Getting lost in Venezia

People seem to either love Venice or hate Venice. It is a unique city that seems impossible not to react to. Count me in the love-it category.

The physical lay out of Venice is impossible to ignore. Built on a collection of islands, the city consists of canals and narrow streets. With so little land to build upon, almost every building is multiple stories. Except when on the wider canals, you rarely get a vista. Something like tunnel vision happens because all you can see is up and down the narrow street you are walking on.

Venice has had a long history largely independent from the rest of Italy. The Venetian people are very proud of their distinct heritage. They describe themselves as one of the few cities in Italy not founded by the ancient Romans. The Italian they speak sounds a little different and their dialect is completely unintelligible to anyone who has only studied standard Italian. Listening to the Venetians speaking was part of the fun, even if we could not understand them most of the time.

The Venetians long history of seafaring prowess brought them into contact with the Byzantine empire in the near East. That contact has influenced much of the architecture in Venice giving a distinct oriental look to the Gothic arches and decorative flourishes on the major buildings such as Basilica di San Marco and the Doge’s Palace. Going along the Grand Canal was a treat for the eyes.

The food in Venice was a bit of a surprise, too. As North Americans, we were used to a lot of Italian dishes. While each region has its specialties and variations, the Venetian versions seemed to be unlike anything we had encountered before. Moreover, they had some specialties we had not tried before at all.

The quiet is one of the best and most unique experiences to have in any city. Away from the noise of the Grand Canal, you cannot hear motors of any kind. Walking, all you hear is your footsteps. I woke one morning and heard absolute silence even though the room window was open. I cannot ever remember that happening anywhere else before. Even camping in the mountains, you can hear noises outside your tent. In Venice, the silence was complete.

Quick Tips:

Buy the most detailed map you can find. Even though getting lost is fun, sometimes you want to get somewhere and need to know how. The street numbering system was impossible to figure out so the only way to know how to find a place is to locate it on a map.

Wear good shoes. You’ll walk a lot and your feet will thank you if you give them proper support.

Head away from the really busy tourist areas. Everyone has to see Piazza San Marco, the Grand Canal, and the Rialto Bridge, but you really feel like you are somewhere unique when you walk down the narrow streets, stare into the murky canal water and notice the tiny doorways.

Beware of glass souvenirs. They are everywhere but not all are made in Italy and certainly, not all are made in Murano. Authentic Murano glass has a seal with it and a fairly expensive price tags. An inexpensive glass item is more likely made in China. Buying a tourist souvenir from China is your choice, but if you want the real thing, look carefully.

Beware of water taxis offering free rides to see Murano. The ride over is free, but if you don’t buy any glass from the shop which runs the water taxi, you’ll have to find your own way back.

Not every vaporetto stop sells tickets. If you plan to use the vaporettos, get a pass from one of the bigger stops. And note that most of the ticket booths only take cash. At the train station one booth, often with longer queues, took credit cards.

Best Way To Get Around:

There’s a movie with Sean Connery called "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", where someone is driving along the streets of Venice. I’ve never known whether to laugh or cry because the scene is so stupid.

Venice is for walking. You can’t drive. You don’t want to swim the canals and boats don’t go everywhere you want to. Walk. It’s a pleasure and the only way to get to know Venice.

We arrived in Venice from Rome by train. We bought our tickets that day at Termini station in Rome. Easy peasy to use the self-serve stations since they provide an option to do the transaction in English.

If you arrive at the train station in Venice, you’ll likely need to get to your hotel by going down the Grand Canal. The vaporettos are very easy to use and are inexpensive. There are many options to buy tickets, from single rides to 24-hour or longer passes. There are also water taxis but they are really expensive.

Same with the airport. You can take a water taxi to get to Venice but it is about €75. The ACTV airport bus (scheduled service No. 5) is €3 and gets to the Piazzalle Rome vaporetto stop in 20 – 30 minutes, about the same amount of time as a water taxi. Or there’s the Alilaguna ferry which arrives and departs from the Grand Canal near San Marco and takes about 45- 50 minutes for €12.

Walking the streets sometimes seemed like an exercise in getting lost. Within 10 minutes of leaving our hotel to go look for a mid-afternoon snack, we had no idea where we were. We had three maps, one of which was supposed to be very detailed, but did not include any of the three street names we could see. But you learn to go with the flow. Venice is tiny enough, you cannot get really lost and we soon decided that getting lost was part of the experience.

The hotel is a small boutique hotel, just off the Grand Canal behind San Stae church. It is in the Santa Croce sestieri or district of Venice, which is not a major tourist area but it is close to Rialto Bridge and access to the Grand Canal makes everything else within quick reach.

