Ahhhhh…Venice, Italy

October 16, 2010 - We were up and off the ship around 8 am. Our first order of business was to take the people mover from the dock area into the station for the vaporettos to St Mark’s Square. We found the ticket office and exchanged our voucher for tickets. These boats are like city buses only on water. Everyone uses them and they are the least expensive form of transport. Our unlimited use ticket cost us about $20 US each for a 24hr period.
We boarded the vaporetto at Piazzelle’ Roma. I was rather giddy with the idea that I was at last in Venice, one of the places I had dreamed of all my life. It was almost as exciting as my first views of Rome had been.
Everything is in a state of decay. But the most poignantly beautiful decay I have ever witnessed. The foundations of all the buildings are covered with lichen and moss and barnacles. Rickety bridges spanning small canals allow residents to cross from one building to the next. Interspersed are bridges made of stone and marble. The pier posts for tying up the gondolas and innumerable boats along every walkway and side canal are rotted and worn at water level. Yet still strong enough to be of use. Walls of houses are mottled with crumbling brick and stucco as the wavelets of water rolls in marching fashion against them with each passing from the vaporettos, tronchettos, ferries and private motor boats. And yet, what you most remember is bougainvillea and ivy draped balconies, window boxes highlighting worn wooden shutters of all colors, with all manner of geraniums and other blooms spilling over the edges, iron grille work with Asian, Moorish, Egyptian, Turkish and so many other styles of architectural influence combined into an almost solid wall of structures along the water’s edges. It is difficult to tell a local business from a five star hotel, restaurant, or private home because not much is marked to help define each from its adjoined neighbor.
We finally reach the floating station at St. Mark’s and the vaporetto disgorges it’s contents of tourists from every locale imaginable, the locals on their way to work, and even school children on a cultural outing with their teachers and assistants.
Doges’ Palace We have reservations for the Secret Passages Tour at Doges’ Palace so we don’t tarry because the vaporetto ride has taken a bit longer than I had originally anticipated. We find the office easily after employing the help of a local vendor in St. Mark’s. Our Italian is very limited and they take pity on us like you would with a small child needing guidance.
Our voucher is once more exchanged for tickets and we line up on a bench to await our guide and the rest of the members of our tour. This tour is to last about 1hr 15min and is limited to 20 people with an English speaking guide. Our guides’ name is Chiesa or in rough translation Cynthia. She is very charming and her narrative helps to bring this huge cold building life. We begin by climbing two sets of stairs, each with golden opulence painted and applied to the frescoed ceilings. These are the last pictures we will be allowed to take inside the building.
To have been the center of justice this place is very austere. The offices of the Doges’ and his committees are a series of very tiny interconnected rooms. The Doges’ himself was chosen to hold office for his lifetime but he was an old man before he was ever selected and he could be impeached and removed. This did happen once. The example served well as not another Doges’ ever took advantage of his position. This sector of government investigated major crimes and through out the courtyard and building there were boxes built into the walls for the depository of complaints and accusations. The one requirement was, that if you made a complaint you were required to sign your name to it and if the complaint proved false you were then prosecuted and sentenced. So it was a very honest form of justice.
Once tried and sentenced bribery was a recurrent theme in the treatment of prisoners depending on their status in life. The more you could pay the better off you were. And in most cases the sentences were shortened for good behavior. There was a short period when torture was used to gain confessions but it fell by the wayside and the Venetians were enlightened early on that torture didn’t work in the pursuit of justice.
The most famous prisoner in the palace was Giacomo Casanova, the well known lover. He was actually imprisoned for tempting the daughter of a wealthy Venetian. The main problem was he enjoyed tempting nuns. He was sentenced to 10 years but served only a matter of months before his escape thru the rafters and out the front door the next morning. Ironically he made his escape on October 31^st. He fled to other parts of Europe for the next 10 years and actually came back to Venice and was pardoned.
He wrote an autobiography of sorts extolling all of his adventures even his escape from the prison at the Doges’ Palace. The tale was a best seller in his time, however, no one knows exactly how much is truth without embellishment.Murano, Burano, TorcelloOur next scheduled activity is a trip to the three islands in the Bay of Venice.
