When the East meets the West!

3rd November 2005

Due to the thick fog and mist covering Venice (ok, who blew it this way from Wellington?!!), our flight was delayed so that by the time I set foot outside Aeroporto Marco Polo, the fog has thickened and in the process, trapped the cold air underneathe it. I shivered slightly and zipped up my Snowgum polar fleece jacket as I made my way to the bus stop. This was my first taste of European winter as until only few hours ago, I was basking in the balmy warmth of the Mediterranean sun in southern Spain.

Well, the good news so far is that my 'camping ground' is situated only like 10 minutes bus ride from the airport and it is superly cheap accomodation (bunk to myself for 20 Euros). Bad news though is that I'm not sure what quality of accomodation I'll be getting from this 'camping ground' and that it's a 30 minutes bus ride into the town centre. Oh well, the price one would pay (or not pay as this case may be) in order to keep one's visit to one of Italy's most expensive cities under one's budget! It was also funny how there's all these vast amount of travelling on land between places. You see, I have this picture that Venice is totally a floating city with canals everywhere and you will never see a single road or motor vehicle. I guess that was a bit unrealistic huh?

Anyhow, I sighed with great relief upon walking into my 'cabin'. It was very basic, but very clean, tidy and equipped with an 'ensuite' shower and toilet. It even had a heating system, excellent! One settling in, my tummy's grumbling reminded me that it's dinner time and since it was quite late and we're kinda out in the middle of nowhere, the only feasible place to go eat would be the camping ground's in-house restaurant. As you would guess, I approached this place with the trepidition of noting what the price of the meals would be, after all, with nowhere else to go, these guys got you by the throat (or tummy for that matter) and plus being such an expensive city. As I opened the menu, I was prepared that perhaps all I could afford was a bowl of soup and some bread but once again, pleasantly surprised to see most meals were "non motto costoza" (meaning not too expensive). I ordered spaghetti carbonara and just some tap water (Backpacker's meal 101). The waiter was terribly helpful and polite and another fear began to grip me. Oh darn it, I forgot to check whether I was suppose to tip the waiters in this country or not! You see, according to the Lonely Planet guide, not only is tipping inappropriate in certain circumstances, but it could be considered an insult. Like in Prague for example, to show appreciation, you mainly just complimented the cooking and leave it like that. What do I do in Italy? Luckily, I had a cunning plan. There were few other international diners and I decided I would take my cue from them (gosh, I hope they weren't planning to stay there all night!).

When my spaghetti arrived, I was kinda stunned. Visually, it looked like a plate of thin spaghetti with lots of light yellow sprinkles of what I suspect to be eggs and of course, finely grated Mozarella cheese. That was it...no bacon, no other veggies or any other ingredients. Then I remembered hearing my Italian friend Gheri mentioning before that in Italy, where of course Pasta and Pizza "apparently" originates from (don't even get me started on that argument), the locals keep it very very simple in terms of the ingredients, unlike the pastas and pizzas that migrated across to other parts of the world where the preparation and presentation were somewhat more elaborate and complex. Shrugging my shoulders, I dug in and from the first twirl of spaghetti on my fork right to the last ones, I practically didn't stop...they were superbly delicious! I suddenly felt self conscious of appearing like a silent human vacuum cleaner instead of a worldly Chiwi (chinese kiwi of course!) traveller. Of course, after sucking down my dinner so quickly, I suddenly realised I had to painfully sip on my tap water while waiting to see what other diners would do and eventually, I learnt that you do not tip in Venice (not necessarily the same all across Italy). Pheew, just as well, otherwise I wouldn't have had quite enough with me to not appear like Miss Scrooge.

I had quite a nice pleasant walk back to my cabin..noticing the rest of the campground. It was a well set up place, with trailers, tents and cabins spread out across a well kept couple of acres of park ground. After sharing a dorm room with 3 others in Barcelona, Venice cabin seemed like a heavenly upgrade.

