Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, PA
Dec 19 2004
Lost in Venice
By Mark Houser
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, December 19, 2004
In the map room in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, a familiar feeling
crept over me.
Two days of wandering the city’s medieval tangle of winding canals
and narrow, cobbled streets had flummoxed my sense of direction.
In Venice, my internal compass was stuck in a bag of magnets. At each
intersection, I scoured my map and chewed my lip like a man doing
long division in his head.
Now, in the pink marble palace whose residents once ruled a great
naval empire, I felt lost again.
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On a wall of the grand chamber was a painted map of oceans and
continents that seemed vaguely familiar at first glance. But the more
I looked the less familiar they became.
I squinted. I muttered to myself. I swiveled my head.
Finally, I figured it out. The painting is upside down.
There was never such a eureka moment with my street map. A visitor to
Venice is going to be lost, and often. This is a good thing, and
should be embraced.
Every block is a potential postcard, and somehow more appealing if
found by accident. There are no seedy or dangerous neighborhoods;
real estate is too expensive. And it’s impossible to wander too far
on what is, after all, an urban island.
I visited in summer with my wife and two daughters, 9 and 6, and by
the second day we had worked out a few routes.
>>From our airy budget hostel, a former mansion run by Armenian
priests, with a private garden and trompe l’oeil murals in the
ballroom, we could dogleg along a canal and past a church to one of
the city’s bustling squares, Campo Santa Margherita. Sipping
cappuccino and fresh pear juice and chewing pastries for breakfast,
we watched fisherman lay out their catch on beds of ice, pestered by
mewling seagulls.
The famous pigeons of St. Mark’s Square are even less patient. We
bought bags of dried corn from a vendor. A couple kernels would bring
them flapping to perch on my hands, arms, shoulders and head.
St. Mark’s Basilica, the city’s Byzantine centerpiece, is adorned
with spectacular gold-studded mosaics inside and out. One depicts the
legendary 9th-century heist that put the city on the map, when
Venetian merchants stole the holy relics of St. Mark and smuggled
them out of Alexandria in a basket of salted pork.
Venice’s original patron was St. Theodore, a Greek. By adopting St.
Mark, who wrote his version of the Gospel in Rome, the young city
managed to set itself apart from Byzantium and from Rome, where St.
Peter was patron.
No less significantly, with the famous bones Venice boosted its
potential draw for religious pilgrims. The tourists have been coming
ever since.
Mark’s symbol, the winged lion, is synonymous with Venice and can be
seen throughout the city and surrounding countryside. As a sop to the
spurned Theodore, a statue of him in armor tramping on a dragon
crowns a column in the square, next to another supporting Mark’s
lion.
Without the stained glass windows of Gothic cathedrals, the
gargantuan basilica relies for light on candelabras and isolated
sunbeams descending from windows high in the cupolas.
There is a nominal fee to see a museum upstairs, where the original
four bronze horses looted from Constantinople hide from the elements.
Copies crown the main entrance on the balcony outside, looking down
on the square, its extravagant restaurants, dueling orchestras and
teeming mass of pigeons.
Instead of waiting in the sun for an elevator ride to the top of the
campanile, the bell tower next to the basilica, we hopped a boat
across the canal to San Giorgio Maggiore. The view from the belfry of
the Palladian church was just as splendid, and the bells were just as
loud.
On the nearby island of Murano, famed for its glassblowing, we saw a
man using narrow tongs to deftly tug a rearing horse out of a glowing
orange ball. Cost: a three euro tip, plus the expense of a couple
more horses we picked up later in the shop.
Wandering away from St. Mark’s, we found a gondolier willing to give
us a ride for 50 euros, a relative bargain. Crooning costs extra, and
Sandro, our oarman, only donned his trademark wide-brimmed hat for
photos.
But drifting along the back canals, we were treated to a view of the
city almost completely uninterrupted by waving spectators. And Sandro
let the girls call out “Oe!” at the blind turns, which is what
gondoliers do instead of honking.
True penny pinchers can take a quick, standing ride across the Grand
Canal on a traghetto, one of the retired gondolas Venetians use
instead of bridges.
But we discovered a better strategy to cruise the splendor of
Venice’s main watery promenade.
Boats called vaporetti play the role of buses, and Grand Canal routes
are standing room only. But coming back from Murano, we jumped off at
Giardini di Castello, a park and residential area two stops from the
crush of St. Mark’s and the canal.
After a quick stop at a cafe, we boarded the No. 1 vaporetto with the
locals and headed for the main drag. Most everyone got off at St.
Mark’s, and before the crowd on the dock could board, we scooted to
the bow and plopped down in the coveted few seats on the sides.
Dusk descended, and the glow off the water lit the opulent facades
with ripples of light.
Almost everyone poured out at the train station, but we stayed for
one more stop and disembarked at the car park with Italians headed
back across the causeway for the mainland. Then we waited for the
next No. 1 boat to chug back down the canal.
When it came, we easily claimed front seats again, and were lulled to
reverie shortly after as the crowd of tourists boarding at the train
station set the boat to mild rocking.
Some of them probably were checking their maps, but I was long past
noticing.
If you go
Arrival
Venice’s new Marco Polo airport is served from most major European
airports. The shuttle boat to Venice is 10 euro per person; private
water taxis are about 80. Train travelers arrive right at the top of
the Grand Canal.
Transportation
It’s 5 euros just to ride one stop on the Grand Canal on a vaporetto.
Three-day passes are an astronomical 22 euros, and conductors rarely
check tickets on the crowded routes. If they catch you cheating, the
fine costs more than the pass.
When to go
Summer is high season, but we avoided crowds at the Doge’s Palace in
June by arriving just before it opened. St. Mark’s Square is
frequently underwater during winter floods.
Eating
Venice is crowded with restaurants of every price and quality, with
seafood the specialty. You can save by munching appetizers at a bar
or buying a picnic lunch at a supermarket.
Wine
Vineyards on the mainland produce soave, a light white, and reds
valpolicella and bardolino. Bubbly prosecco also is popular,
sometimes mixed with peach juice for a Bellini cocktail.
Sleeping
Consider anything less than 150 euros is a bargain. Above all, stay
away from Mestre, the ugly industrial suburb across the causeway.
Souvenirs
Seemingly every third shop sells masks, glass and lace, so shop
around for a while.
Getting lost
You can see a picture of the upside-down map from the Doge’s Palace
at