We were in Venice! At the Venice train station it was somewhat chaotic. As we had been told by people we talked to in Florence, Venice was crowded. Because of the crowds at the train station, it was difficult finding where to buy the seven day Vaporetto passes we wanted and even more difficult figuring out which boat to take. Since we had been to Venice twice before, this was a bit unnerving, but we quickly got the hang of things.
For the uninitiated, Vaporettos are the water-buses that take everyone everywhere in Venice. Since Venice is a group of islands, 118 at last count, you need boats to get around. Of course many of the islands are connected by little footbridges, but to get to the outer islands or across the Grand Canal, you need a boat.
Most of the people on a Vaporetto have to stand in the middle area where you get on and off. There are a few seats but they fill up quickly if the boat gets crowded. There's another interesting fact - there are no handholds, not even very much to grab onto, and in addition to the boat rocking when it crosses the wake of another boat, when it pulls up at a floating dock, it bangs hard into it as they tie it up right against the dock so people can get on and off. It's all anyone can do to stay upright.
Onboard, the Vaporetto was even more chaotic and became more and more crowded as we went from stop to stop. Ultimately we got to our hotel, went through a seemingly lengthy check-in process and were escorted to our very fancy room in the very fancy, very historic Hotel Danieli. The building dates from the end of the 14th century. The young woman who checked us in told us that the hotel was celebrating its 200th anniversary as a hotel.
Notables who have stayed in the hotel include Goethe, Wagner, Charles Dickens, Byron, Peggy Guggenheim, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Charlie Chaplin, Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, Anthony Quinn, Paul Newman, Sophia Loren, Sean Connery, Le Corbusier, Yehudi Menuhin, Walt Disney, Gina Lollobrigida, Maria Callas, and now us.
The interior was absolutely gorgeous, with antique furniture and art objects everywhere. We quickly figured out that we would have to explore more later.
Another interesting thing was the way we had to get to our room. The Hotel Danieli is actually three buildings, side-by-side, connected by enclosed bridges on the first floor, which is called the second floor by Americans. To get to our room, we either had to walk up one flight of stairs from the lobby, or take an elevator up one flight, cross the bridge to the next building, and then take another elevator up two more levels to our floor and our room. After checking in, the very nice, young, trainee, female desk clerk had escorted us to our room in order to show us how to get to it the first time. We got used to it pretty quickly, but during our stay we sometimes would run into other guests who appeared lost. During this daily journey we would pass gorgeous public spaces with beautiful furnishings, decorations and flowers.
After freshening up we went to the hotel's highly-touted, fancy rooftop bar and had two Spritzes. Two of the great things about the hotel were that it is right on the water of the lagoon facing the island of Giudecca and with great views of the neighborhoods of Castello and Dorsodouro, and that it is only a few steps from the Doge's palace and St. Marks square. The view from the rooftop bar/restaurant was wonderful.
Then we did what we always do in Venice, we wandered. If you ask those in the know, like us, Venice is for wandering. However, the vast majority of tourists visit only a few places in Venice. They go to St. Mark's square, the Rialto Bridge, and take a boat to the island of Murano where they watch a glassblowing demonstration and buy cheap Chinese glass that they think was made in Murano, and then leave. The more adventurous ones wait on long lines to visit the Doge's palace and the Basilica of St. Mark. Most tourists don't even stay overnight. We, on the other hand, spend a week, or at least several days, and the best part is that all the tourists are gone in the late afternoon.
During the day, while the crowds are in St. Marks square or the Rialto area, we wander the back alleys, little canalsides and little piazzas and explore and get lost and enjoy the rest of Venice, which is essentially empty. We did that every day this time too.
We wandered all afternoon. Finally we got hungry and stumbled into a nice looking little place called Ristorante da Carletto. The food was marvelous. This led us to a problem - a recurring one. We have been to Venice twice before this trip. Each time we have had the same problem. We found a restaurant we really, really liked and wanted to go back to and were never able to find it a second time.
It’s impossible to find anything in Venice. There are thousands of tiny little streets, alleyways, passages, piazzas, tunnels, and walkways. They have interesting and somewhat confusing names, like
To accommodate the tourists, occasionally a wall has a painted sign with an arrow and words saying "Per San Marco" or "Per Rialto", indicating the direction of one of the two sights that tourists gravitate to. Since the streets are complicated, sometimes the sign has arrows that point in both directions, or there's one sign with one arrow that has both names on it. If you want to find something besides these two places, good luck. Tonight we found a great restaurant and while trying to memorize how to get there while going back to our hotel, we got lost. On previous visits, some of the restaurants gave out cards with a little map on the back - very thoughtful but equally useless. The little map showed about three streets which we still couldn’t find.
