charismatic megafauna since 1985

Venice

(posted from Florence. Internet in Venice was too expensive. ( 2.50 for 15 minutes!))

Someone at the hostel in Gimmelwald told me that Venice was overrated. They were right.

I had a bad experience right off the bat. Neither of the tourist information people at the booths were helpful. One just told me to go to the other booth, the other just gave me a book of hostels and hotels and said “go find them yourself.” Luckily there was a man around who pointed out a cheap hostel and told me how to find it.

After dropping my stuff off (I could pick my key up around 1700) I wandered out into Venice. Almost immediately I got lost, which was okay because that was one of the things people have told me to do. It’s pretty easy to do in Venice; none of the streets or addresses make any sense. Luckily I was going to St. Mark’s Square which is very touristy and hence has signs all over the place.

I didn’t know anything about Venice so I wasn’t prepared for St. Mark’s Basilica. It’s a crazy mix of various architectural styles from back when Venice was a seat of world power. I wandered around the square for a while, listening to Rick Steves (that guy again?) tell me about what I was looking at. He’s got a series of audio tour podcasts for Italy: St. Mark’s Square, St. Mark’s Basilica, Frari Church and a Grand Canal cruise.

I imagine I would have gotten weird looks from people, wandering around staring up at everything, if anyone around hadn’t been doing the same thing. The square (and surrounding buildings) were the most tourist-filled places I’ve been on my trip. It didn’t feel off-season to me; I’d hate to be there in the summer.

As I finished the audio tour of the square it was starting to rain and I made my way into the Basilica to do another audio tour. The outside of the building is impressive with it’s arches, onion domes, golden mosaics and bronze horses. The inside is almost entirely covered in golden mosaics. With or without the floodlights it positively glows.

By the time I finished walking around the Basilica it had stopped raining outside. The weather was still grey but at least I wouldn’t have to walk around in the rain. The next stop on my tour was across town at the Frari Church. From the outside, it doesn’t look like much. From the inside, it’s a crazy antique monument gallery. The church is in the shape of a T, with the altar along the top of the T. On that side are altar pieces painted by some of the Venetian masters in their original settings. They were painted to be in those places in that church. During most of my trip I’ve been seeing art in museums. It’s a very different experience seeing them where they were meant to be. Along the long part of the T are tombs, although they look more like giant monuments. One is reminiscent of a pyramid, with statues in mourning walking up to the entrance. Another has giant slaves tipping over jugs of something in black and white stone. (marble?)

I wandered around for a while after that, making my way to the Ca’Rezzonico and the Accademia. Unfortunately, Tuesdays are bad days for museums in Venice. Ca’Rezzonico was closed for the day and the Accademia had closed at 1400. Luckily for me there was a pizza place close by so I stopped in and had some lunch: a mushroom pizza. Apparently pizza isn’t too bad in Venice: I got a medium pizza for 5.50 there. I also got to watch something that I hadn’t seen before in a restaurant, certainly not one as small as this place. I got to watch my pizza being made.

He pulled out a tray with several lumps of dough and tossed it carelessly onto a metal table with flour on it. After kneading into the pizza shape (i.e. round), he poured the sauce on, the cheese and the topping. To get the pizza onto the paddle, he got a bit of flour on the paddle and proceeded, slowly but deliberately, to force the paddle under the pizza. Getting it off and into the over wasn’t a problem, and halfway through its cooking he spun it around with another (metal, this time) paddle. Five or six minutes later (it’s a thin crust) the pizza came out, piping hot for my consumption.

Okay, maybe that’s not that interesting. But after walking around for 6 hours with nothing for breakfast except two rolls with jelly and butter with a cup of coffee, anything would be delicious. This homemade (close enough) pizza just hit the spot.

After getting my energy back, I strolled back to St. Mark’s Square. At the end of the square away from the Basilica is the Correr Museum, along with the Bibliotek Nationale Marciana and another museum I can’t remember the name of. I spent a couple hours walking around looking at all the paintings (not in their original places) and sculptures. I was excited about the Bibliotek, but it turned out to be just two rooms at the back. There were some big globes and a strange art exhibit, but I wasn’t impressed.

I walked back to my hostel to pick up my keys and move my stuff in. Even though the hostel didn’t have a kitchen, I still picked up some groceries to make sandwiches for lunch and dinner since I didn’t want to pay a lot of money for dinner. Most of the places I saw started at 10 and went up from there. I got a loaf of bread, cheese, a pepper, more apples, yogurt and a bottle of wine, food for a whole day, for the same amount.