We had a junior suite and a double superior room. The rates looked like a steal compared to Rome. The rooms were very spacious, and had a lot of character. They were decorated in 1700s Venetian style. The floor in our junior suite was crazily uneven. When I walked on it, I felt slightly drunk because it caused me to weave. The bed was huge and comfortable and there was a beautiful Murano glass chandelier hanging from the high ceilings. An armoire for our clothes looked like an antique. The room also had a couch roomy enough to sleep on, small tables and chairs, and a desk. Off one corner was a small balcony overlooking the courtyard. Bathrooms were very modern, clean, and spacious. Our room had a Jacuzzi tub which we used to treat our tired feet.

The hotel is small so does not have room service. But breakfast is served in the courtyard each morning (or by the bar when the weather is inclement). For breakfast, you can help yourself cereals, granola bars, fruit, juice, and yoghurt and you are served coffee and warm croissants or toast.

As well, there is a small bar off the reception area where you can get drinks or coffee in the afternoon and evenings. We sat in the courtyard and sipped on beer one afternoon after we took an unscheduled walk around almost all of Venice trying to find our way back to the hotel.

We loved the reception area which has a door which opens onto the canal. One morning, there were deliveries being loaded off a small boat into the reception area.

The owners are extremely helpful and friendly. The hotel is a wonderful place that deserves the high ratings it gets. You can get information and make reservations from the hotel’s website at: www.alpontemocenigo.com.

We stumbled upon this place when wandering around looking for somewhere to eat. The menu is almost all fish and close to the fish market so that seemed like a good sign.

You cross a small wooden bridge from the fish market to the door of the restaurant.

We were given prosecco when we sat and asked if we wanted an English menu. I didn’t think that was a good sign.

The food turned out to be fairly good. We had pasta e fagoli, a bean soup, calamari and scampi with polenta, spaghetti al vongole and a delicious grilled sea bream with potatoes and a huge contorno of insalata mista. In a complete break from usual, we had a bottle of pinot grigio.
The place seemed rather touristy. There are a number of rooms that seem to be filled largely with people not speaking Italian. I hear French, German, and some other European languages I didn't recognize.

The décor was cute and plays upon the old "antica" in their name and rooms are decorated with antiques. There is a rather awkwardly painted but amusing frieze along the wall of the room we ate which shows the seven deadly sins and only two of the virtues.

Despite the apparent tourist orientation, the fish is good and relatively inexpensive. It is not a bad find. Their business card says it is the oldest restaurant in Venice.

This is one of the two Michelin starred restaurants in Venice. It’s very tiny, six tables, and the décor is very red. The restaurant is located in the Hotel Metropole which is along the very ritzy string of hotels on Riva degli Schivoni near St. Mark's Square.

We started with a water menu and were each poured a glass of prosecco. The dinner menu has 3 tasting menus consisting of either 17, 11, or 5 courses. We opted for the al a carte menu, which they call al a carte, so again, not traditional Italian, more French in its approach.

The menu items are not traditional at all. We were served two amuses, a rabbit consommé and tuna tartare. My starter of four "Cicchetti" was a squid ink gelatin square topped with a poach prawn, squid and a seared scallop; mousse of eel and crab, baccala on a brioche with yoghurt and an anchovy surrounding an anchovy mousse topped with a caper. We also had squid salad and an elaborate layered dish of guinea hen, handmade pasta, cheese flan and tangerine. My husband and I split a risotto "Amatriciana". Many of the items came with scare quotes. The risotto was given its name presumably because it was made with a very smoky pancetta and tomatoes, surrounded by a pesto sauce and topped with prawns and pine nuts. Our son had handmade pasta with lentils, a rice cracker, fish and a sauce with a curry spice, cardamom, we thought.

For secondi, we had hare "salumi" which was jugged hare formed into a sausage shape accompanied by a juniper flan which had the most amazing taste; baby beef cheeks done in Valpolicella with blood oranges and onions; and red mullet on an artichoke heart with almonds, olives and a "nougat" which was a sauce we couldn’t identify.

We enjoyed two bottles of red wine, a Barolo and a Guado al Tasso, an Antinori super Tuscan. For the latter, I had a long chat with the sommelier about the various choices. Here, too, he cured the wine glasses by swirling wine to coat the insides before pouring the wine.