We made our way from St. Mark’s down to the ticket kiosk and once again exchanged our voucher for tickets. We still had over two hours before this boat would depart so we asked the agent to recommend a local spot for lunch. He sent us down a small alley/street for a E12 lunch that was very hearty local food. Two courses plus either dessert or coffee. First course (of course) was pasta. A huge serving that was a meal in itself. We are beginning to learn that in most cases we can share one lunch or dinner and it is more than we can eat. We did this last year in Rome so we should have remembered. Second course was a small platter of mixed fried fish which included shrimp and calamari. We chose coffee since we were both stuffed. I have started to collect small coffee cups from the restaurants we eat in as mementos of our travels. I have had coffee this past year in Napoli, Istanbul and Brazil on various mornings at home, so I asked to buy the small cup at our lunch in Venice. The owner and his wife thought I was just another crazy American tourist I am sure but the wife offered it to me for E1 and the husband said take it at no charge. So Tony left a E3 tip to compensate. So now I will have coffee in Venice whenever I want. Time now to walk three bridges farther down the canal and board our vaporetto for the “Three Islands.”
Murano is famous for its glass. The glass forges are numerous and the locals who live on the island are very proud of their craft as they should be. Their infamy is hundreds of years old. However, the prices are outrageous!! For a small nondescript frog or turtle the price of E38 caused us to bypass most of the items. These items were of about the same quality as the glass animals we used to get at the LA County Fair when we were children for $1. Guess simply because it is on Murano the price is inflated. I did find some small pieces of glass candy for E3 each that will make very nice ornaments for the grandchildren on the Christmas tree and serve as a memento. Our stop here was about 35 minutes and then we were off to Burano on a different vaporetto with a different guide.
The island of Burano is very picturesque with houses painted in bright almost Caribbean colors. It is famous for its handmade lace. We watched a very old woman ply her needle to make a small swatch about the size of my hand. This one piece will take up to a month to complete. I purchased a handkerchief with “R” embroidered in the corner and lace work around the edge for E7 and then an appliqué showing the canal and a gondola for E10. Next we are off to Torcello. This island was the beginning of Venice itself. The church located here is the first and oldest in Venice. There is not much else on the island now other than a few farm houses and the church and museum. The church is covered with scaffolding for renovation so maybe the next time we come we will visit again to see what progress they have made.
Just as we are ready to leave and head back to Venice it began to rain and continued so for the next day and a half, but that didn’t stop us from our next scheduled adventure… a gondola serenade.Gondola Serenade and dinnerWe venture back past St. Mark’s umbrellas in hand, night falling rapidly and with vague directions. We have over an hour to find our next destination, however everything looks completely different at night so it was a stroke of luck that I had asked for the later time of 7:30 instead of 6:30 because as we discovered “you can’t get there from here”. We had to wind over, around and through several streets, bridges, a sea of umbrellas with tourists attached looking as lost as we are, to find Santa Maria del Giglio, the location of our very damp gondola ride with serenade. There was a total of 3 gondolas on this little adventure. The first held 6 wet souls, the second 4 and the two young men who would sing for us, and ours was the third with 4 plus our gondolier.
There was one tense moment when we first drifted into the Grande Canal directly into the path of an oncoming vaporetto. Needless to say I was a bit nervous about the possibility of the gondolier yelling “abandon gondola!”. As the saints evidently knew I was repentant of any and all offenses I might have committed in my life and that my grandchildren would forever be scarred with the knowledge Nanya and Papa got run down by a vaporetto while on a gondola serenade in Venice, they went around us. But it was a close call.
Our ride and serenade lasted about 40 minutes and our young singers were excellent. As we went under little bridges the lost tourists with umbrellas would stop to take pictures and listen to the young tenor and his partner with the concertina. I encouraged them to throw money but finally realized that since they had been too cheap to pay for a gondola serenade themselves they were not going to help defray our costs. Oh well.
As luck would have it the restaurant where we were to have dinner was right next to the gondola stop. Restaurante del Giglio is a small elegant hole in the wall with low ceilings of ancient worn smooth beams, offered us another 2 course meal that began with (of all things) pasta for me, lasagna for Tony. We ordered a small carafe of wine and water. Good wine by the way. Second course for me was grilled sole and for Tony scaloppini, both were excellent. And I finally had gelato. OMG!!! Lemon gelato is to die for!!!
We finished off the wine and headed around the corner to hop the vaporetto back to Piazzelle’ Roma and our ship. We finally arrived back in our cabin around 10:30 pm and fell into bed exhausted but very satisfied with ourselves for conquering Venice on our own.
We left the following day at noon headed for Dubrovnik, Croatia. I have to admit I found myself thinking of the third Indiana Jones movie where they are racing around the Grande Canal and out into the Bay of Venice when we started our departure at the end of our short sojourn. And I caught myself repeating Indy’s comment of “Ahhhhh…Venice” with a quirky knowing smile on my face. Ahhhhh…Venice.