4 November 2005

Originally, I planned to spend at least 2 days in Venice but due to the drama of missing the train in Barcelona, I decided to cut my visit short which meant that I only had one day to see all of Venice and what a day it was going to be. So I rose nice and early and headed off to wait for the bus. At the bus stop, I found two girls also on the same mission, Aussie Sara and a Canadian girl whom for the world of me, I cannot remember her name! Anyhow, we struck up a conversation which turned out to be a laugh fest as we regaled to one another our travel stories. Sarah for one, was the most fluent in Italian of us 3 as she studied it in High school. She warned us to be very careful when we request for "gondola" rides and to pronounce it clearly so as not to accidentally have it sounding like "funcola" which literally translates to the not so nice version of "piss off". We arrived at the main centre which also happened to be the Train station. Although sharing different travel guide books with different opinions on what one ought to do first in each city of interest, this time, the books were in unison in recommending that we catch the no.1 water taxi that would take us pretty much from the beginning of Canal Grande (nope, not Grand Canal, but rather Big Canal) which incidentally is shaped like the letter "S" and it would take us right to the end of the main canal route, which we would then get off and be directly at St Mark's Square (or as I've found the Italian name so commonly referred to in my audio Italian lesson, Piazza San Marco). So after buying our tickets, we all hopped on the very quickly crowded water taxi. I was lucky I was able to wriggle my way through the crowd and onto the prime position on the outside deck where I could click away happily on the camera.

As you will see on the photos taken from this taxi, the day was unfortunately rather misty and cooly damp, giving the city a feel of an English moorland or if you're an American, think a really cold New Orleans day at the swamps. Perhaps it was this hazy atmosphere that prevented me to fully appreciate the romanticism that is often linked with this city but once a while as the taxi glides through the water and the sun was able to sneak one of its rays through the thick dark mist, you would catch a glimpse of the light against the water and some of the old buildings, illuminating both the romantically hidden and the authentically pleasant..

Standing in ront of Chlesa di San Simeone Piccolo.

Gondola driver on his way to work. The gondola as you can see is narrow, made of fine wood with its head finely carved in the manner that is uniformed to most of the gondolas servicing the canals of Venice. The water taxi on the other hand are simply like small ferry boats, made of steel and not terribly exciting unfortunately.

And this is of course the gondola station. As you can see, it was indeed a misty and foggy day.

It was facinating seeing houses, offices and markets existing alongside one another in an unplanned manner, unplanned in the sense that unlike other European cities, Venice's infrastructure and city planning is governed more by the locations of the canals and the requirement of housing, offices etc as it arises as opposed to being structured like any old European city, which often started off with a small nucleus and then slowly expanding outwards. As the taxi pulls to the station at Piazza San Marco, I concluded that perhaps the buildings I saw on my way down this canal were certainly old, depleted and certainly looking like no upgrade, new paint or renovation were to be carried out, perhaps signifying the inhabitants resignment to their city's unfortunate dire future, thus confirming what we have all suspected all this time, that city of Venice is sinking and sinking quick.

Shaking the cold damp air off my shoulder together with any nonchalant thoughts that lingered like the mist over the water, I climbed out towards the Piazza San Marco to be greeted by hundreds of people walking around the square. It was not so much the large crowd that surprised me but rather the sighting of various groups of men in different kinds of uniforms either walking around, having breakfast in one of the many cafes located nearby or simply standing in some sort of formation as if practising a march. I learnt later from one of the helpful cafe owners that today was Italy's Republic day (the day Italy became a republic instead of being under the sovereign empire of Rome (and Hungary) ). A parade was to be held in honour of this day at the square. I stood for a while rejoicing in my good sense of timing and waiting for the parade to take place. After a few minutes and noticing that the wait could be longer than "a while", I decided instead to continue my sightseeing of the square and the historical Basilica San Marco which of course houses the tomb of Apostle Mark. The church, with its spangled spires, byzantine domes and seething facade of mosaics and marbles was built in the 11th century.

