Day 21: Full day in Venice, Doge's Palace, the Basilica, Winged Lions A Plenty

It was my first (and only) full day in Venice, and I decided to wake up early to make the best of it. This meant awakening at 7:00 AM and attempting to do my morning thumping-arounds as quietly as possible to avoid awakening the other hostel-dwellers - more difficult then it sounds. Thankfully they made some distressed moanings but stayed vertical, and I was able to get out the door.


Venetians are deadly serious about baked goods.

It was Sunday morning and there was almost no one on the street - Venice doesn't possess much in the way of natives - and I made my way to a sweet shop to have a cappuccino and re-align myself. I ended up befriending the owner, who spoke good English and apparantly made a mint off of American college students in his discoteque upstairs. Whatever works, good sir, whatever works.


A detail from the Basilica.


More details, more lions. Playing Spot the Goddamn Winged Lion is a pretty fun game in Venice.




This is a tower with a flag by it.


This is a tower without a flag by it.


This is the base of a tower.

The grocery store opened up and I wolfed down some yogurt and cherries, then headed to St. Mark's square for some intensive touristing. I am allergic to lines and would not wait in a line for, I dunno, the heavenly chorus, so my heart fell when I saw a big ol' morning line for the basilica.


Passageway into the Square. Note the Winged Lion. Can someone tell me what the guys up there with the bell symbolize? The clock below is comprised of the Zodiac symbols.


Another view of Lion + Mysterious Naked Bell Ringers.


St. Marks is of mild popularity on Sunday mornings.


A side door into the basilica.

But the line wasn't quite as long as it initially appeared, so I girded my loins (does that sound mildly dirty to you) and decided to wait. I had to put on a Holy Wrap Skirt around my legs, but then I was in. The basilica is gorgeous and Byzantine style, covered in gold gilt, elaborate mosiac work, and amazing relics and statues collected from the world over. The Basilica was originally not a church but instead the private chapel of the Doge of Venice, who presumably could have the whole damn thing to himself whenever the mood struck him. However, being a Doge of Venice wasn't actually as great at it sounds - indeed, the Doge's powers were almost entirely symbolic, rendering him an impotent vice-president of a ruler.


The Square. Believe these are old parliamentary and administrative buildings.


St. Marks from behind: pointy. Like many other historical monuments in Europe. Pointy. Pointillism. I should stop.


A gorgeous gold-gilt mosaic on the Basilica. Note the horses above.


More detail shots. I like them.


Another shot of administrative buildings.

The stairs up to the basilica museum were very steep, and I was afraid of tumbling backwards and causing a horrible tourist disaster. This did not happen. The actual church was shut - it was Sunday morning - but from the museum nestled around the actual sanctum, you could hear the up-and-down tones of the priest's singing and the chorus. It was beautiful and extremely atmospheric. I wonder what you have to do to get into a Sunday service at St. Marks? Have an incurable cancer or be exceptionally holy or something of that nature?


The Square from above - note the pillars. Executions used to be held in between them back in the good old days!

I headed out onto the walkway, which allows an excellent view of the Square and the teeming zillions of tourist below.


Replicas of the Four Tetrarchs.

The walkway puts you right beneath the impressive testicles of the Four Tetrarchs, a group of monumental horse statues captured from the Hippodrome of Roman Constantinople. Doge Enrico Dandolo captured the horses in
1204 after the sacking of Constantinople, and they were put on St Marks around 1254. Napoleon did remove the horses to Paris for a stint - he used them in the design of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel - but they were returned in 1814 and here they have remained. The horses on display are replicas, and the real deal is on display inside the museum. They really are magnificent works, all rippling muscle and flaring nostrils and that other stuff that makes people all sentimental about horses. The mostly-copper skins of the horses were scratched up so that they might better absorb light (in case you were curious, and you were, weren't you?



