands. This made Venice second only in importance to St Peter’s in Rome.

Tourists taking photos of the Bridge of Sighs

After the performance I wondered into St Marco square where there are a number of cafes, each with an orchestra. These really draw the crowds. The orchestras "duel" with each other for the crowd's attention and you can hear some of the real classics if you hang around the outskirts for a while. This was a hint of the grandure of the old days in Venice. Music, dance, wine and good times all in the grandure of St Marco square.

The Bridge of Sighs

Alley ways of Venice

I loved the narrow alleys of Venice and as frustrating as getting lost is – (more than once I turned down an alley that led to a dead-end) it was truly beautiful. I spent an afternoon looking around various museums including the Doge’s palace, unfortunately the audio guide of the palace was rather on the boring side and there were plenty more Japanese tour groups to dodge in order to actually see anything.

Alley ways and canals

I’m starting to find that the opulence presented and amazing artefacts and architecture in all the palaces and castles and cathedrals is all merging in one big clump of gold. It was at this point that I decided not to over load the trip with museums – one or two but I’m not sitting through tons of information I’m only going to forget. However, I forgot this promise to myself as soon as I hit Rome.

The view near my digs

Venice also had lots of people from Senegal trying to sell hand-bags and I would guess Turkish men trying to sell toys that were like jelly balls and splodged on the floor or at night lighted toy parachute-people that you could catapult up into the sky and they would come down spinning in a stream of coloured light. A rather pretty sight actually if you can get past the hawkers. The historic buildings and the lighted toys 10 meters in the air gliding down to earth.

Other notible items on sale was Murano glass (famous and as soon as you see it you know why), the normal shot glasses and T-shirts and of course masks. There were such stunning masks on display all colours and shapes and intricutly made. Obviously based in the masks used by the Venetians to hide their identity so that they could do whatever they wanted without anyone knowing who they were. Also there were a number of classical music shows and I happened accross a free museum that had instruments on display from 1400 and 1700.

Murano glass

There are lots of statues of winged lions in Venice – maybe something to do with St Mark, the lion. Also there are statues representing the sea and Neptune and the relationship that Venice has with the sea. I was told by my free audio guide that the square where the palace and church is floods when there is an especially high tide. The ground has actually been raised in order to prevent such flooding as much as possible. You can see this by the pillars around the palace looking as if they don’t have a base. Meanwhile, the base was just covered by the additional flooring.

The lion of Venice

The columns around the palace have little figurines carved into them at the top and as you walk around you can see the stories of the people. Venetians had a number of problems with plague and that becomes evident when you look at the columns too.

So, Venice is a very interesting city and I really enjoyed it, overwhelming number of tourists and all.