The sommelier, who had become our best friend towards the end of the meal, noticed that we were sharing the chocolate tasting dessert, so he recommended something which he said was not on the wine list because they found it in the cellars. It is a Barbaresco Chinato, similar to the Barolo Chinato, a slightly sweet wine flavoured with herbs. It made a very interesting compliment to the chunks of different dark chocolate we were served.

We were completely full but were brought a tray of tiny pastries and manage to eat most of them.

The meal was a unique experience and not nearly the astronomical cost we expected, it was less than Il Convivio in Rome.

We made a reservation through their website at www.vinidagigio.com.

The first challenge was finding this place. The address is Strada Nova, the very tourist filled street which runs parallel to the Grand Canal leading away from the train station. We have learned by this time in Venice, in Italy, in fact, that the numbering system is not the Napoleonic one of odd numbers one side, even the other, nor are they always in consecutive order but we walked up and down the street three times without success. At that point, we figured we needed to start looking down side streets and indeed, that was how we found the restaurant. I guess because it faces Strada Nova, it has that as an address instead of the name of the side street where the other doors face the canal. Who knows?

The place consists of two rooms each with 6 or 7 tables. A family ahead of us without a reservation was turned away. I told the owner's wife in Italian that we had a reservation. The servers continued to indulge me by speaking Italian for the rest of the evening. We were given a choice of tables so opted for the one near the kitchen which is open and behind a counter. We enjoyed watching the busy chefs.

The place was recommended for its wine list and it is very extensive.

For antipasti, my husband loved the sarde al saor, a traditional Venetian dish of fresh sardines covered with sweet and sour onions. It came with grilled polenta which is white and much lighter than the yellow polenta we’ve had before. I had scallops which are seared and served with a drizzle of olive oil and something slightly acidic, balsamic vinegar, perhaps. They were so delicious. We had these with a Soave Classico. We split a seafood risotto which was very creamy and full of pieces of fish and shellfish.

For secondi, we had grilled scampi and osso bucco. The osso buco was different also, very little tomato, more creamy than what I've had before. It came with grilled polenta and roast potato. We had a Brunello da Montalcino to go with our secondi. I could not finish my dish, although we managed to finish the wines. Dolci were out of the question.

The food here was superb and the cost moderate. There were a lot of items on the menu, many traditional Venetian dishes, I would have like to have tried. I would definitely come back.

This art gallery is best known for its pre-1800s art in Venice. Situated on the south bank of the Grand Canal, it gives its name to one of the three bridges across the canal, the Ponte dell'Accademia, and to the vaporetto water bus stop.

The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 8:15am to 7:15pm, Monday from 8:15am to 2pm. Admission is €6.5. You can purchase advanced tickets, but when we went, there was no queue to purchase tickets and when we got in, we found the gallery quite uncrowded. This was one of the very few galleries we have ever been to that allowed photographs (without flash).

The Gallerie dell’Accademia contains masterpieces of Venetian painting up to the 18th century, generally arranged chronologically with some thematic displays. The floor layout is not conducive to a continuous line. Some back tracking is required to see everything but the entire gallery is not large so you can view everything in a few hours.

Artists represented include: Gentile & Giovanni Bellini, Bellotto, Pacino di Bonaguida, Canaletto, Carpaccio, Carpioni, Rosalba Carriera, Cima da Conegliano, Fetti, Pietro Gaspari, Michele Giambono, Giordano, Francesco Guardi, Giorgione (da Castelfranco), Johann Liss, Le Brun, Pietro Longhi, Lotto, Mantegna, Rocco Marconi, Marieschi, Antonello da Messina, Piazzetta, Pittoni, Preti, Giambattista Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese (Paolo Caliari), Vasari, Leonardo da Vinci (Drawing of Vitruvian Man), Vivarini, and Zais.

I particularly like Titian's Pietá, one of his last paintings which has a very impressionistic look; Antonello's Annunciation, strikingly modern in its psychological portrait of the Virgin; and Veronese's Feast in the House of Levy, a massive painting which was a last supper until he got called up by the Inquisition, who questioned its orthodoxy, so he just changed the name.

A must see place for anyone interested in Italian art.

We were at the bus station and discovered there you can take the direct vaporetto to Murano. We travelled over some rather choppy water to Murano, the closest island to Venice.

An alternative to the vaporetto for getting to Murano are the free taxis run or sponsored by the glass shops. But beware, if you don't buy anything, they will not give you a free ride back to Venice.

Murano is like a Venice in miniature. It's called an island but like Venice it is a number of islands with canals and connecting bridges.

We visited here because my husband is interested in glass blowing and does it as an amateur. Glass blowers were banished to Murano in the 12th century because of fears about the fires which could be caused by the furnaces necessary for glass making.

