Venice

Arrivederci Venezia

We had planned the next morning to head out really early and catch Venice out – to find the streets deserted and bask in the glow of the sunrise. Unfortunately by the time we awoke and got moving it was after 8am. We still saw a very different side to Venice though. Along the canal, the barges delivering supplies to the city’s many shops and restaurants were pulling into unload while yesterday’s rubbish is piling up along the waterways awaiting collection. And the bilge barges are pumping out blocked pipes and drains throughout the cities ancient sewer systems. The tourist strip was largely devoid of tourists at this time of day but there were plenty of workers pouring into the city to ready things for the thousands that were about to arrive.

Today was still hot but much, much cooler than yesterday. Probably early 30s. Dan was still feeling under the weather so we decided the best approach was to catch a ferry up the grand canal to San Marco so we could see all the buildings on the side of the canal and get that feeling of the grand tour that the canal alone seems to provide, maybe because I have watched far too many travel shows about the grand tour of t the early 20^th century. We wandered up to the train terminal to catch the ferry past closed street stalls and shops only to find a plenty of people trying to crowd onto the ferry. As we made our way onto the platform, it became obvious that the ferry was going to be a lot more crowded than we envisaged. We got on anyway and found ourselves pushed into the back section.

One of the crazy things about Venice, which is basically a mass of stone and concrete with nary a tree in sight is that the cabins in the ferries are close to the hottest place on the islands. If you manage to stand near a window you get a bit of a breeze as the ferry jest its way along the canal but the main windows don’t open. On one of the smaller ferries, where the ferry sits much lower in the water and the cabin is just above the water level, the splash from the ferry pulling into the jetty and the waves caused by the activity on the lagoon meant that water splashed in the higher top to, we were free to stand on the window that open like those on the bus. The best place to stand on a ferry is on the deck where they open the sides to let people off or on the stairs to the upper deck at the front of smaller ferries. After the hordes of workers got off the ferry at Rialto, we were free to stand on the deck and enjoy the view. While limiting the number of bridges makes it really difficult to get from one side of the canal to the other, it also makes for a beautiful view as the ferry chugs its way out into the lagoon and San Marco Square. Watching the water lap at the front doors of homes and palaces along the waterway, stairs long since engulfed by the rising waters of the lagoon is a calming sight You can’t help wonder what is going on behind the closed doors and secret gardens I guess that is part of the mystery of Venice, there are no front gardens, so everything is going on behind closed doors. (The Harder They Come – H-Block 101 – these guys remain one of my favourite Australian punk bands – dedicated to their craft and the political stance they take – more serious and non-assuming than most of the 90s breed of punks, they take their cues from the likes of Radio Birdman and The Clash rather than the Fat Wreck Chords phenomenon.)

We arrived in San Marco Square to see vendors opening up their stalls on the side of the canal, tour guides giving the low down to the groups and queues forming for the museums in the square. The square itself though was strangely empty, no one sitting in the café and only a dozen or so people standing in the square not in a queue. From here, we wound our wayback along the tourist path and collected a snow globe – one with a gondola in it not one in a gondola, and some postcards. When we got closer to the hotel we decided to wander through the back street of Carneggio and checkout the tiny island of the Ghetto – the Jewish area of Venice which stood up and defended Venice from those who wanted to destroy it. The ghetto was particularly interesting from a people watching point of view. A number of Hassidic Jews were milling around in the central square. There was a temple and also a number of kosher restaurants and a bakery. We navigated our way back through the alleyways and out through a different gateway onto our canal. By this stage it was 10am so we headed back to the hotel for breakfast. It had already gotten quite hot so we decided to take our time getting ready in the comfort of the hotel’s air-conditioning before heading to the train station.

Dan sat in the (relative) cool of the train station while I headed back along the shopping strip for a couple of last minute souvenirs – a mask, Murano glass pendant and glass Christmas ornaments. I also picked up some baguettes, cannoli, chips and water for the six hour train trip. I also had my first good coffee on this trip – a Café Latte.

