Venetian experiences

I had fallen in love again.

Venice is a city that attracts so much criticism, for how crowded it is, for its prices, for the sheer number of tourists everywhere.  Yet none of that mattered to me.  I was in one of the most incredible cities in the world and I was completely enamoured.  This city was incomparable with anywhere I had been before.  There was beauty around every corner in this city.  Each street, each bridge was a scene of unique visual splendour.  The combination of the buildings with the water and colours was something truly unique.  I had seen pictures before.  I had seen films before.   But none of it seemed to properly capture this lovely combination.  Each time I looked out, it seemed like the city was floating on sheets of glass. 

After walking through the city over the last few days, I also started to realise how much more the city had to offer beyond its striking facade.  Veronica and I had something that most other travellers to this place didn't have, the luxury of time.  Instead of only having a brief few hours to marvel at the city, we were able to enjoy everything at a slower and more deliberate rate.  There was no rush for us and we didn't feel at all compelled to race from location to location.  Even with this extra time, we didn't see everything we wanted to, that would take a far longer stay in this city, but we were still fortunate enough to be able to use a far more relaxed approach to enjoy everything the city had to offer.

So with that time, we sat down, we lingered and we embraced as much of the Venetian culture as we could.  Being able to stay overnight in Venice was also far more of a luxury than we could have imagined.  There has been a lot of talk about the incoming tourist tax for visiting Venice.  It seemed to add to the "Disney" claims of the city, but the more time I spent in this place the more I understood its rationale.  For many, a visit to Venice seems to have become nothing more than a quick stop on a longer tour.  Many visitors often stay outside of the city and day trip in, or in other cases they may pass by on large cruise ships to visit the city only for the day.  In both of these cases, the actual benefit for the city of Venice seems limited at best, and potentially detrimental at worst.  The visitors who come into Venice for such short trips often spend little.  However, the city services are still used and the crowds were impressive in their number, creating an expected burden on the city's ability to function and operate.  In the most extreme and famous of these cases, the cruise ship visitors may even have a packed lunch provided to them when they visit, meaning their entire trip into the lovely city is one which leaves no positive outcomes for the city, and only the drag of the additional burden on the city's resources.  I don't think about this from too critical a lens.  I understand it entirely, and I myself used to travel of a far more restricted budget.  Everyone should travel if they can, and if this is the way to allow for that travel to occur, who am I to begrudge them for their attempts to see more of the world?  On the other hand though, the city still needs to thrive and to exist, so the inclusion of a small cost to enter the city made a great deal more sense to me.

It was something that the local Venetians seemed to be well aware of as well.  Several times, when we interacted with the service staff or the shopkeepers, we would be asked in conversation if we were "staying in the city".  When we answered that we were, there would be this noticeable change in demeanour, as they became friendlier and more engaging with us.  They would proudly proclaim that they were Venetian and that they too lived in the city.  I could understand it all.  There was of course a pride amongst the locals for their city.  A city with such a history is certainly something to be proud of.  So for them, there must have been an additional consideration of the tourists who came.  In their eyes, there must have been a difference between those whom they thought brought too little to the city, as opposed to those whom they thought gave enough to the city.  It may be a binary way of looking at it all, to think of things only from this give and take attitude.  But for me, I thought the necessary exchange that took place when visiting Venice for a longer period was well worth it.  The more we gave, the more the city seemed to give back to us. 

I thought about the high cost of staying in the city overnight.  The hotels were extremely expensive, and though they had an old world charm, they were not modern and they were far from being even close to the best hotels I had stayed at.  Some of the rooms and hallways in the hotels seemed to be closer to antique than boutique in the worst sense of the word.  And yet, staying in the city meant that I got to experience the evenings in Venice.  During the hours starting from late afternoon, early evening, the city of Venice seemed to transform itself.  As people began to return to their accommodation out of the city or back on the cruise ship, a sense of calm descended.  The hectic bustle of the city disappeared and was replaced by a calm and relaxed atmosphere.  The spaces opened up, and the noise disappeared.  This was the Venice that people dreamed about.  The Venice that people seemed to think about wistfully as opposed to the heat oppressed days filled with crowded streets.