After dinner, I went back down to St. Mark’s Square to hear the dueling orchestras. Apparently the cafés on the square have orchestras that play in the evenings to attract customers. I wasn’t planning on being a customer but I did want to hear the orchestras, since they place outside. I guess it was too cold, or off-season, but regardless of the reason they weren’t playing.

I started my second day with a trip down the Grand Canal. I didn’t take a gondola since that would have blown my budget, but instead a vaporetto, the public transportation of Venice. Tickets are expensive too, but only because they gouge tourists. It’s surprised how explicit they are about it. A ticket for a local (since they’ve got passes) are 1.50. A ticket for a tourist is 6.50. I wish Washington, D.C. did that; that might keep them from raising ticket prices all the time.

There are two vaporetto (vaporetti?) which go from the train station to St. Mark’s Square: #1 and #82. #82 is the fast one, which wouldn’t give me a chance to listen to my last audio tour, so I took the slow one. There weren’t too many people at 815, so I got to sit in the front and get good views (and pictures, I hope) of everything.

My ticket from the Correr Museum also got me into the Doge’s Palace, also on St. Mark’s Square, so I went there right as it opened to beat the lines of tourists. There’s a lot of art there too, but mostly I looked at the building itself. There’s gold everywhere (at least gilt) and the ceilings and walls are all intricately carved. The Doge was the elected ruler of Venice back in the day. His power was mostly ceremonial, but like the Queen of England today everyone made a big deal out of him. Interesting side note: only the Doge’s Palace could be called a palace; that’s why lots other buildings are Ca’whatevers when they’d have been palaces anywhere else.

Connected to the Doge’s Palace are the institutional rooms of Venice. These were the places where various councils, along with the Senate, met. They’re connected to the Doge’s Palace so that he can get there easily, like the Residence being connected to the West Wing of the White House. One room in particular, for meetings of the entire ruling council (say for electing a new Doge) is massive. It’s about a quarter of a football field and could hold 2,600 people. The rows of benches were set up back to back; the descriptions didn’t mention how the people who had to face backwards felt about that. There are also prisons right next door, but they’re only interesting because you get to walk across the Bridge of Sighs, where prisoners walked after being convicted while being taken to prison. Legend has it that they walked across, looking for the last time out at the lagoon, and sighed.

When I got out of prison, the square was flooded. One of the disadvantages of living right about sea level is that sea level changes and sometimes the sea becomes higher than ground. This is what’s know in the biz as a ‘flood’. Venice has solved this problem not by moving away from places that flood really easily, but instead by having platforms that can be put out allowing people to walk higher than the water again. I’m not sure they have a plan in place for if the water gets higher than the platforms again, but I imagine that any plan for that involves fleeing in the city.

Right next to the Basilica and the Doge’s Palace is the Campanille. It’s a giant bell tower that fell down a while ago but got put back together. It’s currently undergoing more repairs, but you can still go most of the way to the top via elevator. It’s a very pretty view from there; you can look out over most of Venice, as well as all the tourists at the bottom trying to file along on the 1.5m-wide platforms. I waited for a while to see if the bells would ring while I was up there, but they didn’t move an inch. I think the bells that ring must be higher up that we were allowed to go.

My only stops for the afternoon were a couple of art museums: the Accademia (best art museum in Venice) and the Peggy Guggenheim collection in her former home (modern art). The Accademia was nice but having seen lots of great art, even in other places in Venice, made me a little jaded about the whole thing. To be honest, I’m getting pretty jaded about museums in general at this point. I’m glad that I’ve got the Cinque Terre coming up soon, where I can do nothing except walk around and read my books (I’m in the middle of 3 now, after I traded Ghostwritten for The Hitchhikers’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Four and started reading it immediately).

The Guggenheim was very cool, though. There are pieces from many of the modern greats like Picasso, Miró and Dali as well as others whose names I can’t remember as I type on the train. Even if I don’t understand it as much, I like modern art much more than older art.

I finished up with that around 1700. Starving, I went back to the hostel to eat dinner. Even after three sandwiches consisting of the rest of the pepper, the rest of the cheese and some jelly, I was still a bit hungry. Eventually I went out and grabbed a couple slices of pizza; that really hit the spot.