THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509110207
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE D'ORSO, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 321 lines
IT WAS NOT SURPRISING upon arriving at Venice's tiny Marco Polo Airport to step from the terminal and be assailed by a swarm of beckoning taxi drivers. Happens all over the world. The difference here was that these taxis were motorboats, a fleet of sleek needle-nosed launches bobbing in the green Adriatic water, waiting to whisk their fares across the Laguna Veneta and into this ancient city the same way visitors have approached Venezia for a millennium - by sea.
I had been to Venice before, during a one-week camping trip through Europe with my parents when I was 6. Like 90 percent of the 90,000 sightseers who swarm into this city each day, we stayed no longer than a few hours, time enough for some snapshots in the Piazza San Marco - St. Mark's Square - and a spin in an honest-to-god gondola.
It was fun, a precious memory for an American kid, but it was also rushed. Our vacation was nearing an end that day. We had to get back to Frankfurt, where my father, a naval officer, was stationed at the time.
That was 35 years ago. This time around I would be spending a week in Venice, not a day. And I would be traveling with a friend, Liliane, who spoke Spanish. How helpful that would be in Italy remained to be seen. What I knew of Italian I learned during the week before we left. Basically, I could count to 10.
Heeding the advice of several guidebooks, we had reserved a room away from the overcrowded San Marco area, in one of the quieter, less expensive siestri, or districts, of the city. There are six such neighborhoods, and each is within walking distance of all the others. That, we soon found, is one of the marvels of Venice - its incomparable intimacy. The city is composed of 117 islands, 150 canals, 400 bridges, 3,000 calli, or streets, and about 90,000 residents, all squeezed into an area no larger than New York's Central Park.
It is a place to be absorbed at a leisurely pace, no faster than the feet choose to move, and there is no choice but the feet - the feet or a boat. No other form of transportation is allowed in Venice, and none is needed.
That is another aspect of Venice's unique appeal - the endless and aimless sense of adventure that awaits each journey out the hotel door. The city is a labyrinth of serpentine lanes and alleyways, many no wider than a single armspan, some coming to an abrupt end at a stone stairway that vanishes down into the lapping waters of a dark canal, others opening suddenly into one of dozens of sun-splashed campi, or public squares. There, local children kick soccer balls, lovers linger in the shadows, cats curl at the base of a statue of one or another historic Venetian, and old men crowd around a table outside a small enoteca - wine bar - chatting in sing-song staccato voices and sipping a midday glass or two of prosecco, a favorite local sparkling dry wine.
To be lost is to find.'' That is Venice's advice to visitors, to follow the urge to simply explore, with no worry of damage or danger. It is as safe to wander these narrow nooks and cobblestoned crannies at 2 in the morning as it is at 2 in the afternoon. What would be an unthinkable risk in almost any city in the world is a sheer delight in Venice.
Guidebooks are handy: to stand beneath the bright blossoms and thick ivy tumbling from the window boxes of a modest, paint-peeling home and read that this was where Casanova enjoyed a few bedroom romps before being tossed into prison and eventually fleeing to France. It's fascinating, and enriching, to learn that Richard Wagner composed opera in one of those elegant palazzi in the center of the city or that James Fenimore Cooper wrote prose in another, that Napoleon viewed floating parades from this third-floor balcony or that Monet painted landscapes on that one.
But if none of these facts are known, the city is still a wonder to roam and behold, simply because it lives and breathes today much as it did when it drew these storied figures here, much as it has for the past 12 centuries.
We had heard that Venice stinks - literally - that the foul odor of the canal waters could be unbearable, especially at low tide. This was in fact true until several years ago, when an extensive campaign was launched to dredge and clean the city's system of waterways. The result can be seen - and smelled - today. We caught not a whiff of stench during our six-day stay, except when we happened upon one of a handful of remote alley canals that remain in the process of being blocked off, emptied and scoured.
Venice's buildings themselves need no such facelift. They are old, crumbling and all the more gorgeous because of it. Like a beautiful woman in her twilight years, unashamed of the wrinkles in her skin and the gray in her hair, the structures of Venice wear their age with openness and pride, covering themselves with no coats of new paint or varnish.