The place has seemingly endless glass shops lining the main streets and the difficulty is figuring out which are selling authentic Murano glass and which are made in China.

We visited the Museo di Vetri (Fondamenta Giustinian 8, 30121 Murano, closed Wedsday, admission € 5), the glass museum, which has some good explanatory displays about the glass making process and its history. After, we wandered about looking at the furnaces, the glass blowing studios. The small ones were not in operation when we looked in but the large ones seemed all to be operating. Glass blowing is fascinating to watch. Seemingly hard glass become liquid when heated and the things that these experts can do are amazing.

Of course, we bought some souvenirs and my husband got some murrinis, glass rods, when cut look like flower designs. He hopes to incorporate them into something he makes in the future.

The back streets away from the glass shops of Murano are also interesting. Quiet like Venice and more people who don't speak English. The tiny church of Santa Maria e Donato is a fascinating pattern of brick work.

The direct vaporetto drops you back in Venice near Piazza San Marco. Murano is a quick trip outside of Venice and an educational peak into the very old and beautiful craft of glassblowing.

The Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, usually just called the Frari, is one of the greatest churches of Venice. It is in the Campo dei Frari at the heart of the San Polo sestieri.

We went to see Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin, and Madonna di Ca Pesaro. Admission is € 2.50, the only church I’ve ever been to that charged admission. It is open Monday through Saturday from 9am to 6pm.

The church, built for the Franciscan order, was completed in 1338. Its campanile, the second tallest in the city after that of San Marco, was completed in 1396.

The church is imposing in its size and built of brick in the Italian Gothic style. As with many Venetian churches, the exterior is rather plain. The interior contains the only rood screen still in place in Venice. The rood screen (also choir screen or chancel screen), a common feature in late medieval church architecture, is an ornate screen, constructed of wood, a substance that does not survive well in Venice’s humid climate.

As I said, I wanted to see two Titian paintings. The Assumption of the Virgin over the high altar is the largest altar painting in Venice and considered by some to be one of the world’s great paintings. The other, his Madonna di Ca Pesaro was painted for a side altar for a prominent Venetian family whose fame initial came from an ancestor who won a naval battle. These are both fairly early works of Titian and the beautiful colours still show through the aging canvas.

Other important art works in the basilica include Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna and Child with SS Nicholas of Bari, Peter, Mark and Benedict, the sacristy altarpiece; and Donatello’s figure of St John the Baptist in the first south choir chapel, Donatello's first documented work in Venice.

It is a lovely place to visit if you like art.

Every tourist to Venice must visit St. Mark's square and admire the Basilica. We dutifully did that, but on the day we went, early April, the piazza area in front of San Marco was packed with tourists.

We could go into Basilica San Marco or the campanile bell tower, open Monday through Saturday from 9:45am to 5pm, but the queues were daunting. Or there's the Palazzo Ducale, open Monday through Sunday from 9am 7pm with admission of €12 but we had no reservations which are recommended and again, long queues. Instead, laziness had set in by our second week in Italy. The sun was out and the air was pleasant. Standing in a queue to go inside a dark building was looking like too much effort.

Instead, we sat at one of the cafes with outdoor tables farther away from the Basilica because it is less crowded and this one didn't have a group playing old Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra tunes. (Is that what Italians think American tourists expect in Italy?) We decided to enjoy the sun, some wine and some people-watching.

The cafe was called Eden, I think, but it hardly mattered because we weren't there for the food. We ordered a bottle of wine from the Veneto. It came with olives on ice which made it refreshing. We hadn't had lunch so we each ordered a panini. My cheese, tomato, and lettuce was exactly that, no dressing of any sort and the bun was plain, entirely bereft of butter or any spread. But the bun was toasted and the cheese and tomato have flavour so it was not as dreary as it might be. My husband's salumi panini was also just bun and slices of salumi. Again, a lesson not to expect much in the way of good food near a major tourist attraction.

This place also had one of the weirdest toilets. It was only 8 - 10 inches high and no seat. And this was for donne, women. I had been warned about lack of toilet paper but no one told me I'd have to practice my deep knee bends.

We sat for quite a while admiring the ornate architecture of the Basilica and people-watching including the drama of some teenage girl running around screaming until she fell into a heaping crying. A crowd gathered around, police were fetched and we never figured out what it was about as she was up and walking away eventually.

We later window shopped in the arcaded area of the square and when the gun went off, the pigeons all flew up, swirled around and settled back. Someone told me this was to scare them off, but it obviously doesn't work.

A perfect afternoon of doing not much of anything.