The trains are a good way to demonstrate the differences between German and Italian culture. In Germany they can tell you a month in advance which platform a train will leave from. Each day there is a yellow poster put up throughout the station that shows all departures from the station, their destinations and intermittent stops, and platforms. There are also diagrams of where on the platform your carriage will stop. On some rare occasions the cars might be back to front and you need to make a mad dash for the right car. You usually have quite a few minutes if this happens and it is fairly easy to move between carriages. In Italy there are no diagrams or lists. The departure time will go on a board an hour or so before the departure and if you are lucky, the platform will go up 10 minutes before the train leaves. On my first trip to Europe, the platform number for my first Italian train in Milan went up less than five minutes before departure. Here we had 15. (Get your filthy hands off my dessert – Pink Floyd – Like most of Pink Floyd’s tunes, the title belies the lyrics – this is a little upbeat politically aware ditty. I didn’t like Pink Floyd much in my teens as they were so damn depeessing– save for Another Brick in the Wall which I had enjoyed as a roller skating accompaniment in the early 80s and which wasa lot more angry like the punk I learnt to love years later. I rediscovered Pink Floyd in the 90s and while there is a lot that still doesn’t grab me I can understand the allure.)

We got on the train, put our bags up and settled into our carriage, hoping that it wouldn’t be quite as full as the last. About 10 minutes late a quite stern old German lady came in with what looked like her grandson – it turned out she was just a youngster she had paid to carry her bags on to the train. Instead of taking her sat near Dan she jagged the window seat (which had a reservation) and pulled out the other seat to put her feet up. She was very annoyed when the girl who was in her feet seat entered the carriage. Dan helped the girl with her bags and it turns out she was a German who grew up in Australia and moved back to Germany. She had gone back after uni and then returned again a couple of times. This time she had been in Germany, living in Munich, for 12 years. She had been to Venice for a wedding of all things. Weddings really seem to be making more of a splash in my life. She was really lovely and we started chatting. The old lady had enough of that and moved to a less crowded compartment. Another man joined us for a few stops through the Austrian Alps but mostly it was us and our new found German-Australian friend, incidentally from Perth. It turned out the wedding she attended was two Australian friends (although he was born in Italy) and that she may have had a romantic evening with a kiwi who was at the wedding.

We had noticed a number of policemen on the train at different intervals and about half an hour out of Munich, an announcement came over that the plane was delayed for a police investigation – I wondered whether something had been stolen on the train. Eventually we arrived at München Ost, where we were to catch the night train to Berlin,

When I had booked the reservations it hadn’t let me select the main station, despite the fact that both trains went through there. The other unfortunate reality was that München Ost had very limited dining options (and there was no dining car on the train). It had already been quite a long day of travelling and the prospect of another 10 hours on a train was looming. The train was already on the platform but it had to be done. As I was still moving fairly slowly with my strapped broken foot, I was left in charge of the bags while Dan headed down to the station to purchase what turned out to be pretty awful reheated pizza slices. Once those were consumed, he hightailed it to the other platform to get some water and snacks for the journey.

As it turned out we were both too busy coughing throughout the night to need the snacks (or to sleep very much). It was a pity because we both usually sleep really well on trains (while neither of us are able to sleep on planes.) This was the first time we had travelled on the trains in summer – like much of Germany’s infrastructure they are toasty warm in winter but the temperature usually doesn’t require too much in the way of air-conditioning. Of course we had managed to travel through Germany during the worst European heatwave in quite some time. There was air-con on the train but it only really got going while the train was moving. Unfortunately this meant it was stinking hot when you got on – there was a window – like an old bus style window – that could be opened but this meant the blind had to be up. Sounds reasonable except that you can’t really dry yourself in the shower and while the train only stopped at a few train stations, there is less time between German train stations with packed platforms late at night than one might think. In the morning we received the prepacked brekky of roll, brioche, liverwurst, cream cheese, jam and two really awful coffees. I ate the roll and drank half a coffee while Dan spent the last half hour before we arrived in Berlin sleeping. Lucky I had booked our apartment to book in when we arrived – principally because the minimum booking is four nights and we really like these apartments. (Cattle and Cane – The Go Betweens – One of a handful of songs that really speaks to me of Australia – like Wide Open Road, the tune speaks of Australia’s wide open skies and never ending countryside and no matter how good a time I am having while travelling, it always makes me feel a little homesick.)

Things that lovers do

We took our time to get up and went downstairs to enjoy breakfast in the hotel garden. It’s one of the things I really like about Venice – the idea of the secret garden. There are no public parks in Venice. The community comes together in the squares that open out from cramped alleyways in the middle of nowhere to provide generous spaces between the buildings. But the squares are all paved and generally there’s not even a potted tree in sight. Yet the palaces and private residences of the rich and famous often have lush garden behind locked gates. You get a glimpse of them as you pass by on the canals but they rarely face out onto squares or streets. So I was enchanted by the idea of a Venetian hotel with a garden. The breakfast was the same kind of restaurant breakfast fare we had become used to with a couple of differences – The bacon was really finely sliced and the fat was see through when cooked and the scrambled eggs tasted like they were made with cream, There were stacks of cherry tomatoes. And there were pastries – chocolate, jam and cream filled croissants. Disappointingly, my cappuccino (there are no flat whites here) tasted like it came from a Nespresso machine. The other strange thing about cappuccinos here is that they don’t come with a chocolate dusting.