Even the towering, awesomely ornamented palazzi that line the Canalazzo - the Venetian name for the Grand Canal, the storied central waterway that snakes through the heart of the city - are all the more stunning because of their unrenovated exteriors. And each is an architectural mirror of one of the dozens of civilizations that passed through this city during the hundreds of years that it served as the gateway linking Europe to Africa and Asia.
From Byzantine to Baroque, Gothic to Renaissance, Neo-Classical to Lombardesque, the structures along the Grand Canal stand today as monuments to this city's once spectacular wealth, to a time when economically, if not militarily, Venice ruled the world.
Much of that wealth remains, at least along the Canalazzo. Their frescoes are now faded, their marble fronts and foundations chipped by wind and rain, their footings turned green with the growth of slick algae, but this two-and-a-half mile stretch of addresses is still among the most prestigious - and pricey - in the world. They may show their wear on the outside, but take a vaporetto - one of the city's fleet of motorized waterbuses - up the Canal at night (a 4,000-lira ticket, about $2.50, takes you as far as you'd like) and peer into any of the lighted interiors of these homes.
They are as lavishly decorated and furnished, renovated and modernized as the toniest Manhattan townhouse. One can only imagine the international roster of corporate CEOs that inhabit those rooms.
Away from the Canal, the same wealth and history are displayed less ostentatiously on the walls inside the city's scores of churches. The Basilica San Marco, with its five crowned domes and gleaming golden mosaics, is of course breathtaking, one of the most visited places of worship on the planet, along with the Vatican and Mecca.
But step inside any of Venice's more remote sanctuaries, taking care not to disturb the local men and women kneeling in prayer, and chances are there will be a massive 16th century fresco, or a gold-flecked 17th century altarpiece, or a 15th century polyptych on one of the walls. Unguarded, virtually unnoticed by all but outsiders, any of these pieces would fetch a seven-figure price on auction at Sotheby's. But to the Venetians kneeling among those worn wooden pews, these masterpieces are simply a part of a place to pray, as comfortably familiar as a simple stained glass window.
We came primarily for the people, Liliane and I, to wander among them and sense how they live, to feel the rhythm of days and nights in a place far from the one we know. We wanted, as best we could, to meet Venice on its terms rather than on ours, and so we journeyed out each morning and evening with a phrase book and dictionary, stumbling through halting conversations with shopkeepers, bartenders and passersby on the street, all to their friendly amusement and to our unabashed delight.
There were the two young men sitting beside us one night in a small osteria - cafe - in the San Polo section of the city. They had clearly been there for some time before we arrived and were still lingering and chatting over the remains of their cena - dinner - as we were finishing ours. Nothing in Venice is rushed, least of all the evening meal, which routinely stretches for two to three hours. As we prepared to leave, Liliane remarked that one of the pair looked like a young Robert DeNiro.
``Yes,'' he said, leaning back with a smile and speaking in English, ``I have been told that.
``But,'' he added, ``I am peaceful.''
``But you're Italian, aren't you?'' teased Liliane.
``No,'' he answered, emphatically waving a finger, ``I am Venetian!''
Then there was Marcello, a roundish, bearded fellow who runs a glass shop on the island of Murano, a half-hour boat ride from Venice. Murano is where most of Venice's world-famous glassware is blown and sold. Marcello told us the pieces on the shelves around him were fashioned by his father, who had first begun working here in 1923.
Marcello himself had tried making glass for a couple of years but had finally quit. ``It was hard work,'' he explained. ``Too hard for me.''
So now he tends the store, dealing with the tourists who arrive by the boatload every 10 minutes. His English is excellent. I asked if he had ever been to America.
``Yes,'' he smiled, nodding his head. ``Minneapolis. New York for a time. And Florida,'' he added. ``At the Epcot Center. I worked with a friend in a shop there.''
What did they sell, I asked.
``Glass, of course,'' he answered.
Of course.
A shy man named Bruno ran a small grocery, no larger than a walk-in closet, just around the corner from our hotel in the Dorsodura district at the southern end of the city. Like most Venetians, Bruno closed and locked his store each day from noon to about three. Pranzo - lunch - like dinner, is a time to be savored here.
