Freshly returned from a twelve-day Mediterranean cruise, I’m going to post “a port a day” as I work through our itinerary, which included visits to Italy, Croatia, Greece,, Turkey, France, and Spain. First stop: Venice.
Venice
Purgatory before paradise. US Airways before Venice. ‘Nuff said.
Venice may not be paradise – perhaps if the pigeons were doves – but it is magnificent. With no cars, and with winding alleys framed by centuries-old buildings and topped by a sliver of sky, it’s easy to imagine the city unchanged since the Renaissance. (Unfortunately, Venice’s time may be running out. The city is sinking: many buildings now have uninhabitable first floors, much of the stucco has worn off the structures lining the canals, leaving shimmed and gap-filled brick, and flooding is commonplace.)
Venice deserves a glowing, descriptive write-up. Unfortunately, my jet-lagged stupor fuzzed the limning details. Here’s what remains:
After a short bus ride from Marco Polo airport, ten of us and our luggage squeezed into a boat taxi. Several canals later, we pulled up, bobbing and swaying, to the waterside entrance to the Hotel Kette and clambered into the refined marble lobby. With several hours to go until our rooms were ready, we ventured out in search of lunch to eat and sights to see.
After a restorative lunch (the specifics of which elude me), we took in Venice’s greatest hits; the next morning we enjoyed a vaporetto (water bus) ride up the Grand Canal the next morning. In a city overstuffed with must-see sites, there are some that still stand out.
The Piazza San Marco, the Doge’s Palace, the Bridge of Sighs, and the Rialto Bridge are deservedly iconic, combining beautiful design with rich history.
(The Piazza, the Palace, and the Bridge of Sighs are contiguous; the Rialto Bridge is no more than 15 minutes away; just follow the “Per Rialto” signs.)
Cruising up the Grand Canal, spectacular mansions sporting Moorish filigree and ornate stonework alternate with narrow canals accessible only to gondolas.
Smaller pleasures include admiring the colorful and brilliantly crafted Murano glass figurines and watching the Vaporetti, water taxis, gondolas and private boats putter, splash, and weave about.
My unconventional advice to anyone visiting Venice is to get lost. We had no intention of doing so, but our hotel-provided tourist map bore an at-best aspirational relation to reality. We wound up in narrow passages that the map designated as broad thoroughfares, streets whose names arbitrarily changed mid-block, dead ends where the map showed through routes, and alleys that, on paper, didn’t exist. No matter; there’s history and charm at every turn, so losing one’s way in Venice is a bonus, even when dopey from jet lag.
PuffinlessTravel 