Venice - a sort of trip report
 

Well, we’ve arrived. About thirty hours, door to door, the initial door being in Melbourne, the ultimate door being at 2878A, Calle Lunga San Barnaba, Dorsoduro, Venice. I suppose one ought not complain – it took Marco Polo about 15 years for his round trip, so one must be grateful for the jet engine. Emirates is good – good service, on time, and our bags made it. I like the way they announce the multi lingual nature of their crew. “Good morning, I’m purser so–and-so. Our crew speaks Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, Italian, Urdu, English, Spanish, Greek, a decent broken Icelandic, and Sonya in First Class has just completed her MA(Hon), majoring in Sanskrit. We do hope you have a pleasant flight.” Melbourne to Dubai with five hours on the ground in the United Arab Emirates.

I think that there are two groups of people on the earth, people who like Dubai, and people who don’t much care for Dubai. I regret to say that I fall in the second group. Maybe it was being stuck, marooned, in Dubai for a week a few years ago, waiting for a visa to come through for Libya – a place that I liked even less.

Dubai airport seems to be in the business of redefining the concept of huge. Gates numbered from low digits through to about 320, with more to come. That’s a lot of gates, transit time from the single digit gates to the 300’s about 30 minutes on foot, but it is well organised and signed. I think the airport is a continuation of the Sigmund Freud inspired architecture that is evident in Dubai. “Who says size does not matter.” World’s tallest building, world’s biggest indoor ski slope, and world’s biggest artificial residential bunch of islands. I’m waiting for the announcement of the world’s biggest 18 hole fully grassed indoor golf course, design by Tiger Woods if he can find the time, structure by Frank Lloyd Wright, who did some nice structures on the prairies, so the dry and heat of Dubai would suit his style, if he were not deceased.

Dubai is a something of a contradiction, quite remarkable buildings, yet the fish market is an open-air affair, with enough ice on hand to make maybe half a dozen martinis at a stretch. Mercantile enterprises with names like Pan-Arabian Traders, who have cornered the local market for strange combinations like say, fan belts and plastic sandals, or saucepan lids and lube oil. Trading dhows in the creek, laden with motor bikes, drums of fuel, air conditioners, goats and plasma TVs. The spice souk standing in sleepy contrast to the frenetic construction activity, bags of frankincense, saffron, cinnamon, and other spices that I’ve never identified.

wow - interesting start to your report. Intriguing, to say the least.

Hello there Peter, wishing you, your dear wife and mother-in-law a wonderful time in Venice and of course the two ladies lots of fun when they take their side trip for some days.

I wish I could join you in Venice for a glass of two of Prosecco. Cheers! ((D))

t

Oh, good, you're going to take us along for the ride!

I due gatti dicono "Buongiorno". Loro sono troppo grasso!! (Just kidding.) Oggi, piove.

ciao Peter.

looking forward to more - are we there yet?

I'm happy you're doing another Venice blog, so I can enjoy your adventures too. You're staying in the same apartment as last time?

So we Emirated our way across the globe, fetching up at about 45deg 15m N, 12deg 19m E, in Venice, arriving in real style per taxi, threading our way through the Rio di Santa Giustina (sound horn at the intersection with the Rio di San Francesco), the Rio di San Lorenzo which gives a good view of crumbling foundations, and the Rio dei Greci. And then that complete knock out sight, as we entered the Grand Canal, Ducal Palace and the Campanile to starboard, and the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Salute to port. There’s a line in “Wind in the Willows” – “There’s nothing so worthwhile as simply messing about in boats”, and Venice has taken this to heart. The Grand Canal is full of people simply messing about in boats. Gondolas, police boats, workboats, ambulances, waterbuses, water taxis, the lot.

Upstream under the temporary bridge with traffic lights erected across the Grand Canal to the Salute for the 21st November festival, and disembark at the Ca’ Rezzonico. I can’t really claim to have returned like Marco Polo, if for no other reason that we lacked his cargo of silks and spices, but it did feel pretty special. Stroll down Calle Lunga with no bridges to cross, a blessing as we are travelling pretty heavy, and we’ve arrived. Same place as last time, up a tight spiral staircase, and we’re here.

We (that’s Lou and I) came here for eight weeks in late December 2008 , so we sort of know Venice, or we like to think that we know Venice about as well as non-Venetians can. We’ve brought Lou’s mother with us, a sprightly lass, and it’s her first real visit to Venice. We’ve left the home, cats and goldfish in the charge of another Venetian enthusiast, Yvonne from Atherton, and run away.

