Some Things About Venice

In which hopes and temperatures are high.

I have wanted to go to Venice since I was a child. I read Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord, a novel that takes place in Venice, and knew it was my destiny, as 11-year-olds so often know with total confidence¹. 

I have heard people either love or hate Venice. It’s so unique; and that can be good or bad, depending on the person. My expectations were so high, though. Like, I knew some people say it is smelly and overcrowded and hot, especially in, oh, say, the peak of tourist season in the middle of a heatwave. But my hopes had been building for almost 20 years, and there really wasn’t much I could do to tamp them down. If I was going to be disappointed, I’d be disappointed. But I physically could not lower my expectations. Thanks, Cornelia!!!

But, apparently, Fran Lebowitz (that most Italian of writers) once said “If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you’ve imagined. Venice is. Venice is better.”

That’s how I felt too.

Look, if you only go to the most crowded and touristy parts of the city, yes, it is crowded and touristy. But we found plenty of empty and picturesque streets that felt like being in a fairytale. And, even in the middle of July, it wasn’t difficult. It was very hot, but that’s showbiz baby.

Venice isn’t a normal place. It’s 116(ish — accounts vary) islands and over 170 canals connected by more than 420 bridges. When people fled to the lagoon for refuge from invaders and conquerors during the fifth century, it started to get crowded. It’s difficult to wrap my head around how they even came up with this, but they dug a bunch of canals and pounded thousands of long pillar-like things down into the mud, then built solid stone platforms on top of that. And then they put Venice on top of THAT.

Truly, can you even imagine the amount of effort and dedication? As someone who sometimes can’t find the motivation to, I don’t know, write a blog post, or get up to pour a glass of water even when I’m really thirsty, I, personally, cannot. And I’m so thankful they built this marvelous, mad city.

We did a city tour with a bohemian Italian woman who is passionate about sustainable tourism. She showed us a haunted house and told us that wood-burning ovens are banned in Venice, so it’s not a good place to order pizza. She told us some basic tourist traps to watch out for, like menus with pictures on them and super cheap “authentic” Murano glass. She also said, in her opinion, that taking a gondola ride is actually worth it, because where else are you going to take a gondola ride, you know?² She also explained how difficult it is to become a gondolier and now I feel like gondoliers are some sort of elite race of superhumans.

Gondola rides are $80 for 30 minutes, and we hadn’t decided whether we were going to do one. It seemed dreamy, but expensive. But maybe not crazy expensive for such an iconic activity.³ However, it’s $80, total, whether you are one person or five people (it does max out at five people because, you know, you don’t want to capsize). So, we teamed up with another couple on our group tour and took a gondola ride together. We had a lovely chat, and we got pictures like this one, so all-in-all, it was a wonderful way to spend half an hour.

A fun fact about me is that I just learned this year I have been mispronouncing “gondola” my whole life.

Sometimes travel feels like a constant series of decisions of whether to do the touristy thing. Of course, traveling is, in some ways, an inherently touristy thing to do. I think all I can say, in my experience, is that it’s a balance between personal preference and thinking about how you can support the people who live in the city.

You know, eat at local restaurants, try to spend your time and money in places a little more off the beaten path. But I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with, say, wanting to see the Colosseum in Rome or the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the most iconic spot in any given city. These things tend to be world famous for a reason, and I think good old-fashioned marveling is good for the soul. And oftentimes the locals won’t begrudge you that anyway, so long as you’re being respectful and not carving your name into the Colosseum or whatever.

Still, here are a couple of things we liked that were not St. Mark’s Square or the Rialto Bridge (which were both beautiful, and also swarming with people).

Santa Maria Della Salute

A lovely church which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary as a thanks for ending a big plague in 1631. There’s a sweeeet statue of Mary driving the plague out of the city.

The lady on the left represents Venice, saying “SOS, Mary!” Mary is in the middle, going, “no prob. plague, you have to leave” And the lady running for her life on the right is the personification of the plague.

The Borges Labyrinth

If you happen to like the writer Jose Luis Borges, we enjoyed seeing this labyrinth which was constructed to mark the 25th anniversary of his death. It was commissioned by his widow, because Borges so loved Venice and often used the labyrinth as a theme in his work. There’s a special piece of music composed specifically to listen to while walking through the labyrinth. It was a nice, nerdy thing to do that was off of the main islands.

Festa del Redentore

We stayed in a hostel on the island of Giudecca, which is normally reachable from the main part of Venice only by water taxi. However, through sheer luck and absolutely no foresight of our own, we were there during the Festa del Redentore, a big festival that originated as a way to give thanks for (another) an enormous plague in 1576. Someone promised God if the plague ended, they’d build a big church, and the plague ended. So they had to build a church, but they threw in a party to make things fun.

So, on this weekend, because the festival is based on Giudecca, they construct a big temporary pontoon bridge connecting it to the main part of Venice. This was incredibly convenient for us, because we could just walk right over to the main islands whenever we wanted.

The festival itself was mostly organized around a big fireworks display, which was nice. More fun, though, was watching Italians watch fireworks. As an American, I’ve seen fireworks countless times. But the people around us were rapt. Kind of like I was, all day long.

My face the whole time we were in Venice EXCEPT during the fireworks, because I was tired and they were going on too long.

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Questions of the Week:

If you promised God you would build a big church if the plague ended, and then the plague ended, would you build a church?

Have you ever gone to a touristy destination and purposely skipped the most touristy parts (like not seeing the Eiffel Tower in Paris)?

Recommendation of the Week:

Go to Venice? Read The Thief Lord, a children’s book by Cornelia Funke? In keeping with the Italian recipes theme of last week, I recommend this pasta e lenticchie.

1. I mentioned this book to Jeff and he said that his mom bought it for him as a kid but he only read ten pages of it because he wasn’t enjoying it. Maybe we aren’t compatible after all.

2. The Venetian in Las Vegas doesn’t count.

3. Jeff and I had a good laugh over one woman’s blog about why she HATED Venice. Some of our favorite quotes: “I literally had a HEART ATTACK at the price of a gondola ride.” She got fined for not validating her public transportation ticket (which is a common requirement in many cities) and “flipped out” because “this was absolute bullshit obviously.” The blog closed with the claim that “[Redacted] and I are probably the most positive people you’ll ever meet.”