After breakfast it was time to start exploring. Given we had already been to Rialto, it was going to be 36 degrees and Dan was still feeling sick, I decided it would be good to catch the ferry from just outside our hotel to San Marco. I had expected the ferry would go up our canal and then turn left into the Grand Canal to San Marco, which sits on the edge of the main cluster of islands that face out into the lagoon. It turned right instead and went around the outside of the island cluster to San Marco, virtually avoiding the Grand Canal altogether. What we did get to see were the airport, the parking station and the industrial area. Dan got to see a tank parked on the side of the canal and the replacement barges for the ferry stations. One thing that seems to happen quite quickly in Venice is that barnacles and algae grow on anything that doesn’t move. You see them on the ferry stations, on the stairs to people’s houses and on boats moored along the lagoon. (Feel the Pain – Dinosaur Jr – Dinosaur Jr are a band of the 90s that you often forget about but when you really pay them some attention the brilliance of J. Mascis becomes obvious. I have seen these guys a few times in the past 20 years and every show always turns out to be a reunion of sorts with many of the old crew in attendance.)

San Marco Square was so full of people, it was hard to move. There were quite a few standing in queues for various sights including Doge’s Palace but plenty more just milling around. Curiously there were very few people sitting down in the square’s cafes. Perhaps the warning that you will have to mortgage your house to sit and drink a coffee in the square has finally tipped the balance to the point where the cafes just aren’t getting any business at all. The square is a must see in Venice of course but it has lost its gravitas with the trappings of tourism – touts, tacky souvenirs, oversized queues and the throng of humanity, cameras at the ready. Where you see the real Venice, and the lives of its citizens is exploring the back alleyways and getting lost.

No time for that now though – It was back along the well-trodden path Per Rialto – and between Rialto and San Marco, where every visitor to Venice walks, you’ll find the incredibly high end stores such as Gucci and Versace nestled amongst the endless supply of tourist tatt. Needless to say I didn’t venture in here. From Rialto we wound our way back to the hotel and chilled out for a while in the hotel. Dan’s cold had gotten the better of him and he stayed in the hotel to snooze while I went out to explore.

First stop was the shoe shop – the Clarks store up near Rialto – Dan hates show shopping so this was a good opportunity – and I found the patent T-bar flats I had coveted in Dubai in my size – in wide fit. It was meant to be. One of the great things about shoe shopping in Italy, Germany and Scandinavia is that many of the shoes are designed for wide feet. At a wide size 41 I can never buy pretty shoes in Asia.

Shoe purchase made, it was time to explore some of the back streets and small canals of Carneggio between Rialto and our hotel near The Ghetto. The tight lane ways totally in darkness weaved their way through the tightly packed building opening out suddenly onto a sunlit square where washing was hanging from the windows or abruptly ending at a cabal where there were two choices – over the bridge or a sharp right turn down into another alleyway squirreling off into the distance. For much of this journey I didn’t see a soul. This was suburban Venice – quiet and sleepy with nary a gondolier in sight. It was in one of these streets – quite close to our hotel that I found Venice’s Michelin-starred restaurant – Osteria Anice Stellato. I got incredibly excited about this discovery until I realised it was closed on Mondays. I kept wandering the back streets but it was starting to heat up and all the pathways along the bigger waterways seemed to be on the sunny side. I headed back into the more convoluted path of the smaller passageways using my map as some kind of guidance. GPS is often slow to work here because the laneways are so small it is impossible for satellites to get a fix. Eventually I navigated my way through, emerging onto our canal through a non-descript archway, I had passed many times before. (Witchita Lineman – The Clouds – this is a fab version of the country classic with much more bass).

