Venice (Part 1)

March 17-19

Venice was truly a place of enchantment and I spent yet another fantastic weekend with Little H.

Our third straight weekend of travel, Henrietta and I weren’t too eager to hit up every museum or rush from one sight to the next in order to check everything off the “must see” list. (The only thing that could persuade us to run on this trip were the ravenous pigeons). So, we spent our three days there lingering in San Marcos Square, meandering through a labyrinth of shop-filled alleys, drawing lung-fulls of salted air from seaside verandas, and sitting on bridges just watching the locals walk by.


A Dying City

Venice's dominant feature is it's massive Grand Canal which snakes through center of the island. All the little canals branch out from this main waterway. Hundreds of years ago, this canal was lined with palaces owned by the wealthiest trade merchants in the world. Today, these aging landmarks once laden with riches from the four corners of the earth, are rotting from the bottom up. Most of the lower floors have been abandoned while the city scrambles to preserve what's left of the upper floors. Some of the better-surviving palaces have been turned into hotels, others museums, but it's not enough to arrest the decaying glory of city with a dwindling and dying population. Venice is tesmtimony that money, power, and things of this world are fleeting. But even though the city is a shadow of its former self, it is still strikingly beautiful. I try to take my imagination to that place and time when the city was in full bloom, but my mental sky simply isn't big enough for the vision.

The Grand Canal

San Marcos Square:
home of a beautiful Byzantine-inspired Cathedral,
as well as tens of thousands of less beautiful, overfed pidgeons.

Gondoliers on a tributary canal scan for potential customers

Sunset on the southern side of Venice.

Hundreds of gondolas tucked in for the evening.

Some Enchanted Evening

I had read on a little flyer that there are often tribute concerts to Vivaldi, Venice's first son. Now, Vivaldi just happens to be my absolute favorite classical composer, and the Four Seasons just happens to be my favorite classical piece ever, and Saturday, the day of one of these concerts, just happens to be my favorite day of the year - my birthday! Ok, so it's actually me least favorite day of the year, but I was trying to keep the "favorite" theme going. Actually, listening to Vivaldi in Venice on my birthday may have been enough to turn it into my favorite day ever.

The talented and young lead violinist flies the
horse hair across the strings, too fast for the camera to capture.

Another Concert

I'm proud to say that until now, I've kept the cynicism and sarcasm to a minimum this entry. But, I simply must say something about our fantastic hotel. (Enter sarcastic comment number one).

We had done pretty good up to this point booking cheap hotels over the internet, sight unseen. I think this success made me overconfident and I forgot those two very important age-old adages, "You get what you pay for," and "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

Now, when I walk into any hotel room, dirt cheap or crazy expensive, my eyes, a.k.a. germ scanners, immediately search for anything and everything unsanitary. Well, upon entering our room on the outskirts of Venice, my radar went into overload!

Suspicious white stains all over our comforter? Yup.
Green mold in the bathroom where the tile had cracked? Yup.
Green mold's favorite cousin brown mold in the bathroom where the tile hadn't cracked? Yup.
Dead bug corpse lying on Henrietta's pillow? Nope.
Live bug comfortably lounging on Henrietta's pillow? Yup.

And the coup de gras, an army of massive rats running up and down the walls and dancing above the ceiling. Fortunately, we never saw any of these rats in the room, but they were so incredibly loud that there must have been an entire family of them, mama rat, papa rat, a couple of kid rats and maybe some pet mice. The scratching and skittering was so loud that it actually kept me up at night. And they were running around so much that the vibration was actually shaking the dust off the fan (which looked like it hadn't been cleaned since it was installed) onto our bed. If I stood in the middle of the room, it was like the rats were in surround sound. There were 360 degrees of rodent-nail friction on the walls.

So you see, we actually had two concerts Saturday night - Vivaldi and the Rat Rhapsody. We loved Venice, but we were glad to say goodbye to that hotel.