This morning Whitney and I took an earrrrrly morning flight from Lyon to Venice. When I was first planning this trip, I found that I could avoid a hefty (~$800 after taxes) one-way international car rental fee if I picked up in Paris and dropped off in Lyon (France) rather than Rome. It also made sense time-wise so that we wouldn't have to spend hours in the car from Switzerland to Venice and Rome.
So we booked a night at an airport hotel and Lyon (a shortish drive from the Swiss Alps), with a morning flight from to Venice. A 6 AM flight. I figured that it was a regional airport, so we could get there just an hour before. As it turns out, construction at the airport meant that we had to arrive 2 hr ahead of time, which meant waking at 3:30 AM, and considering I was up until 1:30 AM figuring out the packing situation, I had the fun opportunity today of practicing a positive attitude about staying awake and alert. And not tearing my hair out (gotta preserve what I have!) at the hordes of bumbling tourists. I know, I know- what a sob story.
Venice greeted us with a wet, blustery day. Almost as if to say, "Welcome to Venice, you filthy animals." I'm not sure why Venice would say it that way, but it sounds good in my head.
Despite the rain, the environs were still unique and charming, with many opportunities to pause and take it all in.
We walked across Venice from the bus station to our hotel, and at first I was a little surprised to see bags of trash lining the street. But then we found that garbage men were still making their rounds. They would call out "Rifiuti!" or something else that I can only meant, "Trash!" and wheel around these carts (that were fun to dodge in tiny alleyways) collecting the bags.
My family has been to Venice before, and I totally didn't remember having to cross so many canals via bridges to get anywhere. But I suppose that, as Venice is an archipelago of 118 islands, one would have to cross a bridge to walk further than a few blocks. The canal water is also much cleaner (for the most part) than I remember.
The roads can be especially narrow and winding, like a maze set in the valleys between tall buildings. I think that much of Venice was built before the 1600s, before they needed to make room for a Ford Expeditions and Hummers to travel the streets, so it only makes sense that the planners would minimize road size to foot traffic to maximize real estate. Still, the teensy, dark alleys took a little getting used to (especially after discussing Jack the Ripper in London).
Due to the rain, we decided that today would be a fantastic museum day. Everyone else had the same idea, which increased the waiting lines for many attractions. Luckily, we had an ace up our sleeves: the museum pass. We bought this combo pass and were able to bypass scores of queued tourists to see the Correr Museum (featuring historical art of Venice), the Doge's Palace (opulent building for the seat of government), and a costume/perfume museum.
The symbol for Venice is the Lion (St. Mark is the patron saint), so I got to see lots of big cats in art. It was wonderful.
View of St. Mark's Basilica and the campanile from the Doge's Palace.
The Doge's Palace had been decorated to impress visiting dignitaries, and I thought that some of their architectural methods were pretty clever. Exhibit A: the ceiling of a stairwell. This stairwell is the entrance into the palace, and the panels in the ceiling look perfectly balance and rectangular from this perspective (looking up in awe as one enters).
However, once you're in the stairwell, you realize that they're not squares, but rhomboids!
If a person were found guilty of a criminal, they would be lead from the palace via a bridge to a connecting prison. As this afforded the new convict the probably final view of Venice, writers in the Romantic Era dubbed this the Bridge of Sighs.
"Ah, Venice."
We wanted to eat like a local for lunch, so we stopped into a bit of a greasy spoon, where was had to elbow our way up to the counter and attempt ordering in Italian.
Most of what we got was fried snacky things, like Arancini (something I've pined after since our trip in 2002), fried Mozarella sticks, fried mashed potato balls, etc. It's a good thing I've been conditioning by living in the South.
After our fry fest, Whitney said, "So... how do you feel about eating gelato in the rain?" Um, that was a no-brainer! We shared a cone with a caramel scoop and a pistachio scoop.
One of the major industries in Venice's history has been glass. It used to be much more difficult to blow and shape glass, which meant that the rich and famous liked to flaunt it. I suppose this this method of conspicuous consumption was effective in earlier centuries, but now this colored chandeliers just look to me... I dunno.... kinda tacky, like you'd find it in a dusty garage sale. Maybe I have poor taste. Probably.
We finally got to check in to our hotel (like I said, our flight got us in niiiiice and early), and when we opened the door to our one-star hotel room, its long and narrow dimensions jumped out at us.
Then I heard some street noise... nay, CANAL noise beyond the window, and opened it to discover a balcony overlooking the canal!
We found out that 70% of the hotel's rooms are long and narrow to fit in as many canal views as possible. Makes sense.
At 5 PM, the sounds of bells from the nearby church filled the air for 20 minutes. There are seven churches with about 200 meters, so it was a bit of a symphony.
We took a passeggiata, or evening walk to St. Mark's Square and enjoyed sampling music from various cafe quintets. La vita e bella!
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