Originally we had planned to head to the beach in Lido but it is quite a journey and to make it worthwhile we really needed to spend the whole afternoon. By this stage it was already 3pm so I suggested to Dan that getting out of the room would do him some good. The ferry right outside our front door went to Lido so we caught it to get a view of the lagoon, and to catch some of the sea breeze by standing on the stairs to the cabin. Lido was practically a ghost town on my last visit but in the sweltering heat it seemed where most Venetians had escaped. We hopped off the ferry and found a gelato store where we could chill for a while before heading back. I also took the opportunity to try a spritz – as per the recommendation of a couple of friends who had left Venice a day before our arrival. I understand there are a couple of different versions – I am pretty sure from the orange hue that this particular specimen was the Campari based one. From the taste I am pretty sure the spritz is a traditional wine spritzer (white wine and mineral water) with the addition of Campari. Now I have to confess that Campari is not one of my fave liqueurs and this just tasted bitter to me – not the way you’d expect something bright orange with a slight fizz to taste. The gelato wasn’t much good either. On the plus side, I was drinking my spritz sitting in a swing so that did add to the 1950s holiday feel of the whole thing – I just needed to procure one of the big sunhats I had seen on sale everywhere. (Bullying the Jukebox – Bouncing Souls – I bet a jukebox under the control of Bouncing Souls would be really cool. Back in the day I had an old Bouncing Souls work shirt – back in the day when it was cool to wear such things. Can’t give up the skate shoes (or Doc Martens) I wore with it though.)

By the time we got back on the ferry it was around 7pm so we went up to change and ventured out to dinner. Dan had promised me a nice dinner out in Venice and despite the Michelin starred restaurant being closed, I had found two other suitable alternatives both within a few hundred metres of each other. The trick was to find them as they were buried in the centre of Carneggio, one in a square and one near a small canal. We navigated our way successfully to the first -Ostaria Boccadoro – a traditional Osteria long praised in Venice and then found the second – a more edgy establishment noted as an up and comer. It was a hot night and the up and comer, as you might expect was a fairly small place and quite crowded. While it was close to a canal, all the seating was inside. We thought it might be a bit close and less enjoyable on this incredibly warm evening so we headed back to the square. Sitting outside in what was obviously a residential square felt like you were experiencing the real romance of Venice. This was the only restaurant on the square and the other diners were your only company.

Lagoon seafood is the staple item on Venetian menus and this was no different. The special appetizer they were offering was a selection of raw lagoon seafood with various pickles and things. While I was keen to sample the local seafood I had been in a boat on the lagoon and wasn’t trusting eating it raw. I chose the steamed clams and mussels which came steamed in butter- some of the clams weren’t much bigger than pipis but they were sweet, juicy and delicious. My recent fancy dinners with Dan seem to end up being in seafood focussed restaurants (Rockpool) where there are few options for those who prefer their dinner to have come from the land. Here Dan chose a mixed platter of cheeses. At the recommendation of our waiter, we chose a bottle of local white from the menu and it was a pretty decent drop. (Whip it – Devo – one of the greatest tracks of the early 80s- save for all the punk and ska I discovered later – Devo were a Countdown band in 1992 but they deserve far more kudos than that label implies.)

Dan and I have long mused about serving bread in a restaurant – it is a fairly cheap item and ensures those with huge appetites leave the restaurant feeling satisfied. On the other hand, when the bread is really good, you risk the temptation of filling up on it. And I love bread, which makes Germany a treat as they have some of the best bread (sourdough, rye, wholegrain) in the world. One thing we have noticed in our culinary escapades is that you can tell a top restaurant by the quality of the bread and the fact they continue to serve it throughout the meal. Here there was a mixed selection of ciabatta, wholegrain and rye breads and they kept coming. The second course of an Italian meal is pasta – Dan played it safe and chose the veal strips and tomato spaghetti. I was a bit more adventurous and went for the black ink spaghetti with clams and artichokes, which was thoroughly delicious. It’s not often that you find a menu peppered with fresh ingredients such as artichokes so that was particularly enjoyable. We probably didn’t need a third course but we had it anyway – I continued with my seafood theme and enjoyed John Dory (which I assume probably wasn’t lagoon caught) on potato with artichokes and salad. – Dan chose the slow cooked veal cheeks with herbs, which he said didn’t really taste like herbs – just like a really good beef roast – of course our beef roasts are usually marinated with garlic and rosemary. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. The air was warm and fairly still save for a small breeze through the alleyways every now and then but it was enough to make for a pleasurable dining experience and sitting in the square as it darkened overhead and you looked up to the night sky made you appreciate the romance of Venice. (Minstrel Boy – Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros – The outfit Joe spent most time with before his untimely death over a decade ago is not what you’d expect from the punk troubadour but this tune in particular does have the hallmarks of him having spent too much time with the Irish – a cross between a Pogues song and Enya in a good way, with jazz drumming this evokes the feel of the seafarers of all and seems somewhat appropriate.)