As for the museum - no photos allowed, so sowwy. I particularly enjoyed the displays of incredibly antiquated mosiacs - it is always amazing to witness what our forebears could do with tiles of colored clay and glass. The staring and round eyes of the older Bynzantine art was particularly arresting. I am an agnostic and have no formal religion, but I enjoy visiting places of worship the entire world over - Buddhist, Catholic, Islamic, whatever, I enjoy it. I think religious sites get at some essential human truth that reverbates with us all - I don't neccesarily believe in an omnipotent deity, but I do recognize that humanity has been seeking out answers in religion for a few millenia now and the impulse is worthy of study and interest.


A canal near the Arsenal, complete with posing gondolier.


Another shot of same because I'm silly like that. WHICH ONE IS BETTER?!?




Another view of same.



After the museum, I decided do some more exploring, as well as hunt down a decent place to eat lunch. I walked alongside the lagoon for a while, enjoying the perfect weather and the site of huge luxury yachts and tiny little skiffs weaving in and out of one another. I prowled through the back alleys for a while, avoiding pushy gondoliers (80 euro is too damn steep for a glorified boat ride, says I). I ended up near the old Venetian Arsenal.




why yes it is a winged lion so terrifically unusual i know

The Venetian Arsenal used to be one of the biggest-deals in Venice, hosting the city's world renowned ship building activities. It's said to have been built in 1104 (though no one really knows,) and the place is even mentioned in Dante's Inferno. The Venetians were badass ship builders and could, at the height of their powers, turn out one ship a day, a precursor to the incredible volumes of the Industrial Revolution. The Arsenal's innovators also made many excellent improvements to handguns and firearms, finally unseating the crossbow as everyone's favorite weapon of death and destruction. The lions around the entrance are especially impressive - they come from all over, including a couple from Greece and one with 11th century Scandinavian graffiti on it. (Does anyone else like ancient graffiti as much as I do? Getting proof that elder generations were just as dorky as we are fills me with delight).



I found a nice row of restaurants by the Arsenal, and stopped in at a small seafood-specializing place for a plate of seafood antipasto. Venice is, not surprisingly, renowned for its seafood, and this was a really delicious specimen of such. I particularly enjoyed the crunchy-chewy octopus salad and the delicious fried sardines in cold cream sauce. Cold seafood antipasto is about the perfect thing to have for lunch on a bitch-hot Venice day, as it was shaping up to become.


Canal - gondola- taxi pileup OH NO.


Same thing. Don't worry, everyone lived!

After lunch, I figured it would be wise to check out the Doge's Palace, which everyone says is unmissable and all that junk. I wandered over and bought a ticket using my student ID (yes!), then headed inside. The scale of the place is immense: I was particularly impressed by the tremendous staircase up to the Doge's personal apartments, which is almost disgustingly classical and heroic in design. (It is a gothic palace to be entirely accurate). The palace also contained "Lion's Mouths," decorated slots that were literally complaint booths - if you had an issue with the government or wanted to tattle on your neighbor, you could slip a piece of paper in the slot with the assurance that the authorities would read it. Handy.


The stairs to the Doge's palace. For Triumphal Walking.

I walked up to the apartments, and was pleased by the huge map room, which contained a hilariously inaccurate 16th century rendering of California and an upside down and extremely stunted take on India. The actual living spaces were not particularly huge or ornate, although they did contain some excellent art, including some distressing works by the great (and greatly disturbed) Hieronymus Bosch, depicting writhing demons in hell or something of that nature.


Carpaccio's lion. Bro's just chilling.

I particularly liked Carpaccio's rendering of Venice's winged lion, which can be seen above. (The lion is standing half on the water and half on the land, to symbolize the city's dual interests). Why is Venice mad for winged lions? The story begins when some Venetian authorities decided it would be swell to steal the remains of St Mark from Egypt for internment in their own city. The moldering corpse was, apparently, covered in pork to deter the local Muslims from opening up the container they had placed the Saint in. St Mark's body was successfully taken to Venice, and St. Mark's traditional symbol, a winged and halo-wearing lion, was adopted for Venice's purposes.


