Venice!

Night View From Our Room

Day view From Our Room

St. Marks Square... Wet!

Tourists and Everybody Above The Water

Venice:  It’s So Annoying!

We had never been to Venice.  Seems strange, since we’ve dotted in and out of Italy through the years.  What you’ve heard about Tuscany is true.  So is the buzz about Sicily and Rome.  But Venice?  The buzz about Venice is that it is romantic, with canals and gondolas and gondoliers singing, masked balls, decadence and the easy life!  Right?  I knew that was what you were thinking.   And it is what we were thinking too, when we booked this pretty much “all-Italy” cruise starting in Venice!

Canal Scene

St. Mark's Sq. Water Side

I guess I never thought too deeply about Venice – or at least, what it must be like to live in Venice – day in and day out living.  Like it is our forever home or something.  Well, the first thing I will tell you is it isn’t romantic at all. It is horribly inconvenient!! Yes, there are gondoliers and gondolas all over.  And canals all over also.  BUT you just can’t get there from here.  And that is very annoying.  At home, you can walk out your front door and cross the street to get to the other side.  OR you can hop in the car and drive to a spot, quickly and easily.  Just park that car and off to shopping or whatever.  Not in Venice.  No, in Venice you can look longingly across the “canal”, but if you want to go there – think again.  You have to go out some door and walk until you find a bridge.  And that could be miles.  Or you can walk to a terminal for a water taxi.  Or you can marcha-marcha to a gondolier stand to “hail” a gondola to get you there.  Only, unlike taxis in NYC, none of these forms of transportation get you “there”—not exactly “there”, in any case.  But they might, if you last long enough, get you close enough to your target.  You see, there are no cars or roads in Venice. (No trees or grass either, but that is another story!)  So anything you want, from a head of lettuce or loaf of bread, has to be picked up, after planning an intricate route map, and brought home – on a daily basis, since—well, that’s another story.  But do you see what I mean about annoying?? 

And we never thought about it in our convenience-oriented state-side life.  As an example, we looked longingly from our very elegant hotel at the Peggy Guggenheim palace museum, world-noted for her collection of contemporary art. And it was really truly just across the canal!  You could probably swim there pretty easily! We really wanted to go there for a quick peek at the art.  BUT we couldn’t figure out how to get there easily, even though there were gondolas parked at our hotel (which were NOT for just going across the canal).  So we had to evaluate.  Was it worth it to walk for miles to find a bridge?  Did we really NEED to see the Guggenheim collection or could we just look at pictures on the internet?  Seems to me one shouldn’t have to think this hard about going across a canal!?  But we opted for the internet.

Now, why the shopping every day for Viennese residents?  It’s because they live in flats, mostly called “palaces” but really just tall buildings.  And there are no elevators.  Our guide lived on the 5^th floor of her “palace”.  Her mother was on the 4^th floor and her two sisters were on 3 and 2.  That’s family closeness.  But they need to shop daily because they have to lug everything up 5 sets of stairs.  Up and down.  Up and down.  And when it is laundry day, the residents don’t have clothes dryers.  So everyone, and I do mean everyone, hangs their wet laundry on pulleys out their windows or off the balcony to get dry.

Now, onto the touristy things.  St. Mark’s Square.  Almost the entire world has heard of St. Mark’s Square.  BUT not everyone knows that you can get your feet wet on a twice daily basis.  So the residents set up risers so people can walk around the square, into and out of the church, into and out of the shops.  Darn inconvenient!!

So our guide was bemoaning the fact that all the young people, as soon as they are old enough, leave Venice for other places.  I can see why.  Really, I can.  Venice is annoying…very annoying! In fact, old as I am, I’d leave Venice even in my wheelchair, if need be?  Come to think of it, what do people in wheel chairs do about the stairs??  Oh – and if you have a heart attack or something, you need to wait for an ambulance water taxi to take you to the hospital!  Outta there…