After dinner, we headed for the Grand Canal to find a gondola. Sure gondolas are an expensive way to get about – 80 euros during the day and 100 at night for about half an hour. And yes, there is an element of kitsch to the gondola (not least of all because you can actually buy a gondola that has a snow globe of a gondolier sitting in it) but there is still something romantic about cruising Venice’s canals with a whistling gondolier. It is also an awesome way to get a very different perspective on the city. Travelling up the main canals on a ferry doesn’t give you the ground level look at the buildings a gondola does – the appreciation of how the lagoon is enveloping the city. It is clear from this angle that if the water rises a centimetre, the streets are flooded in some areas. The gondolier took us along the main canal and then into the back waterways, pointing out various landmarks on the way such as the place where Marco Polo lived in Venice. Dan had pointed out earlier in the day that Venice, a city of waterways and seafarers, holds Marco Polo in quite high regard but Marco Polo walked to China. After a while the gondolier got the message that we weren’t really interested in the history lesson so he did this strange combination of singing, whistling and humming. On our journey through the dark canals, I thought we were going to total a number of boats along the way but the gondolier skilfully moved the gondola centimetres to avoid them ducking as he went under the low canal bridges. At one point we passed a gondola full of young Americans and the other gondolier asked ours what English swear words he knew. In the dead calm of the Venice night he said only one word – Fuck. And then the silence was filled with laughter from both boats. From the back canals, the gondolier rounded the turn back into the light of the Grand Canal and there resplendent in front of us was the Rialto Bridge lit up like a Christmas Tree. Our ride ended on the other side and we made our way across the bridge and back towards our hotel. Last time I was in Venice I was alone and while I had a nice dinner on the canal and met a really interesting Mexican woman, I hadn’t enjoyed a high end romantic dinner or a gondola ride because I thought they would be best enjoyed with someone else one day when I returned. And they were. The only downside was that the hole in the wall Gelato place was closed on our walk home. (Down to Sea – Doves – Many of their tracks evoke dreamy summer evenings and this one in particular reminds me of summery winter nights in Byron Bay at Splendour in the Grass.)

The Merchants of Venice

Rested and cooled, we decided to venture out into the evening twilight to have a look around – the day tripping tourists had left and while the place was still busy, you could wander the streets and alleyways without feeling like you were going to be bowled over. I was actually a bit surprised – my first trip to Venice had been in winter – February) when the streets are a lot quieter during the day. It was Carnivale though so Venice partied into the night. Admittedly this was a Sunday evening but I thought Venice would have been jumping. The northern twilight (while it didn’t last quite as late in Italy) made Venice pretty special in the early evening. The subtle light set off the canals beautifully and yet another myth was busted – it didn’t stink – except of the ocean when a breeze blew through from the canals.

Our first stop was on the canal near our hotel for some of the best gelato I have ever tasted – I had limone and Dan had chocolate. It was a little hole in the wall establishment, like many that you find in Venice. We wandered along the canal eating our gelato in the most Venetian of traditions – I even had a 50s style strappy sundress on that made me feel like I was in Roman Holiday or something.

We wandered along the well-trodden path to the Rialto Bridge, passing street vendors selling, masks, Murano glass, tons of crap with gondolas on it and all manner of hats. The closer you get to Rialto, the more expensive the shops get – curb side marketeers turned into the Disney shop and high end Italian retailers. I did spy one or two shoe shops that I was keen to revisit the next day. I know, I know – you don’t go to Venice for the shopping but there were sales…

One day I’ll go on holiday and not get sick. Travelling with a fractured foot clearly wasn’t enough. Since our second day in Dubai I have been battling a cold- I thought I was losing my voice the day before the wedding – it held out but it is still quite raspy and punctuated by an impossible to get rid of cough. And of course by the time we arrived in Venice I had shared the love with Dan so he was getting tired and was keen to have some dinner and call it a night. (The State of Massachusetts – Dropkick Murphys – A rollicking tune that could well have been written in Ireland in the 1800s, is actually a modern tale of struggle in modern-day Boston)

It was then we broke the two golden rules of dining in Venice. Don’t eat anywhere on the popular tourist route, especially anywhere close to Rialto Bridge or San Marco Square. And don’t eat anywhere with laminated menus. And those rules held true – Dan had an underwhelming lasagne and I had seafood pasta with the world’s tiniest prawns that had obviously been frozen in a block of freshwater ice which had left them with no taste whatsoever. Lucky it was cheap (even though they add a service charge to the bill to stop tight-arsed Australians (and probably I’m guessing Russians) from scrooging on the tip. Although the Italian girl behind us clearly didn’t think it was cheap enough. She had a ten minute argument with the waiter about what she was going to pay. I think she just wore him down in the end. The entertainment over, we headed back to our luscious hotel room and planned a generous sleep in.

