Classic Venice

Our apartment in Venice overlooked Piazza San Marco, an appropriate place to start when searching for classic Venice. Unfortunately, the actual population of Venice continues to decline, as it becomes more predominantly a tourist destination rather than a living city (see Betsy's post below: The Weight of Venice). The reason for this steady influx of travelers can be seen in some of the pictures below. I was rather ambivalent about these sites, feeling that they had somehow been co-opted by tourism and no longer really belonged to Venice. Hence the traveler's unenviable search for the "back door." Certainly these sights were impressive, and I'm not such a purist that something has to be "untouched" or "original" to be valuable to me. But I was never hit by a sense of cultural gravity as I was in other places I've visited (like Machu Picchu -- though the epitome of an over-visited cultural site, it still managed to exercise a spell on me). For that reason, traveling to Slovenia after Venice, where people still work the farms (even the one where we were staying) had a more authentic feel and was a refreshing glimpse into a living culture. I hope, however, that I'm not so aloof that I don't recognize some of the more striking elements of Venetian culture.

Saint Mark's Basilica forms one boundary of St. Mark's Square, and is where we went to a midnight service on Christmas Eve.

The Campanile, also in St. Mark's Square, dominates the Venetian skyline.

Though relatively traffic-free in December, the Grand Canal is the main thoroughfare for the city.

This row of homes on the south lagoon was particularly striking. The second one from the left was our favorite.

Venetian architecture is particularly compelling in the delicately curved windows.

How would you like this for a front porch?

The Weight of Venice

This vacation presented a heavy contrast: the historical splendor of Venice, the lively lovely mountain culture of Slovenia. I found our transition to the mountains a tremendous relief, and just as I was mulling over why that might be, I came across the following passage from one of Rainer Maria Rilke's letters. Though it's about Rome, and written over one hundred years ago, this idea of the "tiny present" living on the relic of a vast past expresses some of the weight I felt in visiting Venice, a city now fighting its own floodwaters mainly for the sake of tourism.

"In addition, Rome (if one has not yet become acquainted with it) makes one feel stifled with sadness for the first few days: through the gloomy and lifeless museum-atmosphere that it exhales, through the abundance of its pasts, which are brought forth and laboriously held up (pasts on which a tiny present subsists), through the terrible overvaluing, sustained by scholars and philologists and imitated by the ordinary tourist in Italy, of all these disfigured and decaying Things, which, after all, are essentially nothing more than the accidental remains from another time and from a life that is not and should not be ours."

Yet I don't want to say Venice is a dead city, or that I didn't find it magical when the sun hit the reds and oranges of the lanes and the gondolas bobbed over their mirror images in the water. But it was strange living for five days in a city most tourists visit only for one or two, taking photos in a line of cameras, realizing that a gondola ride is now a hundred dollar affair instead of a means of transportation. The tales of history I read in Jan Morris's Venice stayed with me as we explored, reminding me of a Venice that once ruled an empire instead of an industry.

Rilke eventually found his beauty in Rome, but he had to shake away history first.

"...but there is much beauty here, because everywhere there is much beauty. Waters infinitely full of life move along the ancient aqueducts into the great city and dance in the many city squares over white basins of stone and spread out in large, spacious pools and murmur by day and lift up their murmuring to the night, which is vast here and starry and soft with winds."

In Venice, the night is full of high water and sirens, but soft light and kind citizens hold up the weight of history as best they can.

Of Freezing Nights and Pine Nut Gelato

Venice puts on no show for Christmas. Postcards and shop windows stuffed with colored masks advertise the real show that’s coming – carnivale. But Christmas in Venice is understated: a few more colors of Lindt truffles in the candy store windows, piles of pannetone at the bakery, a string of lights glinting through the fog from a balcony hundreds of years old.