Today was the 23rd anniversary of the day I met my wonderful wife - so of course we woke up to a sunny, beautiful day. I told Donnie that I had arranged it that way. I'm pretty sure that she didn't believe me.
First, we went to the farmacia, Italian for pharmacy, to check about the required Covid test needed to go back to the U.S. and made an appointment. Donnie kept saying that she almost wanted to fail the test so she could stay in Venice longer. I reminded her that she would be quarantined in her hotel room the whole time. She replied that she would sneak out. Afterward we sat at a nearby cafe and had cappuccinos and brioches for breakfast.
As is customary, we wandered some more. The little back streets and little bridges over little canals are very picturesque and fun.
We found an amazing mask store which we thought might have been related to one we bought masks from on our first visit to Venice. The masks were very beautiful and artistic.
Educational Information - skippable if you already know everything.
Masks are another very old tradition in Venice which started in the 13th century. Venetians would hold parties from December 26th until the start of Lent. They would wear elaborate masks to conceal their identity. Safe behind their masks, they indulged in gambling, clandestine affairs, political intrigue, and dancing and partying the night away. People still wear elaborate costumes and masks during Carnivale. The Venice Carnival takes place each year in February, starting around two weeks before Ash Wednesday and ending on Shrove Tuesday. also known as Fat Tuesday.
There is one mask that is not part of the Carnivale tradition that is still sold in the masks stores and is quite popular. In fact we bought one on our first visit to Venice. It's the mask with the long downward curving beaklike nosepiece which has a very striking appearance. It is called the "Plague Doctor" and masks like it were actually worn by doctors who treated plague patients. The mask was like a respirator and the beak held dried flowers or herbs, a sponge soaked in vinegar, or other aromatic substances. The purpose of the mask was to keep away bad smells, known as miasma, which they thought caused the plague. They were wrong.
The shop turned out not to be the one we knew. On our first visit here, in 2005, there were only a handful of mask stores and they were all genuine - the masks were designed and made by local craftsmen. On our second visit a few years later there were now dozens of stores selling cheap Chinese rip-offs and not many places to get real ones. This time there seemed to be more genuine stores with very imaginative and elaborate designs. Still - I wanted to see if we could find the store we bought from on our first visit.
We wandered some more until our scheduled time to visit the Basilica of San Marco. We had passed by earlier and the line for pre-purchased ticket holders was short. Now it was longer. We waited for about fifteen minutes.
The Basilica was breathtaking, almost indescribable. Both Florence and Venice have completely blown me away because I can’t encompass the huge amount of work by skilled artists and craftsmen it took to make all the incredibly detailed art and architecture. The Basilica of San Marco must have taken millions of man-hours of painstaking work.
Educational Information - skippable if you already know everything.
The Basilica is the third church to stand on that location which is at one end of Saint Mark's square and attached to the Doge's Palace. It is essentially Byzantine in architecture and dates from 1063. Inside almost every surface is covered with gold mosaic tiles and mosaic art depicting religious people and subjects. In front there are four gilded bronze horses which were stolen from Constantinople during the crusades. In the mid-thirteenth century, they were installed on the main façade. Since 1974 the original four horses are preserved inside, with copies on the balcony which no longer appear gilded.
Inside we walked around and were dazzled. We had bought tickets that allowed us to walk up the long flight of stairs to the museum and loggia and go out onto the balcony where the four famous horses once stood. While out on the balcony we admired the view of St. Mark's square and took some pictures.
There were ledges on the building behind the balcony so we, and others, sat on the ledges and rested after the long climb. We then had to walk down the extremely steep, extremely worn, extremely dangerous, extremely scary stairs. We made it down without incident.
After the Basilica we took a short break at our hotel and then went via Vaporetto to find the oldest cicchetti place in Venice, Cantina Do Mori. Founded in 1462, it was initially a wine cellar. According to rumor, in the 1700s it was one of Giacomo Casanova‘s favorite taverns. Some rumors say he liked it because it had doors onto two different streets so he could make a quick getaway from irate husbands. We had a wonderful lunch of cicchetti and wine.
Educational Information - skippable if you already know everything.
Cicchetti are small snacks, akin to Spanish Tapas, although the Venetians don't like them being called Tapas. They are served in small wine bars, called Bacari, or other small eating places. You go into the Bacaro, order a small glass of house wine or other beverage and point at the various cicchetti you want which are displayed on a counter. The ones often served are crostini - small slices of Italian bread with various toppings - meats, fish, etc. One popular cicchetto is covered with Baccalà mantecato, whipped salt cod. Unlike most of the restaurants in modern Venice which have to cater to tourists tastes to survive, the Bacari are still traditional and are hangouts for the locals.