The bridge of sighs is behind that blue thing. It's Under Construction.

Next was the Bridge of Sighs, as coined by Lord Byron - legend has it that people walking over the bridge to the prison would snatch one last look at the lagoon out of the gridded windows and sigh. Truth is the bridge was never used in this fashion, but it's a swell story and we're sticking to it. As Abroad is Always Under Construction, the bridge was covered up in sky blue wrapping and pictures of pissed-off looking Italian models, but you could still walk through - it's a twisty, turning, claustrophobic thing, although there is a bit of a view of the lagoon. The prison chambers were as dank and depressing as you could ask for. I enjoyed looking at the super-old graffiti within them. Unfortunately could not understand the Japanese tour smack dab in front of me.

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Ain't dat a purty sight?


Also purty.

After the palace, I wandered back to the hostel to sort out my train tickets back to Switzerland. At the hostel, I ran into one of my room-mates, who turned out to be from Tennessee and a nice guy. We ended up heading over to the train station together and chatting about barbeque, which is something us red blooded Americans seem to invariably miss when abroad (unless you are a vegan or some freaky shit like that). Along the way back to the hotel, a pigeon crapped on him, point blank. They say it's good luck. Well, it didn't crap on me so perhaps the old saying is true. I met the rest of the room-mates - a girl from Japan, an Australian guy, and the American guy's friend - and chatted for a while before heading out again.



I wanted to go back to the museums, but it was later then I realized, so I ended up hanging out on the dock to finish up my cherries, sip some pre-dinner grappa, and watch a gigantic Greek (?) cruise ship come out of the port.


People in gondola who I do not know. Hello!


My view from my dinner table. Poor long suffering me.

For dinner, I decided one one of the restaurants along the water, on the way to the Arsenal. Although this restaurant was a mere block further along the water then the other, more frequented waterside restaurants, it featured good prices and no annoying-ass touts trying to hurry my ass inside. Therefore I picked it, and selected a nice seat with a view of the sun going down. Yum. I really despise restaurants with touts aside, trying to get you to come in, especially as many of the Italian specimens decide that hitting on me is a great way to get me to come inside. No, I would not like a side of hot smokin' sexual harassment with my fritto misto, senor.




This was REALLY GOOD spinach. Just so you know.

I had seafood soup Venetian style which was downright delicious. Perfectly cooked shrimp, baby octopus, mussels and clams, a delicate saffron and garlic flavored broth - the ideal meal for a summer evening on the lagoon. With a side of spinach cooked in garlic and olive oil, it was a simple and good meal and a definite highlight.


Sundown. Hideous, I know. Rather like Detroit in flu season.

After dinner, I walked back to the hostell to try to find the others, who had gone out (and since they didn't have cell phones, no way to contact em'.) Not that there was much going on in the way of nightlife, anyway. Venice on Sunday nights is a veritable wasteland for sin and pleasure seekers. I ended up going to bed at an unseemly 11:00.

Day 20: Venice!

Today, I left Bellinzona in the early morning and boarded the train for Venice. Europe, as we Americans are always surprised to find, is not that large - it's a mere five hours from Ticino to Venezia via high-speed rail. I hustled my oversized bag onto the train and was quickly speeding down past Lake Como to Milano Central. The train for Venice was already there, and I hopped on and stowed my possessions. The forecast called for rain and misery in Venice, but I hoped very much that the weather gods would be wrong.




A hidden passageway.

The trip to Venice went quickly, through a region of Italy I hadn't really seen before. You can tell you're approaching Venice as the nature of the sky changes (proximity to water) and the vegetation begins to give way to shores of seashell and gravel. The train eventually heads out onto a bridge over choppy and grey water: you can't see the city from the train, approaching, but you know it's there. The train ground to a stop and I hopped off: thankfully, it wasn't raining, just a bit overcast and sticky (as is the nature of seaside towns). Apparantly Venice is afflicted with mosquitos but I did not encounter a single one during my stay - although mosquitos seem to find me really disgusting and don't usually bite me. (YES).