I stopped in his store several times during the week, and Bruno, thin, in his early 30s, with a Beatles haircut framing his face and an apron knotted around his waist, the white cotton stained red from the fegato (liver), cervello (brains) and lingua (tongue) Bruno had sliced and displayed in his butcher case, was always patient with my misguided forays into his language. When I finally made clear to him one morning that I wanted a tin of biscotti (cookies) to bring home to a friend, Bruno grinned, and insisted on wrapping and tying it with a bright red ribbon.
We didn't see a clock the entire week. Nor a television. The newspapers studied by the local men and women as they stood at canal-side bars sipping morning cups of cappuccino before heading to their jobs on the mainland were Italian. I understood only a word or two of the headlines, but the photographs were enough to tell me that the stories spoke of war.
It was hard to believe Bosnia lay just beyond the eastern horizon, less than 200 miles across the Adriatic. Or that the town of Aviano, from which NATO warplanes would attack Sarajevo within the coming week, was a mere 40 miles north of us.
None of that mattered at the moment. We had come to Venice to leave the world for a while, and we succeeded. One night, as we strolled the lanes of the northern Cannaregio district, where the world's first ghetto was created (geto is the Venetian term for a metal foundry, one of which stood on the site in the Cannaregio where the city's Jews were confined in the 16th century), we met a couple named Arpad and Eun-Hee.
He was Hungarian, she was from Korea. They spoke English and told us of the trip they were taking - ``for pleasure,'' said Eun-Hee - through Italy. Venice, they said, seemed different from every other city they had seen. Rome, for instance. They had been in Rome the day before, they said, and had stayed only a few hours - time enough, noted Eun-Hee, to be robbed.
The thought of robbery had not crossed our minds. Not here. Even the vague sense of caution that comes with first arrival in a foreign land - the fear that as an outsider you are made to be fleeced - vanished in Venice.
The city has a system requiring that all transactions, from the simple purchase of a 300-lira postcard (about 20 cents) at a streetside kiosk to a 150,000-lira three-course meal (roughly $100) at an elegant San Marco ristorante, come with an itemized receipt which the customer is expected to keep until he is clear of the premises. Random checks of these receipts by city officials ensure both the fairness of the merchant's pricing and the accuracy of his bookkeeping, for local tax purposes.
No official stopped us during our stay. And we never felt cheated. When we treated ourselves to an evening gondola ride late in the week, Liliane's sister Ellen, who lives and works with her husband Richard at a campground in the nearby seaside town of Treporti, joined us and was prepared, with her fluent Italian, to haggle with the gondolier over a fair price. There was no need. His first offer - 100,000 lira (about $65) - was what we had heard was the standard rate for a half-hour ride.
And it was well worth it. As he poled us down empty, echoing alleyways and up the spectacularly lit Grand Canal, our gondolier, a young bespectacled blond named Maximo, chatted with Ellen about the time it takes to build one of these handmade boats (about 6,000 hours), about the price it costs to own one (roughly $30,000), and about the year or so it takes to learn to handle one.
There was a time, during the 16th century, when 10,000 gondolas crowded Venice's canals. Today there are fewer than 500, all owned and operated by a cooperative of gondoliers, who pool and divide their income as a collective unit. The masters, like Maximo, earn a healthy wage, while the beginners, who shakily push loads of locals on quick hops back and forth across the Canal in bare-bones boats called traghettos, earn far less. They charge less as well - 600 lira (about 40 cents) per crossing.
A traghetto is a good way to save a few steps at the end of a long day. Our last day wound up where most visitors begin - at the Piazza San Marco.
We had spent the week in essence circling this hub. Now we stepped into its center, crossing the crowded square, licking a cone of the exquisite Venetian gelato (ice cream) we had heard so much about, watching three outdoor orchestras compete for the attention (and tips) of the passing throngs, gazing up at the palatial archways and statuary surrounding us, and finally taking the lift to the top of the Campanile, the 300-foot-high bell tower that looks out not only over all of Venice, but on a clear day, toward the snowy peaks of the Alps to the north.
It was nearing sunset as we stepped off the elevator into the open air at the top of the tower, and at that moment the five bells above us, each the size of a Volkswagen, began to toll, marking, as they have for centuries, the maragona - the end of the working day.
The sound was deafening, the view spectacular, the late afternoon sun glinting off the water below, shadows slanting across rooftop gardens, roused pigeons sweeping across the sweet blue sky, the whole of Venice seeming so close I felt I could wrap my arms around it.