The place was tiny. Inside there were no tables, just one short counter with a few chairs but that was occupied. Luckily, Donnie found that outside there were two stools and a little high shelf in the wall so we sat and ate there.
The cicchetti were great. The Baccalà mantecato was delicious. So was one covered with Sarde in Saor, fried sardines dressed with onions and vinegar. Even the “no-name” house wine was good. The experience was fantastic. Then we wandered some more, and eventually took a Vaporetto back to the hotel.
After resting we went out to dinner. After all our wandering today, we had decided to go to a place close by and easy to find. Searching via iPhone, as we do nowadays, we had picked out the Ristorante Centrale which was rated well and supposedly only a four minute walk from the hotel. Using our smartphone GPS apps it only took an hour to find the restaurant - an indicator of things to come.
The dinner was good so it made up for the frustration. The Spritzes we had with dinner helped a lot. The complementary Limoncello after dinner did too. After dinner we wandered again through the dark, romantic streets of Venice and Donnie had her first Venetian gelato of this visit.
While she enjoyed it we watched and listened to one of the orchestras playing in front of one of the cafe's lining St. Mark’s square. A perfect end to our celebratory day.
We woke up to yet another sunny day. We wanted to get a coffee and pastry for breakfast so we thought we’d go to a little street behind the Basilica where we saw several cafes before. One was the place where we had coffee the day before but I suggested trying a different one because the coffee wasn't as tasty as I remembered Italian coffee to be. The other places were either full or didn’t look very good or had only one available table next to two smokers. So we wandered looking for coffee. After almost an hour of searching we ended up back at the one with the smokers but thankfully they had left. Amazingly, the couple sitting next to us were having cicchetti and Spritzes, at ten AM. Not so amazingly, the coffee was slightly worse than yesterday's.
We spent the morning doing ... more wandering. At one point we were in a tiny narrow alley next to a canal and we saw people outside a house dressed in period costume. Donnie asked one of them about it and he told her that Netflix was making a film and that he was one of the extras. Later we saw more of them, even a big group right in St. Mark's square.
Later we then went to our scheduled visit to the Doge’s Palace. Once again there were lots of steps.
Educational Information - skippable if you already know everything.
The word Doge is derived from the word Duke, but the Doge of Venice wasn't a Duke, which was a military title and hereditary. The title "Doge" was merely the title of the senior-most elected official who was elected for life by the aristocracy.
The palace was the residence of the Doge. It was built in 1340 and modified and added to in the following centuries. The palace also housed political institutions of the Republic of Venice.
It was full of magnificent huge rooms. One was supposed to be the largest in Europe. Everywhere there was dark wood paneling, ornate ceilings, and gigantic paintings. Then we walked through the "Bridge of Sighs".
Educational Information - skippable if you already know everything.
The Bridge of Sighs is an enclosed bridge made of white limestone which has windows with stone bars and connects the New Prison to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace. It was built in 1600. The bridge's English name was bequeathed by Lord Byron in the 19th century from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice through the window before being taken to their cells.
Attached to the Palace via the "Bridge of Sighs" was a very scary prison.
After the Doge's Palace we took a Vaporetto to see two places simultaneously.
One was Lo Squero di San Trovaso which is one of the few gondola boatyards that remain in Venice and is the oldest in Venice and dates back to the 1700s. Gondolas are built by hand and need a lot of maintenance so the boatyard is busy.
The other place is called Osteria Al Squero which is another tiny Bacaro which is directly opposite the Lo Squero di San Trovaso across a small canal. We sat outside on the wall at the edge of the canal, sipped our wine, munched on the best cicchetti yet and watched them fix the gondolas. What could be better?
Afterwards we started heading for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection but we decided to stop at a very touristy looking gelato place with tables and umbrellas down by the water. Because of its location our expectations were low but the gelato turned out to be excellent. As we were enjoying the gelato and the view we checked and discovered that the Guggenheim was closed on Tuesdays - time for a new plan.
One of the items on our list of things to do on this trip was to see if we could find Ca Macana a very impressive mask workshop where we had bought two beautiful masks almost twenty years ago. We managed to find it even though it had moved. To tell the truth, we stumbled on it again. The masks are hand made and in fact they now have two shops and a workshop that you can visit, which we did. Many of the masks are very elaborate and imaginative, unlike the cheap Chinese plastic knockoffs sold all over the place. We bought two more masks to hang in our living room near the older ones.