View from the bridge across from the train station. I was not all that keen on going to Venice: I thought it would be tourist hell, full of sunburned jerkoffs from the world over and tourist shills and all that. It is indeed full of sunburned tourists but it is also incredibly beautiful and totally unique - an outpost of Byzantine, nautical Italian culture and very distinct from the rest of the Boot. I am extremely happy I came.


A lovely Byzantineish facade somewhere in the back allies.

My hostel was across the Grand Canal from the train station, which was swell and all, except I had my tremendous suitcase with me and realized I was going to have to lug the damn thing up a very large bridge. Which I set to doing. Thankfully a nice German fellow helped me with it. Something about me seems to activate the chivalry tendencies of nice German fellows. I can roll with it. I checked in at the hostel and was told the place I would actually be staying was a ways away. So I lugged the suitcase back over the bridge (and was assisted by another nice German guy) and waited for the water taxi.



I got off at the Ca' D Oro stop (the Ca' D Oro being a particularly palatial villa) and found myself on a wide open street, full of bakeries selling traditional Venetian wares, fruit-stands, and stop after stop for Murano blown glass. This time I was assisted over the bridges by a complement of three Texans. I finally made it to my hostel, which was located up four flights of stairs - I dutifully lugged my bag all the way up them, making a horrible racket - I like to think that no one was there to be woken up since it was 2 PM anyhow. The hostel was perfectly clean and suitable enough for my needs, and I quickly ditched my stuff and went out to forage for food and explore the city.



The canals do stink a little, but the city is simply drop-dead gorgeous - slightly dilapidated, yes, but full of pastel tones and abandoned back allies, a classic, tacky-ass photograph awaiting at every turn. The tourists seem to mostly ply the routes to St. Mark's square, and I decided to head off the opposite direction towards Santa Croce, the area across from the train station. This turned out to be fairly tourist-free - indeed, almost free of anyone - and a nice introduction to Venice's feel.




An especially narrow Venice alley.


WHY LOOK IT IS AN UNATTENDED GONDOLA. What are the legal penalties for gondola theft, I wonder?

After a nutritious lunch of strawberry and tiramisu gelato, I simply walked up and down the neighborhood, for it is Venice tourism tradition to get lost. (And you cannot get that lost - as Venice is on an island and possesses no areas where you are likely to get murdered - well, the stakes are low).


A rather austere Venice church, compared to others.




Not so popular canals behind Santa Croce.


Some typical Venetian candies. There were tons of these long licorice-y looking things.


Venetians like GIGANTIC MACAROONS. The city is very well known for its old-school bakeries and sweet shops.

I walked until my feet began to ache then found myself a park bench in a quiet square - I purchased a box of cherries and began to devour them, putting my feet up and watching a pack of children attack one another with water guns by the fountain. The weather was perfect: the looming storm clouds of the morning had blown over and left crisp and just-warm enough weather in their wake. I immediately liked Venice: it was nearly impossibly not to.



Sloshing through doubtless PESTILENCE RIDDEN water.


St. Marks complete with flooding. It may have been PESTILENCE RIDDEN but it sure was fun to splash around in.


Another shot of the puddles.

I decided it was probably time to go to St. Mark's Square -you know, the world famous legendary place, that all the tourists are supposed to immediately gravitate to? I had not gravitated there yet. Thankfully roughly a zillion signs were up to guide me towards the right place, and I manage to make my way through the corridors and bridges. I actually did gasp when I finally got there and was treated to an open view of the humongous piazza, facing the Adriatic sea directly, flanked by two columns and the Doges Palace and St. Mark's Cathedral. To add another element of interest to things, the square was flooded deeply with water - high water had come up and drenched the square, and packs of tourists were standing around looking distressed about it all. I decided that it would be perfectly logical to kick off my sandals and wade on in. Which I did, attempting not to think about the pigeon shit and millennia's worth of human junk that has doubtlessly accumulated in Venice's waterways and pathways, no, it was worth it to splash around in the water as the sun was going down.