Run to the Hills

German city night line trains are a great way to save time when travelling. We always book the first class cabin with shower and toilet – now don’t get too excited – this is not five star accommodation by any means – One person has to climb up the ladder to get to the top bunk. The shower/ toilet combo has a basin that swings over the toilet so you can use the shower and vice versa. You also have a button to press that operates the shower for about a minute at a time. And the breakfast, like most train food) is nothing to write home about – a pre-packaged brioche, stale roll with liverwurst or jam and an awful coffee. But you do get to sleep lying down and cover a distance that on a high speed Ice train would take at least five hours during the day.

I booked almost all of our train passes and reservations online this trip, except for the Euro City train from Munich to Venice, which I had to book through Rail Europe and have mailed to me. Unfortunately they didn’t have reservations available for the directly connecting train so we had to spend four hours in Munich after a night on the train. Dan wasn’t feeling so well so we first wandered to the park and sat for a while. It looked like a (slightly prettier) Darwin Park, with homeless people camped out across the lawns. We saw the polizei dealing with some kind of dispute and decided to head back toward the tourist information centre to see if there was somewhere nearby to look at. Unfortunately as it was Sunday, they didn’t open until 10am, only a short while before our departure just after 11. We tried to jag entry to the Deutsche Bahn first class lounge but apparently as we were foreigners travelling on a pass, we were only entitled to entry to the foreigners section which was a bunch of chairs in a filthy and hot lino floored room. We headed to the coke café where they serve coke and ice cream. I just had a water. After the tourist bureau opened and I picked up the information brochures, we discovered the BMW museum was in Munich. Needless to say Dan was a bit disappointed we weren’t staying. (Stain – Narco Wendy – the garage band our friends put together in the early 90s (originally called the Killer Dolphins) – this is one of their best tunes – recorded, available on Canberra compilation Legoland Strikes Back and performed at the (now well defunct) Terminus Bar.)

It turns out the Munich to Venice tickets were in a six seat compartment where all the other tickets were sold – the people were nice – an American couple on what appeared to be their first (well researched) trip to Venice and a German couple who travel every second year for the Biennale – but it was quite close and felt a bit crowded. What you do get to do on this route is pass through the Alps, in this case through Austria. Last time I had travelled from Germany to Italy I went through Switzerland and it was in the winter. The Alp[s look very different in the summer – although the houses look exactly like you see in fairy tales, the lush green grass, various fruit trees growing on the hillsides and the occasional mountain blooms were a new treat in the warm, snowless summer – although there was still a dusting of snow on some of the higher peaks. Then there was the mountain summer resort with visitors lazing around a pool in bikinis with pool toys – not the sort of summer activity you find in the Australian Alps at all. When we neared Italy and the scenery got less impressive, I spent some time in the dining car, enjoying a coffee and some peace and blogging. The compartment really wasn’t conducive to blogging as only the window seats (which we didn’t have) were equipped with power and tables. The American couple by the window were happy to have our chargers plugged in though. The train stopped in the middle of nowhere about an hour out of Venice. Our compartment mates speculated that it was because of the overuse of the brakes coming down the mountain and the fact that it was such a hot day. The locals all came out of their houses to watch what was going on. Eventually the train got moving again and we arrived in sweltering Venice. We decided to forgo the crowded Vaporetto (ferry) and walk to the hotel with our rolling luggage – it was quite simple and direct to get there (highly unusual for Venice where the well-worn path to the Rialto Bridge and San Marco square are signposted on the wall every 100 metres or so. Of course that was after we negotiated the Indian porters with their carts and the multitude of Italians trying to sell you some ticket or other. The rumour about rolling luggage being banned – google told us so – but it was very hot on the journey to our fairly swish hotel – the Carnival Palace and when the doors opened we were greeted with wet towels, a smile and a burst of air-conditioning. (Home – Skunkhour – a bit of a traveller’s tale about returning home after too long – not really how I feel after less than two weeks away but I haven’t heard this track in a decade or so and forgot how much I actually like Skunkhour – doing that funky thing before it was a thing.)

The room lived up to the photos which was fabulous (and largely unexpected. It was a four star hotel but the beautiful large marble bathroom with oversized walk-in shower and bidet, some five star touches like slippers and large bath towels, and a few luxe finishes and some flair made it feel like a luxury suite. After our long journey, we chilled out in the room to prepare for an evening out amongst it.