Sunday, 21st November, and it’s the festival of the Salute. This festival commemorates the delivery of Venice from plague in 1630, and the citizens were so thankful (after repeatedly praying to Mary for deliverance) that they erected a church. “Erected a church” is an understatement. The Chiesa Santa Maria della Salute took some 57 years to complete, and rests on a raft of wooden piles, 1,156,672 piles, so the documents claim. But show me a contractor that never exaggerated the work done to the Quantity Surveyor when compiling a progress claim, or who ensured that there was no double counting of work achieved. It would have taken the most dedicated QS to keep count, but that’s what the “as constructed ” docs claim. And I can just see the piling contractor rubbing out the QS’s chalk marks on counted piles. Venetians historically have mostly been on the right side of a contract.

So the Festival dawned in fine Venetian style, crowds of people crossing on the temporary bridge - which used to be built on a raft of boats, collapsing in style in the 1930’s, precipitating many, including the English eccentric, Sir Osbert Siswell, into the Grand Canal. I can imagine Osbert’s conversation with a chum at a club in Pall Mall.
“Doing anything much for a crust these days?”
“I’m in the City, and it seems to keep me busy. And you?”
“Oh, a spot of gardening at Sissinghurst, pulling the occasional weed. After doing Greats at Magdalene I found myself at a loose end, so I thought that the only career for a gent was to be an eccentric. It’s been pretty satisfying, Venice, all that stuff. Same again?”

So the 2010 bridge is a more substantial affair, substantial prefabricated steel, on substantial floats, secured by substantial piles knocked into the canal. Loads of people, candles about a metre long on sale (3 euro per), kids with balloons, Mass being said on what seemed a continual basis, and an absolute conflagration of candles in the church. A fine Venetian affair not dampened one bit by the rain that fell for most of the day. I always wonder about candles in churches, with works by Titian, and Tintoretto seeing their fair share of candle grease. But given that the smoke has been happening for 450 years, maybe everyone has become used to it, and it keeps restorers in business.

Returning here has a certain intimacy, and Venice is an intimate city – the fact that a cruise liner can disgorge 2000 souls somehow does not detract from the intimacy. So we stood on the balcony yesterday morning thinking “within a few minutes, the shutters will go up on the apartment down the way, and the woman of the house will let her cat out”. Sure enough, the cat was let out a few minutes later. A bit further away, a woman has hung her washing from her window – it looks like the same laundry, and a piece of fabric the size of a small circus tent. We’ve seen it all before, and it feels homely.

The intimacy extends to people that we don’t even know – I’d established a certain relationship two years ago with the guy at 2688B Calle Lunga San Barnaba, as he leant out the window and fired up his morning hazard to health, and we’d exchanged some “buongiorno’s”. We saw the Ambulanza come yesterday and carry him out, and we hope he is OK. We’re not close enough to say anything to his wife – we’re outsiders in this situation. But I can bet that half the street knows that there’s a problem – Venetians are notoriously nosey.

Keep it coming, Pietro, you're painting an interesting and colourful canvas, thank you. I sure hope your neighbour will be OK.

Hi Yvonne, the neighbour is home, not yet firing up smokes from his window, but one lives in hope.

I've been a little diverted - catching up on some old stuff:
http://www.fodors.com/community/aust...-road-trip.cfm

"Emirated our way across the globe" Love it!

Enchanting report. I look forward to continuing the journey right alongside you!

Long sigh.... thank you Peter for this. I so need a Venice fix...

Grazie Peter for allowing us to join you in Venezia!

I don’t get it. You could walk down Calle lunga San Barnaba with a lit candle in your hand, and then you walk into a gale just before reaching Campo Ditto. Boeing could cart their model aircraft to Campo San Barnaba for wind tunnel tests, and have a spritz at the Ai Artisti while the tests are done. One can measure damage by the number of winged umbrellas that proceed towards Academe, and the handful of umbrellas that are in the Campo San Barnaba rubbish bin. It is a graveyard for umbrellas.

Which is a most roundabout way of saying that it’s been wet. Windy too.

Yesterday I went to Vicenza, to sight some Palladian architecture. I like it, and yet at the same time, it’s almost clichéd. Palladio certainly discovered the knack of creating fine facades. I’ve seen drawings of many of them, and they do all follow a style, a certain form. The form that he found certainly found favour with the wealthier clients of Vicenza, he was THE architect du jour.