The Basilica San Marco from the outside. Very impressive building.
The parade would later take place with Italy's forces, army, navy, police, air force and its "caribeneri" (like military police) would converge facing the Basilica.

The parade was rather boring no thanks to the many speeches been given and funny how you don't even need to understand the language to know it was boring :-( Remembering that I had so little time and so much to see, I left the square and made my way to the famous "Ponte dei Sospiri" or Bridge of Sighs which connect the Palazzo Ducale (residence of the doges) and the old prisons. The bridge evoked romantic images probably because of its association with Casanova, a native of Venice who spent some time in the dungeon.

Do you know how hard it was to get a picture in front of this bridge? I had to push a few annoying tourists over the bridge to get a clear view..

Venice is of course famous for its Easter celebration, known as the Carnival where it would go for months with lots of mask parties being thrown and accordingly, it is to be expected that most tourist shops such as this can be found sprinkled all over the place.

If you don't recognise these, they are the highly regarded work of art, the Murano glass, originating of course from the island of Murano in Venice. I would have loved to buy a few as souvenirs for you back home but for the following:
1. Clumsy Adelina;
2. Big turtle shell bag;
3. Lots of packing and unpacking and walking through Europe;
4. All the above put together..

Although not really the famous tower of Pisa, but it was certainly of a similar design. This somewhat smaller model of the infamous building can be found in this city and it was truly a beautiful architecture to admire.

I took a picture of one of the houses by the Canal Grande just to show you how pretty some of the buildings can be but of course their beauty are often heightened by the fact they're surrounded by many old depleted buildings, decaying due to neglect and futility of the sinking city.

A view on some of the smaller canals adjascent to the main ones. I guess you can view them like a 'side street' and accordingly, you have like "vehicles" parked by your house, so this kind of canal scene is typical everywhere in Venice.

Reputed to be Venice's most famous bridge, the Ponte Rialto, one of the first few bridges built in Venice.

Besides the above, I visted many churches, many of them old and majestic but I will save them for later viewing. I have been warned that my budgetary skills will be thoroughly questioned in Venice and I could not agree more! It was rather a challenging ordeal given that you get charged not only for everything, but it is a mistylight robbery! Relieving oneself which often would be free but if not, perhaps the customary 0.50 may be required. In Venice, perhaps they wrongfully concluded that since you're about to create your own "golden arch", you should therefore be charged a good 1 to 2 Euros (that's NZ4 folks) for it. And if you're anything like me, you would almost consider investing in a portable potty.
I was this -->..<-- of launching a mini protest, carrying a loud picket sign which reads "Pee for Free in V!" Oh well..just as well I was only staying one day!

Due to the foggy weather, it was pretty much dark by 4:30pm and while I was sure I could have easily wondered around for another few hours, I was satisfied I was able to experience enough of the city to at least appreciate its beauty on the surface.I made my way back to the camp site, reflecting on the day well spent and silently noting that Venice has proved indeed the perfect host in opening the doors of Italy to me.

AO Rating: Perhaps like many other travellers, I certainly shared the frustration of attempting to navigate my way around this place due to its many canals, roads and bridges all built in a disorganised and ad hoc manner. Nevertheless, venturing boldy through the streets of Venice, sometimes on purpose and other times, by accidental purpose (meaning you didn't want to go there, but glad you did when you stumble across something interesting on that road), you certainly and easily could understand the attraction of this city...with its mysterious and misty air clinging to its ancient walls and piers, the sound of soft rippling waves can be heard as gondolas and water taxis alike glide through its waters. One can only but sigh blissfully as one turns away from yet another dead end street and make another turn right or left, half hoping that this time. this street would lead home, and half wishing that it perhaps will lead to yet another adventure inside the floating city. While I am not crazily in love with the city, I could also understand how others would write sonnets and prcolaim this to be the city of love. Perhaps they were blindfolded by the thick fog of the "Venetian Blind".