Venice the beautiful Venice

Venice the beautiful Venice.  It is a striking city. It’s full of boats, bridges, decaying buildings, art, architecture, great food and tourists. Venice gets something like 60,000 tourists a day.  And I saw them all.  They were everywhere.  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to live in Venice just because of that.  It is a beautiful place to live, but I would declare a day, just one day, where tourists couldn’t enter the city.  Only residents could.  I think that is the only way I and many other people would get any peace and quiet.  But you don’t move to Venice if you don’t like tourists.  So I guess I am not moving to Venice.

I wanted to couch surf, but the hosts in Venice are just overwhelmed with people asking for a place to stay.  In the end two people replied that I could stay for one night, but I really don’t think you can get to know someone in one day.  It’s always better to stay a couple of days so you can spend time with your host.  So I ended up getting a hostel, a little bit outside the city.    The hardest part, for me, always seems to be finding the mysterious hostel.  These entities I can never find without internet and a lot of help from several people.  I ended up taking a taxi… around the block.  I didn’t care by then.  I had been walking around unsuccessfully looking for internet and the hostel.  I found it and just chilled out the rest of the night.   The guy at the desk was super nice, even though he made fun of me for taking a taxi a block.

The next day I found a café outside the hostel and then headed off into the big wide world of tourism.  The   bus was packed, a guy was checking tickets to make sure everyone had paid, and then when we got off and there were more people.  Like a river flowing in two directions.  One river of people went over a huge bridge and the other went toward little bridges.  I took the road most traveled and soon double backed to where there were less people.  I just wandered around for 3 hours, marveling at the bridges, boats and beautiful things everywhere. 

There were people hawking things everywhere.  My favorite thing they were trying to sell was the venetian masks.  They had specialties shops along with the carts with the mass produced versions.  I wanted to get  one so bad, but can you imagine putting one of those into a suitcase for the next 4 months and not have it get crushed or broken. Sadly I could not buy one with good conscious.  So I got post cards instead and was horrified at the price of stamps.  Two Euros per post card!  

I started to look for a little non-touristy restaurant to have a late lunch when I ran into Marta.  The first thing she asked me was if I spoke Spanish.  “Si”, then a stream of rapidly spoken Spanish after.  Yup I speak Spanish, kind of… dear lord.  This made me feel more inept than in Spain.  It turns out she was having a hard time finding a place to stay.  Venice is quite expensive.  I ended up booking a hostel outside of the city, because the hostels inside the city start at 75 Euros (around $100).  She had been wandering around, going from hotel to hotel, looking for a place to stay.  In no way was she going to spend 100 Euros a night for a one star hotel.  So in the end we booked her a room at my hostel and she came and stayed with me, in my room. 

She was a strange and lovely lady.  Marta is in her 50s, but acted like she was 30.  She took a month tour of Italy to visit her cousin and to unwind after months of taking care of her sick mother.    She didn’t mind my Spanish was sub-par. She liked talking and liked the company. I liked her company as well.  We spent the next two days together; walking, eating and taking boats together. 

 I felt like I hindered her trip a bit.  After walking around all day I like to have an early night, so I usually head back to the wherever I am staying around 6.  She wanted to stay out and see the romantic night life of Venice, but really needed a companion to get around comfortably.  So we stayed out a bit, drink a beer on the canals and then head back.  Not a bad compromise.

While I was in Venice I didn’t eat very much pasta.  I mostly ate street food, like croissants, sandwiches and calzones.  I don’t like to dine alone, so I usually just grab something I can eat while walking around and looking at things.  Marta, even though she was on a budget, wanted to have a good Italian meal.  So we sat down and had a delicious dinner on the first night we met.  She had lasagna and I had gnocchi with a Gorgonzola cream sauce.  I had this with a traditional Italian drink called a Spritz.  The pasta was good.  The drink was horrible.  The drink is prepared with prosecco wine, a dash of some bitter liqueur such as Aperol, Campari, Cynar, or, especially in Venice, with Select. The glass is then topped off with sparkling mineral water.   Yuck, between the two of us we couldn’t finish it.

One of the most interesting cultural quirks of Venice is the boats.  Venetians use them like cars.  And it makes perfect sense.  It’s easier to get to your destination by boat than it is to get there on the roads (that have no cars).  The ambulance, police, gas delivery guys, mail…. You name it, they take it by boat.  The second day Marta and I were in Venice we decided to get a day pass for the public transport boats.  What a wonderful idea.  We took the one down the main canal, then we took another boat to Lido and another around the little islands outside Venice.  The islands were so pretty, with their brightly colored houses and old style buildings. 

It was a very relaxing day.  At the end of the day we took a night boat down the main canal again.  Venice is so pretty at night.  We had free entry into the casino, so we got off and went in there as well.  The guys there were amused by us.  It’s obvious that we weren’t gambling, but just being tourists and looking around.  The casino was lovely.  It had a covered dock that taxis could pull up to and a courtyard that was manicured.  Inside it was all brocade walls, velvet curtains and red carpets.  I was quite impressed.  So was Marta.

Marta Left in the morning and I left in the afternoon.  My last meal was calzones and a beer in a secluded part of Venice.  I sat on the steps and watched the locals take their boats around and just enjoyed the view and the quiet.  Bye Bye Venice.