But one thing that I discovered, which I’d known nothing about, was the theatre that Palladio designed, modelled on the streets of Thebes. The gallery is semi-circular, a proscenium arch, and behind that are a set of seven trompe l’whatever streets running off to backstage. No matter where you sit, you can’t get a sight up all the streets at the same time, and it is most realistic. At the time that the theatre opened, it caused a sensation. Palladio was a stonemason by trade, and his drafting skill allowed him to become a brilliant architect. A bit like Charlie Mason, a bakers son, becoming the lead astronomer of his day, joining the Royal Society after surveying the Mason Dixon line. Interesting how there was such flexibility - birth was no barrier to brilliance.

The train trip to Vicenza was good – belting across the flat plains of the Veneto, and the fields covered by a light dusting of snow, past the shipyard cranes at Marghera, that look for all the world like fighting machines from “War of the Worlds”, but controlled by Venetians rather than Martians. Freezing, crisp and sunny in Vicenza. About 40 minutes on the train, and 13 euro each way.

The train was joined in Mestre by a couple of professional teenaged begging boys. They stroll down the car, placing their business card on each table. My Italian is not good, but I think the cards say something like “I am broke. I need money. Please give me some of yours”. They then strolled through again shortly before Padua, retrieving their cards and I suspect little money. They did the same performance on my return, with similar success.

I think that the begging industry took a significant hit in my eyes last Sunday, when I sighted a beggar near Academe finish sending an SMS, pocket the phone, and start on that “Alms for the love of God, Mary, Jesus, Joseph, San Sebastian, San Marco and I have to pay the web page designer account” caper that one hears on the streets. That particular woman – there are no men in the trade – picks a spot where she will certainly be in the rain, to elicit sympathy. I’ve seen her getting off the train from Mestre in the morning with a gaggle of fellow travellers, and she looked for all the world like any other commuter travelling to work.

excellent writing

What stuff costs.
People are often interested in the costs of things in Italy, so some current prices, courtesy of Billa on the Zattere (all prices in euro):
Merlot – per bottle, and pretty drinkable. 2.99
Baileys Irish Cream – 13.49
Smirnoff vodka – 8.49
(Getting the message where our purchasing priorities lie?)

We ate at La Bitta, Calle lunga San Barnaba, Dorsoduro 2753. One and a half entrées (starters for the American brethren as we were three) of artichoke salad, plus leg of goose for three, plus a bottle of the house Merlot – 89 euro, including service etc. Artichoke salad is great – we’ll have to try cooking that. Artichokes the size of a golf ball, lightly cooked, with lettuce. Goose is good too, very meaty, a cross between poultry and red meat, and I’ve never eaten goose before. It’s hard to buy – in fact I’ve never seen it in Melbourne.

Interesting with the wine. “Here’s the bottle, but if you don’t drink it all, we’ll just charge by the glass.” “La Bitta” means mooring bitts, for securing a ship. But they don’t do fish. Go figure – I think it’s just a Venetian take on life, or maybe they think that fish places are a dime a dozen in Venice, and so they differentiate themselves. The meal was excellent – the goose just falling off the bone, served with polenta. (How come my spell checker offers “polestar”, for polenta.)

Everyone complains of Italian beauracracy, and we’ve had our first taste of it, and it was painless. The other morning, Lou and I obtained our Carte Venezia, our resident’s card, and they are good for five years! We are almost honorary Venetians! These give us cheap vaporetto tickets – 1.10 euro instead of the 6.50 that casual users have to pay – proof conclusive, I suppose, that Venice continues the time-honoured tradition of slugging tourists, a practice that started around the First Crusade and continues unabated to this day. The whole Carte Venezia process was pretty painless, hand over 40 euro to the young lady behind the counter (who is visiting Australia in January, and we’re Aussies, so there’s a connection and great service), and walk out with electronic cards loaded with twenty ferry rides, that make us feel a little bit Venetian. Total time – about twenty minutes.

If only I spoke a little of the language …

If only I spoke a little of the language …>>

I'm sure you're being too modest. and if you started, you would discover how many words are the same [or almost] as English - thousands. I'm sure that I have read that there is a language school in Venice - why not go and have some lessons? go on, you know you want to!

There's a wonderful article in today's NY Times travel section, entitled "Venice in Winter," which I'm sure everyone will enjoy. I'm electronically challenged, so I can't direct you to it. Hopefully, someone else can.
We especially enjoyed the article for the same reason we are enjoying this thread....We were in Venice the same time of the year and loved it!