We left the next morning, to Treporti, where we spent the day with Ellen and Richard. Maybe it was coincidence, but that morning came the first bad weather of the week. Rain and an unseasonable chill. Venice was behind us now. We were heading home, just ahead of the hordes of celebrities sweeping into Venice for its annual international film festival.
Our last sight of the city was through an aircraft window as our Lufthansa jet lifted off from Marco Polo and banked north. I could see the Campanile, a small, shadowy sliver rising from a tiny, timeless island, and I thought of something I had read in one of those guidebooks, that the word Ciao, the classic Italian term of salutation, evolved from the Venetian phrase schiavo, which means ``I am your slave.''
I had been saying it all week, but only now did I truly know what it meant. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
ITALIAN GOVERNMENT TOURIST BOARD
One of the most famous squares in the world, Venice's Piazza San
Marco, above and below, is crowded with statuary - and tourists.
Photos
One of the most famous of Venice's hundreds of palaces is the 15th
century C'a D'Oro (Golden House).
No matter how lost you get, there's always a cafe nearby, like this
one at the foot of the Rialto Bridge.
Graphic
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
AS FALL APPROACHES and the peak tourist season ends, the expense
of visiting Venice will drop a bit, but not much.
Because of its waterbound isolation, the cost of transporting
goods and services raises the price of everything in the city, from
food to hotel rooms. Some travelers choose to stay in less expensive
accommodations on the mainland and commute into Venice each day,
which is fine. But to truly experience all that this city has to
offer, there is no substitute for being there, day and night.
There are dozens of hotels throughout Venice, with the rates
dropping dramatically the further you get from the Piazza San Marco.
The nice thing is you're never too far, and unlike many cities,
there is no such thing as a bad neighborhood.
Room prices range from less than 100,000 lira (about $65) a night
in a simple, family-run pensione where the rooms are clean and
charming but lack private bathrooms, air conditioning or any but the
most basic amenities, to 350,000 lira or more (about $225) a night
for a room in one of the elegant addresses overlooking the Grand
Canal.
Keep in mind that you'll be spending little time in your room in
Venice. Book at least a month in advance - more in the summer season
- and remember that many of the city's hotels are closed between
November and February. For hotel information and listings, call the
Italian Government Tourist Board in New York (212-245-4822).
Restaurants, like hotels, are less pricey the further you get
from San Marco, and they too range from simple, family-run
trattorie, with a half-dozen outdoor tables and a menu handwritten
in Italian, to full-scale ristoranti like those surrounding the
gorgeous Rialto Bridge, where tuxedoed waiters deliver three-course
meals beside rows of bobbing, velvet-cushioned gondolas, and the
menus are printed in four or five languages - including English.
Just as there is no such thing as a bad address in Venice, so
there is no such thing as a bad meal. Overpriced perhaps, especially
if the menu caters to tourists, but never bad. Seafood, of course,
is abundant, with ingredients and preparation a world away from the
Chesapeake Bay. Try finding seppie in nero (squid in black ink
sauce) on a Virginia Beach menu.
Meals are almost always ordered a la carte, with antipasto
(appetizers), insalata (salads), primo (soups, rice, and pasta),
secondo (main courses), contorni (vegetables) and dolce (desserts)
all listed separately. A three-course dinner for two (with a bottle
of house wine) in the Rialto and San Marco areas can easily climb
well above 200,000 lira ($130), but the same meal can be found by
the more adventuresome for half that price in the more remote
sections of the city, where canal-side settings are just as romantic
and even more intimate than those along the well-traveled Grand.
Less ornate meals can be enjoyed day and night at any of the
city's dozens of casual cafes and bars, where a salmon-and-egg
sandwich runs 2,500 lira (about $1.60), a gorganzola-and-mushroom
pizza for two can be had for 8,000 lira ($5), a cola goes for 2,000
lira ($1.25), a cup of coffee about the same, and a half-liter of
house wine, delivered in an open pitcher, can run as little as 4,000
lira (less than $3).
Nibbling, like walking, is a way of life in Venice. No matter how
lost you get, and that is the purpose, you will run into a cafe or
bar beckoning you to enjoy one of Venice's most essential and
hallowed traditions - cichetti e l'ombra (``a little bite and the
shade'').
- Mike D'Orso by CNB