We arrived in Venice by stealing a ride on a waterbus at 10 pm. We had been in transit for two days, after a series of weather-related disasters that prevented us from taking our planned one-hour flight. Wearily we wrapped our coats around us and watched bridges disappear over our heads on the way to the Rialto, hoping no one would come along checking for tickets. We had leapt on while it was leaving, and didn’t know and hardly cared anymore how to purchase the ride we were taking. It was the coldest night Venice had seen in 20 years, and my breakfast, lunch, and dinner of crackers didn’t seem to be insulating me against it. Still, I couldn’t ignore the magic of the lights on either side of the Grand Canal, and the candy striped gondola posts announcing restaurants, casinos and palaces.

Venice is a city alive in its past. At every turn, visitors are confronted with the handiwork of generations: towering domed churches, bridges criss-crossing canals, palaces with water lapping on their front steps. The tower bells clang each hour as visitors clamber on wooden planks stretched over the ever-rising aqua alta in the square to get a look at the Doge’s former private chapel – the basilica of St. Mark. Though modernity does its best to weave in here and there with a display of Gucci purses or an “ I heart Venezia” t-shirt, it is nothing but a light coat of new paint on an ancient city. Gondoliers in striped shirts stand near the academy bridge, proffering the grandeur of another era.

It’s amazing how much Italian food you can buy in Venice. I’m used to Italian food; I even love Italian food. I’ve eaten it in California, Oxford, Middlebury, Budapest and Sofia. But it’s kind of overwhelming to go from having one treasured Italian restaurant in one’s own city to finding three on every block. In Venice, I could hardly turn my head without seeing stacks of rosemary focaccia, flatbread pizza loaded with salami, round pizzas under glass waiting to be sliced into oblivion, piles of gondola-shaped pizza boats, rainbow-colored bow-tie pasta, giant pasta shells, bread shaped like faces advertising yet more pizza and pasta. And then there is the gelato. Though most places were closed for the season, Brett and I managed to stumble into one little den of ice cream iniquity about ten minutes before it closed for the holidays. As the final customers of a very kind lady, we had a six-course gelato meal. It began with layers of pistachio, pine nut and straciatella and was soon followed by individual sample spoonfuls of everything else the lady thought we should try – ciocolatto, amaretti with candied almonds on top, mascarpone cream - all made fresh on the premises. I thought seriously of buying her out of amaretti and freezing it in our little apartment, and I think Brett felt the same about creamy rich pine nut, but logic won over our taste buds.

When it rains in Venice, navigating its narrow alleys and ancient courtyards becomes something like a video game. As each new pedestrian approaches, you must make a series of rapid decisions: should you push your umbrella up or pull it down, lean it to the right or the left, dart to one side and risk collision with another alley of pedestrian traffic or dodge an awning. You must always watch out for two enemies in particular: walkers who have invested in the dreaded giant umbrella, and villainous couples hip-to-hip sharing an umbrella and the entire walkway. Meanwhile, you have to watch your feet, leaping over puddles as you maneuver your bright shield in the flow. Bridges in the distance appear to be nothing but rivers of umbrellas, their currents pulling in both directions.

When it’s sunny in Venice, the city glows. Rich reds, blues, oranges and creams reflect perfectly in the canals, and the sun sparks off the lagoon. As the previous day’s snow melts or the shopkeepers sweep the overnight flood out their front doors, the streets buzz with smiling traffic. Camera-toting Asian, European, and American tourists stand side by side on bridges, sometimes posing accidentally in each other’s pictures.

We left Venice on another waterbus, this time having dutifully paid our outrageous 13 Euros for the 10 minute ride. The bells over St. Mark’s were chiming for Christmas morning, reminding us of the late night service of haunting Latin music and candle-filled chandeliers we had risked the high water to attend the night before. Gondoliers were polishing the golden interior of their boats for the coming day’s holiday traffic, and the bags of our fellow passengers were stuffed with Italian Christmas bread and packages. As we turned away from Italy and toward Slovenia, I began to think that maybe I just didn’t recognize the many strands of a Venetian Christmas at first glance. Perhaps I had just been looking for it in the wrong places, and it was there all along, in the “Bon Natale” of shopkeepers, the rim of snow on the Plaza San Stefano and the spoonfuls of gelato handed across a gleaming glass counter.