We visited the Frari a few days ago. I find the Frari pretty special, pure soaring Gothic, take your breath away. It’s a bit of a bizarre thing, strolling around inside a church where you can’t easily avoid stepping on the gravestone of various serious Venetian gentlemen. There’s also a pretty bizarre monument to Doge Pesaro – four Moors carrying the white man’s burden, a crazy monument, with a little Doge Pesaro at the top, completely overwhelmed by the African gentlemen. Maybe it was meant as an economic statement – once the African trade routes were opened up, courtesy of Magellan et al, Venice’s role as the main point of trade with the Orient was in decline. Certainly the muscular Moors are not in decline, shouldering the burden of Doge Pesaro.

There’s a fine painting close by of the Pesaro family in conversation with the Madonna and Saint Peter, by Titian. The thing that strikes me is that everyone is concentrated on St Peter or the Madonna – except young Lunardo Pesaro, who looks at, confronts, the viewer. He was to inherit the family fortune, and looks like he knows that it’s coming his way, and so he’s concentrated on more temporal than heavenly things.

Titian’s Assumption is surely one of the great works of art in Venice, and Titian was so well regarded that when he died of plague, was not buried in a mass grave. He’s buried in the Frari, and Canova sculpted an Assumption (with a few notables included, who likely funded the work) in honour of Titian. Canova’s pupils, in turn, created the pyramid monument to Canova in the Frari, which is said to contain his heart. The balance of Canova is buried at Possagno, including his right hand, which rested in the Academe for some time – it has recently been reunited with the rest of Canova.

The Canova monument is either liked or disliked – some find it clichéd, others find it hauntingly beautiful. Include me in the latter group – it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Peter, I believe that la bitta is the restaurant that we debated at length last time - along calle lunga san barbara - which serves no fish. DS still raves about the dish he had - hunks of meat swimming in a sea of polenta.

i realise that my last post sounded a little - well, not quite right. apologies. my enthusiasm for Italian sometimes gets the better of me.

The Canova monument is either liked or disliked – some find it clichéd, others find it hauntingly beautiful. Include me in the latter group – it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. >>

and mine - though not in a nice way - I'm afraid I'm in the other camp. those mausolea are to my mind most bizarre - especially that other one that you mention with the moors. [or should that be Moors?] though I agree entirely about the Titian, and i love the screen, I enjoy the Scuola di san Rocco next door far more - love him or hate him, Tintoretto certainly could paint.

Oh, good - you are there...answers the question I asked on the other thread!

Reading along.....

"(How come my spell checker offers “polestar”, for polenta.)"

At least it didn't offer "polecat"

And, here's the link to the article HowardR mentioned:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/11/28...tml?ref=travel

I admire, like, love, etc. anything Canova. Have you seen his studio and temple in Passagno? You get there via Bassano (train), then a short bus ride.

Keep the updates flowing, please.

Oh, Peter, how I love your reports. So full of interesting significant trivia.... I remember now that YOU are the one whose reports will help me get my dear Mr. TT back to Venice, because he seems to think we've seen all there is to see. (in one week mind you!) So, thanks in advance, and keep on!

Hi Peter - I just "happened" into your post and have gotten excited by reading it! :) I'll be in Venice for the first time in just over 2 weeks.... staying in Dosoduro (sp)... So, looking forward to hearing more... ciao

Hello HowardR, unless you have a Mac which I know nothing about here is how you can post a website address such as the NY Times Travel article regarding Venice. When you have clicked on that website up at the top of your screen you will see the website "address". Click the right of your mouse which will cause the website address to turn blue. Click "copy" and than go here to Fodor's to start your post and when you post click the right side of your mouse and click "paste". The website address which you wish to share will show up on your post. Once you click "Submit" the website address will show up in the blue color and any Fodorite can click it on and see the website you wanted to share. I hope I have explained this in a way that makes sense. Best regards.

Hi Ann,
Lou did some serious Italian via the Open University from Adelaide in Aus, and did pretty well. A couple of semesters, credits and all that. For a while our house was like a visual dictionary, labels in Italian stuck onto various household effects, and I could not get much conversation from Lou unless I was prepared to go with the Italian.

“Can you pick some prezzomolo and basillico while you’re out there?” – that sort of stuff.

I realise that I’ve come to know more than I thought by this process of osmosis.

Cheers

Peter

Monday 29th November, and Venice really turned it, an absolute pearler of a day, sunny, clear after what seems the traditional morning shower and mist, not too cold, and aqua alta nothing to speak of. San Giorgio Maggiore appearing as the sun burned off the mist, a JMW Turner kind of day. I don’t know what it is about the light here, maybe it’s to do with the water reflecting light onto buildings, and in turn being reflected back, but it’s pretty special.