I decided to be profligate and go out for a decent dinner, since, hell, it was Venice. I found this restaurant, Vini di Giogio, which had decent prices and a nice looking menu. So I headed on in.


I ordered these rather fetching traditionally Venetian scallops - the orange bit which I cannot identify was particularly delicious. They were cooked in a lemon butter sauce and were very nice.



Osso bucco with polenta and potatoes. This was quite nice, although I think the stuff we make at home is better - is that some sort of horrible sin? The polenta was interesting: they don't do it creamy squishy style like we're accustomed to, though the block fell apart and was tasty and soft when poked with a fork. I know osso bucco isn't a traditionally Venetian thang but it is one of my favorite Italian dishes and Venice is about as far north as I am getting this trip, don't judge me.


St Marks Square flooded with water, in the evening. A result of the Acqua alta, or high water.

I came back to St. Mark's after my dinner, and waded back into the inland sea again, coming out on the other side to stroll by the lagoon. The water was choppy and warm looking - a storm had blown through the Adriatic the day before, I think - and the sundown was absolutely beautiful.


A view of the island of San Giorgio Maggiore - it contains the Benedictine Monastery of San Giorgio, and is now the location of the Cini Foundation arts centre.


Magnificent evening by the water.

Tourists in fancy clothes promenaded up and down the strip, and I thought I looked pretty decent myself - had taken the trouble of putting on one of my better dresses (Hint: being dressed nicely when traveling also makes it infinitely easier to use the bathroom in fancy hotels, which is of INTEGRAL IMPORTANCE).


Detail from the top of St Mark's cathedral.

I had, you purchased a bottle of profoundly alcoholic but curiously tasty prosecco grappa. As I am a hobo, I poured off about half of it into a bottle of Coke (to escape the morality police, I guess) and had already taken a few hearty hits from it by the time I entered the Square of the evening. With a small quantity of booze on the brain, splorshing around the water became even more fun - although the water came up almost over my knees by the time I hit the middle of the piazza. They had a string band going in one of the cafes, lit up by gas lamps, and I waded over there, parked myself, and proceeded to drink my grappa and eat the rest of my cherries, totally content.


The canals in the evening.

It finally got dark - it gets dark late in Italy - and I decided to wander the streets and see if there was anything approximating a nightlife going on. Which there was not, even on Saturday night, because no one actually lives in Venice but tourists, and I suspect all the young party-happy tourists are either 1. poor due to their ridiculous lodging fees or 2. with their parents on Bonding Experiences which leaves 3. no one out for a partay. The enotecas seemed relatively popular, but at 6 euros for a glass of nasty wine, I wasn't too interested. I ended up simply wandering up and down the alleys and getting a little lost, as is the tradition in Venice - it's a very safe place and I stuck to tourist-frequented routes, so I didn't feel in danger of being tossed into a canal by a psychopath, particularly. These two boys I was inadvertently following however, seemed to think I was a pyschopath, judging by their glancing-behind-themselves and whispering whenever I got fairly close. I finally decided to approach them.

"Hey, I'm from California, not stalking you, just lost like you seem to be, " I said once we hit a nice well lighted place. That broke the ice - "Oh, okay - we're from Pennsylvania!" - and we decided to try to find our way back to the railway station and our lodgings together. It was a pretty fun stint of being lost -we walked by tons of lit up churches and cathedrals, enotecas and fancy restaurants, prowling gondoliers and all the other trappings. We stopped for a late night gelato at Grom - mmm, apricot and strawberry - and finally emerged on the wrong side of the Grand Canal, somehow. Not a problem: we hopped over the lit-up bridge beside the bus parking lot, and emerged smack dab at the train station, close enough to where I was staying. I said my goodbyes to the two guys and ambled happily down the street to my hostel, feet hurting like hell and happy I had come.