A carnival in Venice

I arrived in Venice to street performers, face painters and buskers, not to mention zillions of people in face masks and many in full operatic regalia. Purely by chance, I had hit Venice at Carnivale. The brochures had said that in the winter when the canals were less smelly, the streets would be deserted and I would be able to wander alone. Not during Carnivale. I don’t think I have ever seen so many people. It was like the Big Day Out, moving slowly through the city with millions of other tourists. Apparently at any time tourists actually outnumber Venetians in the lagoon and especially in the central areas of San Polo and San Marco. This was the first time on the trip so far that I felt like it was OK to be a tourist. Venice is a city of and for tourists from the gondoliers to the stalls selling masks and Venetian glass, it is tourism that is contributing to the city’s problems and tourism that is ensuring its very survival. Most of the Venetians I spoke to either live or work in Mestre on the ‘mainland’. [‘Blue Monday’ – New Order – this always brings back memories of The Manhattan – and blue cocktails – probably two other people reading this blog will have heard of the Manhattan. For everyone else it used to be a club above Woodstock in Civic in the late 80s.]

That was the other difference about Venice – everyone speaks English (except for the tourists from other parts of Europe. And people spoke to me. I met a Venetian guy studying computer science who is thinking about leaving Italy because of the political situation, an Indian studying in France, a group of product design students from Milan – all but one from overseas – India, Malaysia, France and Japan, and a Mexican woman who had been working as a pastry chef in Paris. As is Australia, many of the restaurant and service staff here are Indian or Asian, probably students. Italian with a south east Asian accent is an interesting sound and one you hear often. The advantage of course is that most also speak English. Of course most of the tourists I heard around me were American. And there were some cafes advertising American breakfast of toast or toasted ham and cheese. What’s wrong with pastries or brioche for breakfast I ask you? And if that doesn’t suit, there’s pizza. Good Italian stuff – it’s not like the Italians haven’t heard of pizza for god sake. The Italians may have invented it but the Americans have excelled in turning it into the world’s laziest food.

Despite its status as a tourist mecca, Venice is amazing. The web of winding laneways and alleys are like a maze, with a new discovery around each corner. Sometimes you reach a dead end, sometimes a canal edge with no bridge. Other times there’s a huge Piazza just around a corner where you are expecting to find a dead end. The famed Rialto Bridge, which has stalls and shops up both sides, was never free of people during my brief stay. It was like a huge moving mass of humanity. Similarly, there are so many people in Piazza de San Marco at any given time that you are given the rules when you arrive in Venice – no sitting or lying down in the piazza and no eating or drinking sitting down in the piazza. I suspect that rule doesn’t apply if you are eating at the tables and chairs of the many restaurants in the piazza. While the Basilica was beautifully adorned, as churches go, Il Duomo left a much greater impression on me, [‘That’s Entertainment’ – The Jam – definitely a song for Venice]

I spent hours wandering the streets – I walked to Dosudoro to find Café Blue, which was supposed to have wi-fi. I didn’t find it and later in the evening discovered an internet café with wi-fi just around the corner from the hotel. Unfortunately after an hour of it, I still hadn’t uploaded all my blogging or managed to check all my email as it was very slow and kept dropping out. [‘Know your product’ – The Saints – appropriate as I pass through Bologna, home of that most famous of Italian pastas] In Dosudoro, I came upon a piazza with a market selling vegetables and fish straight off the myriad of fishing boats that inhabit the lagoon and the sea surrounding it.

From here I wandered back though the laneways of San Marco. I decided not to use the map until I got really stuck – all the streets are well signposted and once you get on the main trail to Rialto or San Marco there are additional signs pointing you in the right direction. Most of the buildings here are three stories high right to the street or canal. However, every so often you come across a house with a garden – not a site you usually see in Venice. Apparently you see more of them on a gondola ride, when the gondoliers take you past the ‘places’ of Venice where the well-heeled live. The buildings here, public or private are kept looking like they are in some state of decay, to add to the ancient nature of the city I suppose. Or maybe because with the sea air and the water lapping at the foundations (and I imagine, the rising damp) it is just too difficult to keep the inside and outside looking good.

I decided to take the waterbus across to Lido, the city’s beach strip, where in summer the shores are crammed with Italian sun worshippers. In winter, however, the place is a ghost town and the beach is effectively shut for renovations – at least the area lined with beach pavilions or cabanas. This kind of beachgoing seems very foreign to me. What I’m looking for when I go to the beach is a strip on the south coast somewhere with as few people as possible. And with clear water and white sand. Not here – there are lots of ground up shells and the sand is a grayish brown, like the sort of sand used for construction in Australia. The ocean, like the lagoon in Venice, is a murky green and full of garbage. There are garbage crews constantly working in Venice but it is a filthy dirty place. Early Sunday morning when I rose early to catch the train, the whole place smelt like a giant ashtray after the Saturday night frivolity of Carnivale. All those small laneways hold in the smell I guess. [‘Pretty Vacant’ – The Sex Pistols]

From Lido I stayed on the waterbus to ride along the whole way along the Grand Canal. I considered a gondola ride but it is something I think needs to be enjoyed with someone holding your hand and drinking in the sights with you – there are no gondolas with a single seat. They are all made for two (with additional seats available for groups). And they cost around 100 euros. Doing it James Bond style in a water taxi was no better, and with the amount of traffic on the canals, it’s not like you would reach those kinds of speeds either.

