The Canals of Venice

The Grand Canal

Venice is amazing.

When I was a young boy I remember hearing about Venice.  Venice was a far-off city that did not have streets or sidewalks.   To travel in Venice you had to take a boat or, in my mind, swim.  Since I loved the water it sounded like paradise to me.  The image I had was that the water was clear, warm and exceedingly swimmable.  The boats would have been canoes or rowboats. To get into a house you would swim underwater into an indoor swimming pool.  Everyone spent all their time in bathing suits.

Venice is amazing, but it is not like that.  Swimming in the canals is forbidden, and for a very good reason.  People don’t so much swim in the canals as dissolve in them.   You would not stick anything in the canals that you would want back.  The sewage from the city pours into the canals along with pretty much anything else that you don’t want anymore.  Granted the water is exchanged twice a day with the tides but it does not clear it out completely.  The water in the canals is not like the water in the lakes and streams I was used to as a small boy.  The water is a murky greeny-browny colour.  There is some seaweed that attaches itself to the sides of the canals but apparently it keeps dying.

Gondolier on the non-smelly canal

Interestingly enough the city does not smell.  In spite of all the water there is no damp or sewer smell.  In Victoria if you go down to the ocean you can smell ocean.  I suspect, in Venice, that the lack of smell is due to the lack of growth in the water.  If you stay out of the water you should be good.

The city is far more beautiful than I expected.  The big three places people visit in Italy are Rome, Florence and Venice.  Rome was interesting, albeit crowded.  Florence, which we saw ten years ago, was beautiful but very touristy.  Venice is less touristy and far more interesting than either.   Strangely it has a more laid-back feel. 

The canal just outside our place in Venice

My childhood vision of Venice is that it was a floating city.  All the buildings and sidewalks floated on the water and, if you wanted, you could tow the city to another place.  Venice is actually a multitude of small islands in a lagoon.  They were all independent little towns originally but they gradually amalgamated due to economic benefit and unequal weaponry.  Bridges were built.  Lots of bridges!  409 bridges to be exact - linking all the islands.

The interesting thing about all those bridges is that they are not ramps – they are steps.  That makes the transporting of goods an interesting problem.  There are two ways to transport stuff in Venice – buy boat or by cart.  By boat is easy as long as your destination is near the water otherwise you have to transport your goods by cart. The tricky part is getting those carts over the bridges.  Think of wheeling a fully loaded wheelbarrow up some stairs and then back down some more stairs.  Eggs are an uncommon commodity in Venice.  Those bridges account for the absence of cars and bicycles in Venice.

Telen on one of the myriad bridges 

The city grew based on the position of the islands and not with any kind of well thought out plan.  All of the streets are quite narrow alleys that periodically empty out onto a Piazza.  The alleys vary in size from quite wide roads that you could actually drive a car down to ones that can barely pass two Italians (or one American) through.  Yet, these are still main thoroughfares.  Getting lost is a cinch.

Venice was a rich and powerful nation of its own for a long time.  It could afford to spend a lot of money on itself.   It did.  St. Mark’s square (Piazza San Marco) is an ode to conspicuous spending.  There is, of course, the Cathedral for which the Piazza is named. It would appear as if the Venetian merchants travelled around the world and picked up various bits and pieces of architecture and brought it home and stuck it on the church.  It certainly has a unique look to it – a mixture of Christian, Muslim, Greco-Roman mythology and Jewish.  It kind of looks like those cars with all the plastic figurines stuck on them.  The interior is painted in what appears to be gold-flecked paint.  I wonder if God is impressed.

Telen in Piazza San Marco

Inside is a font of holy water.  What makes holy water holy?  I asked Telen that and why they always keep it at just below boiling temperature. She said, “They don’t keep it hot!”  I said, “So why does it burn when it touches you?” 

The eye-rolling grimace was worth it.

The area surrounding Piazza San Marco is still an area of conspicuous consumption.  This is where you go to get into some serious debt.  The Danieli is a hotel just off the piazza.  It has rooms that run from $250.00 (single bed - one person) per night to $9,900.00 per night.  I am not sure how many people are allowed in the latter but I would hope it would be the whole tour group.  The shops surrounding the piazza have all kinds of expensive names like Prada, Giorgio Armani, and Salvador Ferragamo.  Apparently if you have these people’s names on your clothes they cost considerably more than if you have non-Italian names like Stanfield or MEC.  I am not sure why people spend over $1000.00 for a pair of pants.  I don’t care what amount of money I spend on pants they would still have me in them and it would still look like me.  Giorgio Armani would not want his name associated with that look, believe me.

Young lady with Daddy... or is that Sugar Daddy?

Italians are very conscious of their looks.  Telen has been checking out all the Italian men with their full heads of hair, impeccable good looks, and suave charm.  They all strut around with their tight pants, collars flipped up and thumbs hooked into their pockets.  She has been urging me to try to look like them.  The problem is my t-shirts don’t have collars, tight pants don’t fit my belly and hair gel just makes my head shiny.  If I hook my thumbs into my pockets it looks like I am trying desperately to take my pants off.  I got my suave lessons from Abbott and Costello.  Poor Telen – holding a lump of coal in her hand with her nose pressed up to the jewelry store window looking at all the diamonds.  (Rand is a “diamond-in-the-rough”—Telen)

Diamond in the rough?   Nope - just a piece of coal.  No, I have not suddenly grown really tall - the doorway is just really short!

Venice is a very picturesque city.  I love wandering around looking at the beautiful architecture, the canals, the bridges and the myriad alleys.  Telen loves looking at the sights too, but I suspect tight pants could be added to her list.  We see the gondoliers paddling their gondolas up and down the canals but I haven’t heard anyone singing “O Sole Mio” yet.  The motorboats are probably drowning it out.  Strangely Venice is the only Italian city I have seen that has graffiti.  I think the other cities would crucify someone who spray-painted on their 1000-year-old walls.  In Venice the walls are only about 500 years old. 

Venice is a truly beautiful city.  The scenery is amazing, the food, coffee and gelato are what you would expect in Italy – fabulous.  If you like shopping be sure to bring your sugar-daddy (or sugar-mommy) because bargains never existed here.  We had an excellent little apartment down a back alley and around a corner that was beautiful and fairly inexpensive and we didn’t buy any Prada at all so the trip was affordable.  Venice is worth it.

Telen writes:

I have always wanted to visit Venice and am not disappointed now that I have.  It is as beautiful as a postcard.  It is so unreal to see front doorsteps only 3 feet away from the water.  One can say that every building in the city has “waterfront” view!  Everyone here, young and old, walk.  I saw toddlers taking wobbly steps along the walkways, little ones riding their bikes and elderly walking along with their canes.  There are absolutely no safety rails along the canals and no one seems to fall into the water either, at least I have not seen any bodies. They may have dissolved.

I was very surprised that one can travel to Venice by train.  How does a train travel through the canals around Venice?  As we journeyed north from Siena, the landscape gradually changed from hills to farmlands.  Suddenly I noticed a large body of water with a man-made causeway on which our train sped its way straight towards Venice.  It was quite unreal.

There is not a single car in Venice and hence no traffic lights.  The canals are filled with various motorboats, water taxi and tourist gondolas.  I saw a traffic cop with a radar trap and a whistle standing at the edge of the canal, trying to catch water traffic violators.

Venetian traffic cop

When we left Venice today for the Italian Lakes up north, I suddenly realized how quiet and peaceful Venice is without all the cars.