Aqua Alta

Venice is sinking. It was in the news right before we got there, for terrible flooding in early December, and also the day we left. The morning we set off for Slovenia, we watched the closest canal come creeping up the alley toward our gate, wondering what would happen. When we arrived in Slovenia that night, Venice was being featured on television. In between, we witnessed "aqua alta" three times. It was usually just in the morning, and receded by 10:00 am, roughly 12 hours after the sirens went off the night before. When the warning sounds, stores all around the city make sure their merchandise is hoisted, and city workers spring into action, laying walkways around the flooded areas. It' a remarkably efficient system; I was in awe of how light-hearted shop owners were as they mopped out their stores EVERY morning, conversing with their neighbors as if it were normal. More and more lately, it is. Just part of the peril of living in a city built on water.

The flooding spares no one, not even designer boutiques.

You can see the various drawers that this woman had pulled out the night before. Most stores had a hidden drain near the front door (under the entrance tiles) and many also used a small dam in front of their door to prevent the water from coming in.

This is in San Marco, outside of Florian's, the oldest cafe in the city.

Before

After. Every time the sirens go off, these dummies come down for the night.

Piazza San Marco. Residents know to have a pair of rubber boots handy.

But walkways are constructed for tourists.

Hidden Venice

Venice at Christmas holds the extra appeal of being less touristy, allowing freer range to the network of narrow alleys that web the city. There are tourist maps, but we quickly realized that these were virtually useless, as streets aren't labeled, and the urban planners who designed Venice didn't exactly use a grid to lay them out. One inevitably gets lost, turns down another alley, finds oneself facing a canal at the end of it, then turns around, finds a bridge (was this the same bridge we crossed before?), crosses the canal, walks down another narrow alley...you get the picture. That, of course, is the fun of Venice. While there are certain tourist stops (San Marco, etc.), the draw of Venice is its capacity to swallow you in its old-world aura. Your job is simply to be guided only by instinct and the smell of focaccia. Below you'll see a variety of shots untouted in the guidebooks, but charming in their own way, all stumbled upon while searching for...well, exactly this.

Though the colors drew us to this cluster, it was the chimneys that ended up charming us.

Venice is sinking, or at least the left side of this door is.

This woman caught my eye from across the piazza.

So I zoomed in. And then she closed her shutters, with what I imagined (I hope I only imagined it) to be a cynical eye toward my prying eye.

This is in Murano, an island across the lagoon from Venice known for its glasswork.

Again, the colors drew me. But the four men add the warmth.

Venice for Christmas

Unlike many European cities, Venice does not have a notable reputation for Christmas spirit. And though we were disappointed by the mysterious disappearance of the Christmas market that was supposed to be in St. Stefan Square, not to mention the lack of Christmas concerts we were anticipating, we definitely knew it was the wintery season. First, because our initial flight to Venice was canceled due to weather, forcing us to fly into Milan a day later, and then take a train to Venice, also canceled (Did you know that trains can be delayed by snow? Neither did I. The Italian public transit system continues to amaze.). When we finally arrived in Venice late on the night of Dec. 21, we were greeted by record low temperatures, lower than anyone remembered in their lifetime, well below freezing. Oh well, we were missing Duluth anyway.

Nonetheless, Venice slowly managed to reveal its wiles to us, especially when the temperature warmed up a couple days later and we were treated to some sun. Before that, however, we got to see the colder side of Venice. The side with gondoliers bundled up in winter coats rather than their black striped shirts. Snow on the piazzas and lingering on rooftops. Early morning fog, and yes, even Christmas decorations.

My Kugelhopf

Venice Photos from "My Kugelhopf"

I haven't discovered what "Kugelhopf" means yet, but I have discovered "My Kugelhopf", a site filled with some of the best photography and travel food writing I've ever seen.

There I was, spending a few idle minutes searching the internet for good gelaterias in Venice and English-speaking yoga studios in Hamburg, when my browser suggested I visit "My Kugelhopf." Why not? I thought. And boy was I NOT disappointed. Now it's your turn. Check out the Venice features here, then explore the site if you have time! It's amazing.