I walked back to Rialto through Santa Croce and San Polo. Santa Croce is clearly the alternative, seedy part of Venice – the work of taggers is visible everywhere her and the are shops selling organic produce as well as fair trade stalls in the market places. It’s where you’d expect to find the Greenpeace office. And there are bars on the windows here. I found this interesting because san Polo and Rialto are no more than five or ten minutes walk away. I guess good and bad neighbourhoods are all relative – five minutes walk is like five minutes drive if there are no cars.

It was about this time, my stomach started to let me know it had been about 24 hours since I had eaten anything so I stopped by one of the pizza stalls where you can buy a slice for two euros. I ordered the margherita with proscuitto and mushrooms. It was awesome. The key to great Italian pizza is exactly the opposite of what I would normally do – the crust is thin and, like all things Italian, al dente (which makes it slightly droopy. It has just a smear of really good pizza sauce, minimal toppings and lots of really good Italian cheese.

After an hour in the wi-fi store, I got myself a mask to get into the spirit of Carnivale. Like my Halloween parties, attendees at Carnivale without some sort of costume end up feeling like fish out of water. I also picked up some other sounvenirs, including a Venetian glass necklace and headed back to the hotel. On the hotel, it was rudimentary, with a lino floor and looked like the long forgotten spare rooms at my nanna’s house. Now for a city, with water problems, Venice has some drainage issues. I was sure I was going to flood the bathroom and the shower was really only a trickle at best. And in further proof that Venice is a city for lovers, the two luxury bath sheets were twisted into two swans touching beaks in a love heart – at least I am pretty sure that’s what they were supposed to be. [‘Purple Sneakers’ – You Am I – for some reason this song, more than any other, reminds me of sweaty, smoky winter gigs at the uni bar – the old uni bar that used to stay open for an hour after a show and where you could smoke inside.]

With my mask on (which teamed oh so nicely with my backpacker chic of skate shoes, army pants, a fleece jacket and a Dr Seuss T-shirt) I headed out to find dinner. A couple of notes on my attire – Venice was Canberra winter cold, not Scandinavia cold so I retired the puffy jacket and thermals – I may need them again in the UK and probably Scottish Highlands but for now it sans extreme winter wear. And Dr Seuss is recognized in Venice – a gondolier walked past me and said ‘Dr Seuss – bella’

I decided to sit and enjoy dinner in a restaurant by the main canal with a nice glass of Chianti. As all the local seafood was fresh, I decided on an octopus salad followed by a seafood pasta. Both were superb. The baby octopus was indeed fresh, nicely marinated and likely cooked. The salad was what looked like iceberg lettuce, radicchio (the vegetable not the purple tinged hydro lettuce, some spring onions and lemon on the side to squeeze onto it. Salads in Italy come with a number of condiments – olive oil (in case there’s not enough in the salad), a salt shaker and a big black pepper mill. Yes, you get to put your own on the food here.

During dinner, I talked to the single diner sitting next to me – the Mexican I had mentioned earlier. We spoke about Mexico, Italy, Paris and Australia. Her favourite TV show in Mexico is McLeod’s Daughters (yes I cringed) and she was surprised to learn that Australians mostly lived in cities. When I told her the population of Australia was 20 million, she laughed – Mexico City’s population alone is about 25 million. Frightening really. The Italian student working in the wi-fi store had a similar reaction when I told him the slogan for the winning party in our last election was Kevin 07. Sometimes it’s hard to explain that Australians do actually take some things seriously.

After dinner I got into the street party spirit of Carnivale and had a couple of Bellinis and a few mulled wines (nothing wrong with mixing up the cultures in Venice. Then I boogied with the crowd to some house music in one piazza and some African drumming in another. By about 10:30pm it was starting to get a bit messy and I was noticing those same tendencies you see in pubs everywhere at about 4am so I headed back to the hotel to kip – After all I had to bid farewell to Carnivale at 8am [‘Jesus Built My Hot Rod’ – Ministry – the perfect Venetian tune – debauchery in a city filled with churches.]