Just the other day, I woke up dreaming of Venice. To be truthful, that place of wonder had been on my mind already for a few days, thanks to Facebook. Well, probably thanks to me, really. Statistically, I am sure I stab at the “like” button way more when I come across a post featuring Venice. This tendency resulted in an invite to a group with the catchy and passionate name: I Like Venice. Best not to get too crazy I suppose. So I joined this caring but level headed crew and rewarded their posts with more “Loves” than “Likes”. Sunset at St Mark’s Square…..LOVE! Twinkling lights along the Grand Canal….LOVE! Here’s an aerial shot of the whole dang rat run….LOVE! I am an addict and I am getting my fill on a daily basis now.
I have actually been to Venice, in case you are thinking that this is some kind of virtual only love affair. Twice actually. The first time was a fleeting day trip with an ex-boyfriend back in my very early 20s. A bracing, cold January day, but with the bluest of skies and the brightest of suns in a place that looks like a medieval film set. I loved it. LOVE! OK, every third shop was a gift shop selling masks and every second place an “authentic” pizza restaurant but the magic was still there and I recognised and welcomed it and like all love affairs that end too early, wanted more.
Six years ago, my husband and I began to plan a trip to Europe for us and our two teenaged children. We all had our To Be Visited List – Hamburg, Berlin, Innsbruck, Paris. Venice was firmly number one in my sights though. I wanted to resume that love affair.
Darkness had already arrived by the time the train pulled into its end point at the Mestre station. We were on the edge, the precipice. The point where Venice begins. The four of us rose from our seats and gathered our belongings to us. It always feels a little magical when you step out of a train at your destination. As with most things, doing this in Venice is even more exciting.
To add to the atmosphere, we were meeting a man at the station. Our Venetian connection. Francesco. Was he in the shadows wearing an overcoat and a trilby? No he wasn’t. I could see a middle aged man, ordinarily dressed, looking around for someone, just like we were looking around for someone. We caught each others’ glances, made a tentatively smiling connection and moved toward each other, confident we had both found the party we were seeking. Francesco welcomed us to Venice and politely requested we follow him. Soon we out of the station building at the other end and that’s where the magic began.
The five us were back outside in the crisp January air and looking down towards The Grand Canal. “Hello old friend,” I sighed with a type of contentment, but at the same time feeling electrified. It really is like the postcards. Wide and night-time inky black, like a watery boulevard, it is edged with the Grand Dames of elegant but faded classical buildings in dusky shades. A variety of differently sized and shaped water vehicles slid along it, moving at a range of speeds. Some for leisure, others for transport and more just going about the business of running a medieval water based city in the twenty first century. There are no police cars, rubbish trucks or ambulance vans in Venice. All these roles are carried out on the water.
Francesco led us down the broad steps to the station for the Vaparetto (water taxi). We would have to wait a few minutes for the next vaparetto, he said, but that was ok. On holidays you have all the time in the world at your disposal, especially in a place like Venice where you feel caught in time. In a time of quiet, without the hum of traffic all around. The Vaparetto sidled up to the side of the canal and a crowd of people piled on with us, some speaking assuredly in Italian, others that watched more quietly and with awe, occasionally sharing words with each other in English, German, Chinese.
Now we were amongst the city itself- cruising along The Grand Canal. I stood on the deck where slight salt and diesel smells could be detected in the cold evening air. I thought how refreshing it would be to stand there on a summer’s evening, though I have often heard of the fruity smells that accompany a visit to Venice at that time when it is warm and stifling.
It wasn’t long until the Vaparetto slid into the Rialto station. The station by the world famous Rialto Bridge, that graces many postcards and plays a support part in a billion selfies. We tumbled out, Francesco taking the lead and plunged headfirst into the wonderful walking maze that is Venice. Down small allies (calli) and even smaller alleyways (callettes), each named in native Venician, not Italian, as Francesco proudly pointed out to us. One alleyway was called Bosom Lane (or something close) as once upon a time the prostitutes would stand above on balconies, advertising their wares to passers-by!
We went through small squares and over bridges; walked alongside canals. “That’s where Marco Polo grew up,” said Francesco, offhandedly. The home looks to be unchanged (on the outside anyway). That’s Venice for you.
Soon we turned into a callette and Francesco stopped suddenly. “Here is your home,” he smiled warmly as he pulled out a set of keys. The owner of the apartment is away and he is helping out, he tells us, to settle in visitors and suggest places to eat and sightsee. Francesco told us he runs tours too. Might we be interested?
As the door opened and the light flickered on, we were met by a long steep, set of marble stairs. We bumbled awkwardly up them with our luggage and he let us in to the apartment. Although it was one of the larger apartments in which we stayed during our trip, I could have reached out of the kitchen window and practically touched the solid stone wall of the other side of the narrow callette.
Francesco settled himself onto a dining chair, like he owned the place, and proceeded to unfold a large, colourful yet unwieldy map, straightening it up on the table. At the time it reminded me of a page from a children’s activity book – the page where you needed to forge a line with your pencil from the outside to the pot of gold in the middle of the maze without crossing lines or running into dead ends.
Purposefully, he began to mark places on it with a biro. On one circled spot he wrote “best pizza”. He warned us to stay away from “the tourist traps”. He thought these business owners as nothing better than vultures, preying on innocent tourists, giving them the “fake” Venice on a convenient plate. Francesco was born in Venice but now lived in Mestre as it was now too costly and as he said so eloquently, “You can’t buy a bath plug in a mask shop.” I understood what he meant. It made me sad. Us and all the other visitors that worshipped at the feet of La Serenissima led to this reality. At least we weren’t there at the height of the tourist season and so didn’t have to face the sea of humanity spilling through the alleyways and canals of Venice, clogging them up, quite literally.
Our three and a half days in Venice almost lived up to the dream. It was colder than I had hoped. Our daughter suffered with bed bug bites and locating a chemist to find a soothing cream proved challenging. A strike meant that we could not get out to the islands of Murano and Burano, and somehow, even with Francesco’s warning and advice, we ate some average pizza when we were just out and about and hungry.
We did cruise the canals in a gorgeous wooden motorboat, piloted by the ex- captain of the Italian Rugby team. The Grand Canal was blissfully quiet, thanks to the transport strike that day, and we thoroughly covered the city on water, Francesco’s local knowledge filling our ears and firing our imagination. We visited an ancient bookshop, with mouldering books piled up everywhere – up the walls, inside a gondola that graced the middle of the shop and along the wall outside that fringed the canal.
Another day, we marvelled at the golden riches of Saint Mark’s Basillica, the beating heart of Venice, and gazed upon countless exquisite ceiling frescoes in room after room in the Doges Palace. If it wasn’t pointed out, we would have walked straight past the world’s oldest casino – it was that quiet, shabby and understated. In the Jewish ghetto, where the word itself was invented, we saw the world’s oldest bank, marked with a small red door, and listened to stories of a people shut in to their part of Venice every night. I found a cafe I loved and walked there every day for coffee and people watching. My husband and I ate the best risotto I think we have ever had – before or since. I gathered luminous glass jewellery like some kind of bowerbird, to take home.
On our final day we farewelled Francesco and trundled back to that train station again, to board a train for Switzerland. It was hard to drag my eyes from the pull of the Grand Canal. Hard to leave that magic behind again.