Venice Trip report, part 1 - Thursday 26 Jan

AN INTRODUCTION TO VENICE

I think this is an interesting picture, helps you get an idea of the layout of Venice. The straight thing at about 11:00 is the bridge from the mainland which carries the cars/buses and the train. In the grayish area at about 10:00 is where the train station, industrial stuff, and parking garages are. This is the only place where you'll find cars, and it's as far as the buses go. The big inverted S of water cutting the main island in half is the Canal Grande described below. The splotch of white at the tail end of the S and inthe center of the bottom of the main island is the Piazza San Marco, where the San Marco Basilica and the Doge's Palace are. Our hotel was just to the east of that. You can see only a teensy bit of the southern tip of the island of Murano just above the square island at 1:00. (the square island is the location of the city cemetery)

Venice is located in a lagoon created by a longer island (south of this photographed area) called the Lido. The water is quite calm.



So we arrive at Venice Treviso airport around 12:00. This is not the main Venice airport and is only used for charter flights and RyanAir. Not much to it. We got our luggage and purchased a round trip ticket for the ATVO bus to Venice's Piazza Romale for 9 euros each. The bus left the airport at about 12:30 and arrived at Piazzale Roma about 1:30. We were really hungry so we stopped and ate a standing lunch at one of the bars near the train station. (I had a pizza wrap for about 4 euros, Mike had a slice of pizza and a turkey sandwich. With 2 coke lights the total was bout 11.50.)

Then it was time to get on the vaporetto (water bus). These have various routes around the city; normally they are 3.50 one-way, unless you take one that goes down the Canal Grande; those are 5 Euros. You can buy a 24 hour pass for like 10 euros, or a 72 hour pass for 22 euros. We opted to take our chances and go without a pass.

A trip down the Canal Grande is a good way to get your first look at Venice, so we happily shelled out the 5 euros each. We sat up front to get a good view, but it was insanely cold. I felt like we were riding on a Disney World ride, taking this boat down the large canal lined by buildings, no sidewalks, and water lapping at doorways that had no discernable purpose...

It was just like I had imagined it except with less background accordian music....

So we take the #1 Vaporetto all the way down the Canal Grande to the San Zaccharia vaporetto stop. I had directions to our hotel but I didn't really understand them so we just started walking. It was only a couple of blocks away so even though we went down the wrong street we found it pretty easily.

"Locanda Al Leon" was a very nice little hotel at what I considered a STEAL at 66 euros per night for a double. It was about 2 blocks away from Piazza San Marco just behind the Basilica. It was right next to a little square called Campo San Filipo e Giacomo with a nice bar. We rang the bell and checked in, with the nice lady at the desk taking us up the stairs to show us our room. There was no elevator, and we climbed 3 full flights of stairs to get to our room, which wouldn't have bothered me too much if the stairs hadn't gotten steeper as you went up. It was disconcerting. But our room was lovely. Double bed, lovely handpainted furniture, wood beam ceilings, and a bonus little patio large enough for a small table and 2 chairs, with a view overlooking the neighboring rooftops. Not very scenic but I thought it was nice and authentic. The bathroom was nice sized with toilet, bidet, and corner shower as well as a sink and mirror and window onto the little patio.
There was a really pretty murano glass light fixture on the wall as well.

We dropped off our things and got really bundled up, as it was FREEZING outside. Once we had on our thermal underwear, scarves, hats, coats, and gloves, it was time to explore the city.

Now we had read/heard that one neat thing to do is to "get lost" in the city. That sounded quaint and pretty, but let me tell you, it's not something that someone has to "suggest" to you. It's pretty much a fact of life there. None of the roads are straight, half of the time they dead end into canals or private gardens, they change names, and go around in circles. Here's a satellite picture of the area of venice near where our hotel was.
It's really a laugh, because the buildings are all so tall, you have no landmarks to follow; there are intermittent signs directing you towards major sites but they are inconsistent and confusing. So as far as I can tell there's pretty much no way to NOT be lost while wandering around Venice. You just get a good compass and try to keep wandering in vaguely the right direction and you seem to pop out somewhere you recognize when you least expect it. Loads of fun :).

I might add at this point that it started snowing. Yes, snowing. Here we are, enjoying Venice in a snow flurry. I have no idea how often this happens but I was torn between being disappointed and feeling very priveliged to get this very un-typical view of Venice. It must happen more often than, say, in Baton Rouge, because before it got dark there was a guy out with a little hand held salt spreader tossing salt on the sidewalks.

While it seems kind of obvious once someone says it or once you see it, but there are NO cars in Venice. None. Every street is pedestrian-only, and some are just barely wide enough for 2 people to walk down at one time. This is the street where our hotel was (Hotel awning is burgundy, on the left)


And I'm now going to start defending the bad reputation of my adopted home of Brussels as the Dog Poop Capital of the world. I've never seen nearly as much dog poop as there was in Venice. And it's really unfortunate, because you have to be constantly looking around you because a. it's pretty, b. you're always freaking lost. Makes Venice dog poop more dangerous, IMHO. I mean, I guess I understand that there being no grass, all the dogs have to poop on the concrete, but jeez. The vast majority of dogs I saw were not even on a leash, and owners seemed to have no qualms about letting them poop wherever they darned well pleased.


So we had a lovely time wandering around in the snow flurry (not much of it stuck on the ground, but a little bit did). Looking at the myriad souvenir shops, there was so much glass, so many masks, etc. It was neat that I thought that even the cheap crummy stuff was fun to look at! We walked to the Piazza San Marco and got our first look at the Basilica, which was quite impressive, but I'm sure ti looks nicer when the weather is good and it's sunny.

We continued walking and stopped at a nice cozy wine bar near the Campo San Bartholomeo by the Rialto bridge. I didn't catch the name of the bar, but it seemed to have a Jazz theme, which was a nice reminder of New Orleans.

Something very big in Venetian culture is chichetti. Chichetti are small appetizers, sold by the individual portion. During happy hour, everyone goes to their local bar for wine and chichetti and some good conversation. You just order whatever you want and the bartender keeps track of what you've eaten and drunk and you pay at the end. (Il conto is the word for the bill) A piece of cheese may be about 80 cents, a skewer of meat may be 3-4 euros. At the wine bar, Mike had a couple pieces of spicy sausage and some peppery cheese.

We left the bar after the happy hour crowd thinned out and set off to find somewhere to eat. The first place we tried to find (guidebook recommendation) was closed for the season. We then tried a Time Out guidebook recommendation called Al Portego (Calle Malvasia, near Campo San Bartholomeo). The front was packed with late happy-hour-ers enjoying wine and chichetti (they had zillions of things to choose from!). There are about 8 tables for dining (most of the people I saw eating dinner here were tourists); the waitress was very helpful and spoke very good English. We shared a large plate of assorted chichetti for an appetizer, which included some very interesting local specialties. (Green olives wrapped in sardines, Fried green olives stuffed with meat, bread with a creamy fish paste spread (baccalá, I think), skewer of fried zucchini and cauliflower, fried mozzarella, bread with pancetta, bread with anchovies and butter). For our main course, Mike got eggplant parmigana, and I had homemade gnocchi with a shrimp, artichoke and tomato sauce. For dessert we had mediocre pre-frozen tiramisu. The house red wine was very good, and only 5.50 euros for a liter. We also had a bottle of water. The total for the meal was 52.50 euros.

It was getting late, so we headed to one of the only bars open late (Devils Forest, an English pub style place with pints for 4 euros), had a couple pints of irish beer and cider, then headed back to the hotel for sleeping. It had long since stopped snowing. Magical happy first day!