ONE DAY IN VENICE

July, 2015

Our next stop? Venice. The city of bridges, built entirely on an island with no cars or motorised vehicles. Somewhere I’ve dreamt of visiting since a little girl.

And to be completely honest… It didn’t really live up to the expectation.

I can hear the cries of blasphemy now… I know this city is treasured by so many and I can imagine that if you stayed in the heart of the island whilst being charmed by the beauty at sunset it might even give me a change of heart. But my memories of Venice are tainted by the extreme/unrelenting heat, staying in a caravan park on the mainland of Italy trying to escape the thousands of mosquito’s, seeing the gondola drivers with their grumpy faces and constant cigarette smoking harassing tourists for exorbently expensive rides, being robbed 7 euro’s for a tiny can of lemonade, and for no cafe ever having the toilet seat installed (what’s with that?! we’re paying customers!). The streets are oddly deserted except for the centre near Piazza San Marco where there are hundreds of tourists pushing to make their way to the square. It felt a little like Italy’s Disneyland, a perfectly constructed theme park where no one seems to live anymore and it’s mostly just continuing to function to serve the purpose of satisfying the hoards of tourists. Once the home to 164,000 people, Venice now has a local population of merely 60,000. And considering around 55,000 tourists visit the city daily, you can see why Venice as a fully functioning city, is dying.

Okay that was much to harsh… it is really truly beautiful. I couldn’t take a bad photo, honestly I didn’t even take that many but every one is lovely. Venice is a photographers dream. It’s really wonderful exploring the tiny, quiet streets and alleyways, imagining what life must have once been like. But from all the blogs I’ve read, stories I’ve heard and pictures I’ve seen, it just wasn’t the place I’d envisioned.

We arrived on the Island by boat from our caravan park accommodation. We didn’t stay in the heart of the Island purely because we could never have afforded it. We struggled to find anywhere under $100 a night, and the photos of those that were looked a little scary. On booking.com we found that in Italy there are caravan parks located on the edges of popular tourists cities that offer an affordable alternative for families and young people. We booked an air-conditioned cabin, and we felt like we were the lucky ones. Those camping in tents or sleeping with windows opened in the un-airconditioned cabins looked over-heated and covered in mosquito bites. We were fortunately quite comfortable, but it was far from luxury. We made veggie and mayonnaise sandwiches with supplies from the park store and made the most of our comforts.

I will admit arriving to Venice Island by boat was a really fun way of seeing the city for the first time. We saw the outline of the city on the horizon, and as we got closer I was so excited to see my first glimpse of the coloured Italian buildings on the edge of the sea.

We got off the boat, walked along the waterfront a little bit and then cut into the city on the first street we could find. Immediately were were in a maze of deserted streets, I watched my iPhone map blue dot to lead us towards the canals, stopping to admire the little details on doorways and window ledges. My first view of a canal was everything I imagined, little bridges connecting one building to the next, with walls submerged in the water. By this point I began to notice the lack of Italian people and the growing number of foreigners taking iPhone photos and selfies. There were no food shops, only those selling souvenirs or designer shops for tourists to browse.

Reaching the square and lasting about five minutes in the heat and tourist mayhem. From here on in we were submerged in a crowd until we found ourselves in the neighbourhood of Santa Croce.

We walked at least half of the Island that day, and my favourite part was the quiet, forgotten streets of Santa Croce and that edge of the San Polo district. Martin bought a slice of pizza and we wandered the alleyways, soaking it in and imaging what authentic Venetian life would have been like.

If one day you find yourself visiting Italy, you simply can’t miss Venice. Even with it’s sort of emptiness, and it’s crazy prices, there really isn’t anywhere quite like it. The architecture is more than beautiful, it’s something of a painting. And there are so many little details to remind you of what life would have been like all those years ago.

We only spent one afternoon on the Island, and that was enough for us. We walked so many quite streets and soaked in as much of the history as we could, while adamantly avoiding the tourist culture. But if you do go to Italy, Venice can’t be your only destination, get out into the countryside, visit the small towns, see Rome in all it’s crazy glory, ride the train to anywhere, swim in the azure ocean, immerse yourself in the strong culture of Sicily.

This visit to Venice was our second time in Italy this year, but it wasn’t our last…