Venice

This was my second time to Venice, but it has yet to lose its magical feeling. A fully pedestrian city, it is composed of hundreds of tiny islands connected by bridges. Venice has been sinking over the years, and it is evident as you look up and down the canals, and see the water level right at the doors leading into the houses. As you walk into some of the buildings, the first floors are abandoned, as high tides sometimes flood the streets and city. We stayed at a guesthouse situated just a couple minutes from Rialto Bridge, the main pedestrian bridge that crosses over the Grand Canal (there are only three of them). St. Mark’s Square is less than ten minutes away. We grabbed a quick lunch consisting of pizza and wandered between Rialto and St. Mark’s Square. The square is enormous, with a beautiful cathedral and tower. The square leads out to the ocean side of Venice, where you can see a few of the smaller islands outside of Venice. After a quick viewing of the cathedral, we headed to the northeast corner of Venice to catch a ferry to the island of Murano, known for its glass blowing factories. We walked around most of the island in a couple of hours, popping in and out of shops to look at glass items, much of it beautiful and handmade right on the island. The highlight of Murano was receiving a glass blowing demonstration from a local shop. Starting from what looks to be a hot molten ball, a man using a glass blowing technique and some pliers-like tool formed a small vase and also a figure of a horse. Afterwards, we took a ferry back to Venice and looked for a Venetian meal.

We had dinner at a place called Alla Botte. The menu is scribbled up on a chalkboard, but as with the rest of Italy, the waiter was more than helpful in explaining the menu options to us to the best of his ability. I ordered fresh pasta with shredded crab meat and Naber got a tuna steak accompanied by grilled vegetables, both which were excellent. For dessert, the best tiramisu I have had to date. And of course, a sufficient amount of wine which was hardly more expensive than bottled water.

We saw more of Venice itself our second day. After another quick lunch, we set off to explore more of the San Marco district of Venice, the southern section that contains St. Mark’s Square. We more or less hopped from one square to another to see all the churches and bridges of the district. The walkways are very narrow and eerily quiet, as there are actually a very low number of inhabitants of the islands part of Venice. A lot of the buildings are completely abandoned. Being off the more touristic paths makes you feel very isolated. We made our way back to St. Mark’s square to catch a vaparetto through the Grand Canal. Originally, we had wanted to take one of the many cool wooden taxi boats up and to down the canal, but the idea was quickly shot down by the 100 euro price tag associated with it. We settled for the waterbus at 6.50 euro. A bit more reasonable. Anyhow, the ride was pleasant, and we got to see all the old mansions and buildings alongside the canal. We rode the waterbus up to the train station, where we made our reservations to get to Munich. We walked along the northern section of Venice afterwards, stopping by the Ghetto Nuevo, the old Jewish ghetto, before crossing another bridge back over the Grand Canal to explore the San Polo district, or the middle area of Venice. After getting back to the Rialto Bridge, we got dinner on the go from a pizza place, which sold large slices of excellent pizza for cheap, topped off by some gelato.

I had wanted to go back to St. Mark’s to take some pictures at night, but needed to charge my camera up a bit. When I got to St. Mark’s, I noticed several large puddles of water in the square. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the water was coming up from holes in the ground. As the tide is highest at new and full moons, and there was close to a full moon out, the rising tide was higher than the lower points of St. Mark’s square, so effectively the square was being flooded. There were elevated planks and walkways lining in front of the basilica leading up to the edge of the island for people to walk. Walking up to the water, I noticed that the wakes from passing boats and waterbuses were splashing up onto the walkways, and the steps that would normally lead from a docked gondola were already covered with water. In the next two hours, almost all of the square became flooded, and the water level of the sea covered up a few feet of the walkway. It was a very cool experience to see the tide so high, and the square full of water.

Venice is a unique city to see, even though there aren’t a whole lot of exciting things to do. The city shuts down very early, so nightlife isn’t as popular here. It’s also expensive, and there is plenty of shopping on the islands. The experience of all the canals and bridges and walkways make it a worthwhile trip.