We took some care to look for some different places to eat whilst we stayed in the city.  Given the extra time we had, there was no need for us to eat at the most conveniently located places which seemed to offer the most stereotypical of Italian fare.  On our very first day, we found ourselves in a small secluded restaurant to the side of the fish market.  We had been late to look for a spot for lunch and so our options had been limited.  We had walked into the restaurant late and been lucky to be seated just before the kitchen closed for the afternoon.  The waiter was well dressed and the table settings were immaculate.  The food was well presented, Italian seafood dishes that seemed lighter than comparable versions I had eaten before.  We chatted a bit with the waiter and after the standard enquiries about whether we were staying in the city, he quickly directed us to various other restaurants in the city.  Places that were for "Venetians".  This would be another adventure for us that was unexpected.  The food of Venice doesn't seem to garner much fanfare internationally when compared to its illustrious counterparts in Tuscany, Lazio, Campania or Sicily.  I'm not even sure I really knew what Venetian food was before I arrived.  So with the extra knowledge, we explored and we found restaurants recommended by locals or by friends from the city.  I was surprised by all of it.  There were things that I expected, such as pastas and dishes featuring seafood.  Nothing unusual given the seafaring history of the city.  They were all well prepared, but they were all still variations of dishes I had eaten in other parts of Italy.  There were however the dishes we found which showed the other more refined side of Venice and its culture. Its location and history meant that it had a far greater influence of French and Central European culture than other parts of Italy.  This came through with what we ate.  We found ourselves eating cakes and pastries that seemed to be far more French than Italian.  Shops serving biscuits and other sweets that reminded me of Austria.  In the restaurants we loved, fish was baked and served lovingly as though we were in France again.  My favourite of all though were the risottos.  The finest and most delicately cooked risottos I had ever eaten.  The rice cooked the the ideal point of a delicate bite, with the flavours of the ocean and the local vegetables balanced perfectly.

The evenings also gave us time to enjoy the city's more local culture and vibe.  Before dinner, we embraced the "cicchetti" culture of the city.  It is the Venetian version of tapas.  Though from a historical point of view, I wondered whether it was the other way around?  It was a time for a small glass of wine, accompanied by some small snacks (the cicchetti), to be enjoyed with others and before the more important meal to be eaten later.  I felt the same enjoyment as relaxing over tapas and wine with friends.  The added benefit was that this could all be done sitting next the lapping waters of the canals.  We walked out of the areas around San Marco and San Polo in search of these different places.  We ended up finding the Canaregio district which seems to be the most "local" of areas where most local Venetians still live.  Life felt strangely normal as we sat, drank and ate.  Children ran around and locals popped in and out of the stores after a long day at work looking for a quick snack and drink. 

Even the most famously busy areas changed at night.  One night, after dinner we decided to go for a long walk.  We put our phones away and relied instead on our own sense of direction and the different signs pointing us back to St Mark's Square.  It was long and lovely walk through the quiet streets of Venice.  There were few people on the side and back streets, and each lane and bridge we crossed was always gently illuminated by the golden street lights.  We made our way past different parts of the city we hadn't seen before, finding random new pockets of life and activity, small bars and restaurants filled with people, and we found quiet and silent streets interrupted only by our own steps and that of some of the elderly residents as they themselves shuffled home.   We eventually found ourselves back at St Mark's Square.  It was still lively and full of people, but now nowhere near like during the day.  The old grand cafes that lined the square with tables had the bands out and playing.  We found ourselves a spot to sit down and to order what were possibly the most expensive drinks I have ever paid for in my life.  It didn't matter though.  We were there for the music and the ambiance.  The weather was warm, the breeze from the canal was cool and the music filled the evening sky.

I found it all a bit unfair that people have painted this incredible city as being nothing more than a tourist trap.  There were many tourists and there were indeed services everywhere which were in place to cater to those tourists, but this was no Disneyland.  The beauty and wonder of this city wasn't artificial or manufactured, it had all been built up organically through centuries of unimaginable wealth.  It was a city that had a depth of culture, unique to itself.  It seemed not quite Italian, but entirely European in its approach to life and attitudes.  This was place was a dream to visit.