Afterwards we went wandering and got lost. Getting lost is not a big problem in Venice - you're on an island. Eventually you will come to the end of something. We wandered trying to find the S. Toma Vaporetto stop. We each had three, count ‘em, three GPS apps on our iPhones which were each very good at planning the route to anything in Venice, but when you wanted to follow the route, the apps had absolutely no clue as to where you were so you had no idea where to go next or which way to turn. Every time we tried using the iPhone to get somewhere in Venice, it was useless. The narrow streets and the buildings must screw up the GPS signals. Frequently the phone showed our current position way far away from where we knew we were.
We needed to take the Vaporetto because we were on the other side of the Grand Canal from our hotel and not near one of the very few bridges, such as the Rialto, that cross the canal. At one point Donnie suggested using the one other way to get across, and no, I don't mean swimming. It's called a Traghetto.
Educational Information - skippable if you already know everything.
A traghetto, which means ferry in Italian, is a large gondola, rowed by two gondoliers, one at either end. It is used as q quick and inexpensive way to just get across a canal where there is no bridge. There used to be thirty traghetto routes but now there are only a handful and they operate sporadically. The traghetto holds up to ten people. One waits in line until the boat arrives and discharges passengers and then, carefully gets onboard. The locals stand during the ride but it's not a requirement and tourists are allowed to sit. Sometimes the gondolier will request that people sit, or even ask a person to move to balance the boat. Once on the other side, you pay the gondolier in cash, usually a coin. The current cost is two Euros.
We had ridden on a traghetto on previous trips, but I declined this time because I'm not as steady on my feet as I once was.
During our endless wandering we suddenly heard some ethereal music and we turned a corner and saw a young woman playing music on tuned water glasses by rubbing her fingers on the rims. It was very surprising, and lovely. We watched and listened and, of course took some pictures. I even took a short video. We left some money. The music? No, not Vivaldi - Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” - nice.
We wandered in circles until we finally stumbled upon the Vaporetto stop. Well, actually we stumbled upon signs pointing to the Vaporetto stop. Exhausted, we took the crowded Vaporetto back to the hotel where we made reservations for our anniversary dinner tomorrow night at the very, very luxurious Danieli Terrace restaurant at our hotel. Yes, in addition to the twenty third anniversary of meeting one another, this week was the twentieth anniversary of our marriage. How about that for good planning?
After resting in our room for a while we went to dinner. We wanted to go back to the Ristorante da Carlatto where we had gone on our first night but we figured we would never find it. We found it - by accident. Once again we had a delicious dinner. It finally dawned upon us that you actually can find anything in Venice, but only by accident.
For some horrible reason, we didn’t have any Spritzes today - unforgivable.
Happy twentieth anniversary to us!
We woke again to another beautiful sunny morning. It has been beautiful and sunny and between the middle sixties and low seventies since we got here. Our smartphones had been predicting rain for the entire time we were here. I’m certainly not going to complain.
We slept late and then we were going to go to the little cafe behind the hotel where we had semi decent coffee on Monday but when we were walking to it I remembered that we had found an Illy coffee cafe with a fancy store and outdoor tables next to the beautiful Royal Gardens, only a short walk from St. Mark's square and our hotel. Illy is a premium, expensive brand of Italian coffee which we have had before and have found to be delicious and excellent. The coffee was disappointing. The garden was beautiful and peaceful.
Now we were finally going to go to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection which Donnie had wanted to do for a long time. We had tried on Tuesday but it was closed. We took a Vaporetto to a nearby stop and walked to the gallery. There was a huge crowd - not a line, a crowd - waiting to get in.
We decided not to wait a long time in a crowd of people, so it was time for plan B ... wandering. We wandered and eventually we stumbled upon a place for lunch sitting at an outdoor table right on the edge of a little quiet canal in non-touristy neighborhood far from the crowds. The food was good and the ambiance was excellent.
During our wandering we encountered another street musician playing a very unusual stringed instrument, something like a cross between a lute and a mandolin.
During our wandering we noticed something that had changed in Venice. The houses now have numbers. It used to be that house numbers were nonexistent in Venice. For some reason every house has a newly painted number now.
We took the Vaporetto all the way to the island of Lido which is about a fifteen minute boat ride and, what else, we wandered a bit. Lido is famous for its beach. What isn't famous is the other things it has, cars, taxis, buses, traffic lights, parking meters - yuck. To be honest, Lido is a very nice Italian town, just in contrast to Venice it’s a letdown. One other inexplicable fact, every cruise ship that we have been on calls the deck with an outdoor pool the "Lido Deck" - strange.
After visiting Lido, we decided to take the Vaporetto two stops back to our hotel for an afternoon break, but by mistake, instead of the boat going toward San Marco, we got on the one going the other way. So, having luckily found seats outside near the bow, we rode almost all the way around Venice for over an hour. A very serendipitous mistake. We went back to the hotel for a little while and then went up to the terrace bar for drinks. This time I had a Gin and Tonic and Donnie had the usual - a Spritz.
In the evening, rather late because we couldn't get a reservation earlier, we had our anniversary dinner at the very elegant Danieli Terrace restaurant. We ordered Chateaubriand for two which they said would take some time to prepare so while we waited they served three amuse bouches one at a time. Amuse bouche is literally French for "mouth amuser" - a single, bite-sized hors d'oeuvre. Each one came in a huge bowl, took the waiter at least three minutes to describe and was about the size of a prune - tasty though.
We then had elegantly served Chateaubriand steak with potatoes and grilled vegetables. It was all beautifully presented. The service was impeccable. The desserts were to die for. It was a magnificent end to our celebration day.
Today is our last full day in Venice. Happily it’s another beautiful, sunny one.
We got a very late start, as usual. Today we decided to do something completely different. We decided to wander around. But this time we weren’t looking for anything specific and we weren’t going to even look at our GPS apps. We headed toward the Rialto bridge, along with a gazillion other tourists and, against our better judgment, bought T-shirts
Then we visited the Rialto fish market where there were stalls where they sold fresh fish. It's usually ignored by tourists. It was late morning so it was closing. We continued to wander aimlessly so of course we stumbled upon the cicchetti place on the top of my list, All‘ Arco, and miraculously we got a table - with chairs! Once again we had very good cicchetti. Then, literally around the corner we stumbled upon the other cicchetti place that we had been to the other day, Cantina Do Nori. We hadn’t realized how close together they were, and within a minute we stumbled upon Venchi chocolate, so, of course, we had gelato.
Later, after a brief stop at our hotel, we went to the farmacia for our appointment for the Covid test that we need tomorrow to go home. We passed. Donnie wasn't sure that it was a good result. She wants to stay longer.
We went back to the hotel and did a little packing and then went out and wandered in a different direction and sat outdoors at a little bar and had celebratory Spritzes.
Then we went back to the hotel to change and went to dinner at our old haunt, Ristorante Centrale only this time we figured out an easy, simple way to get there. It actually worked. To start our meal we went for something new. Donnie had something called a Hugo Spritz, made with mint and I had a Bellini, which is just peach puree and prosecco.
We set our alarms for 8:45 because we had to leave the hotel at 10:00, but we woke up much earlier than that so Donnie suggested that we just throw on some clothes, to avoid being arrested, and go out for coffee before showering, etc. So we did.
The streets of Venice were almost deserted except for some workmen lugging tools and building materials on little carts and manhandling them up and down the stairs on the many small bridges. Everything in Venice is complicated by the canals and bridges - mail delivery, food delivery to restaurants and goods to stores, garbage removal, etc. all have to be done by hand if a place isn't directly on a canal. Early in the morning you see workers pushing little carts everywhere in the very narrow streets and frequently lugging them up and down the steps of the footbridges. You often have to jump to avoid being knocked over because they are in a hurry and aren't about to give way to annoying tourists. Sometimes they yell out "attenzione!", but our ears aren't attuned to that.
Eventually we checked out of the wonderful Hotel Danieli and we took a private water taxi, arranged for by the hotel, to the airport. The water taxi was a fancy motorboat with an interior wood paneled seating area and seats in an open area in the rear. First, it slowly made its way from the little dock directly at the side door of the hotel through the little canals until it reached open water and then the skipper opened it up to “ludicrous speed”. Donnie was having the time of her life. She was smiling ear-to-ear and I think she even giggled a little.
We made it to the airport and found it much more modern than the last time we were here. Even the passport control was automated. You placed your passport on a scanner and then two little doors opened and you stepped into a small cubicle where it took a picture of your face and then two more little doors let you exit.
We flew home.
I have only two things to add to this long, boring trip report...
If you are at all interested in renaissance art and architecture, you must go to Florence.
If you are at all interested in beauty, good food, gorgeous buildings, wonderful experiences, or just the best of life, you absolutely must visit Venice, but please - go for more than a day and wander.
Copyright © 2022 by Jeff Kravitz