The street artists were out in force – rain for the last few days has put a real dampener on watercolourists. There’s one particular guy who we encountered last time, and I spotted him before he spotted me. He paints particularly execrable Venetian scenes, with a palette limited, I think, to cadmium yellow and Payne’s grey, possibly those colours were on saldi at his supplier. Pieces fit only to hang in an outhouse if one does not have indoor plumbing. He’s no Turner, unless he’s recently left his lathe.

Last time, he bailed us at the Guggenheim, explaining amongst other things, that he was the only painter that captured the real Venice, that he was an Art lecturer in Milan or maybe Padua, Vicenza or somewhere else as it got a bit confusing, that he did not have to do this for a living, and that’s 20 euro, while batting aside a child who seemed to be interfering with his patter.

We bought the “work” in order to shut him up, as he seemed about to explain that they would, within the next few weeks, hang him in the Tate. Lacking an outhouse, our purchase is lying in a drawer somewhere in Melbourne.

I took a stroll the Campo Bandiera e Morro, named for a pair of revolutionaries in the 1840’s or 50’s, who started a little uprising in the red handkerchief around the neck, white shirt, great rhetoric and songs kind of fashion that was later to appeal to Andrew Lloyd Webber. Sadly both Bandiera e Morro were hanged for their trouble, and Daniel Manin had not much more success, being exiled for his trouble. Oh, the joys of revolution. There’s a left over cannon ball, courtesy of the siege of Venice and the Hapsburgs, bricked into the wall of our apartment.

Bandiera e Moro had, of course, a SECRET SOCIETY, as did many others in those pre-Wikileaks days. I can just imagine the discussion for the password for their secret meetings.
Liberty!
Fraternity!
Equality!
Dump the Austrians!
Oh stuff it; lets just make it “Gondola”. Everyone knows that.
OK, sounds like a plan.

I took a long walk down to the east end of Castello – Castello is not so much frequented by tourists, no glass shops selling Murano or Taipei glassware, a paucity of Prada outlets. Castello has a local feel to it, populated by, as Rick Steves would put it, “Real Venetians”. I’d imagine it is a different sight when the Bienalle is happening, though, and the church of San Pietro, with its rather spooky cloister gets to me. The seat of religious power before the centre of gravity moved west to San Marco.

I was keen to see a monument on the Canale di San Marco which was under restoration two years ago when I last looked. It’s right beside the Biennale gardens, in the water, just upstream from the Giardini waterbus stop. It commemorates women who have lost their lives in war, and the symbolism, while obvious, can also move one. A figure of a woman washed in the waters of the lagoon. We Australians have been fortunate, we’ve had few civilian casualties in war, and I think the figure in the water speaks for all the civilians in Europe who have lost their lives.

I took a long walk down to the east end of Castello – Castello is not so much frequented by tourists, no glass shops selling Murano or Taipei glassware, a paucity of Prada outlets. >>

we liked exploring that area too, Peter. on our last trip back from the islands, we got off the boat at Giardino and walked back through "normal" streets, with ordinary goods in shops asking half-way normal prices. Who would be a "local" living in Venice?

we didn't find your statue though. do you know how long she's been there?

Anne, the statue has been there for maybe ten years, as I recollect seeing it in the National Geographic guide to Venice printed around 1999. (That's one of the best guides to Venice I've ever seen).

From the path beside the Giardini Publice, the statue mostly appears as a group of square stones. The woman is pretty well immersed in the lagoon. Appropriate, I suppose, as it is about the invisibility of civilian casualties.

Well, Palladian architecture would seem "cliched" as architects have been copying him for 500 years!

Have you made it to San Francesco della Vigna, near Celestia vaporetto station? Palladio had a hand there, and the beautiful church and cloister were empty in July. Isn't it wonderful how easy it is to get away from fellow tourists in Venice?

I decided that today I should explore down the food chain, discover where the artichokes come from, so took voyage to Sant’ Erasmo. It’s pretty quiet there, almost like walking through an abandoned film set. The occasional cyclist, a few of those Vespa three wheeled vans, and some Fiat two stroke cars, and not a lot else. I’m not sure what I expected, a bit more action maybe, which was somewhat far fetched. It is winter, after all, but there are fields of artichokes.

I got lucky – I missed the ferry to Sant’ Erasmo by minutes, and so had time to visit the Gesuiti around the corner from the Fond. Nuove. The Gesuiti is really one of a kind – a complete marble interior. If you think that St Peters in Rome is elaborately carved, then you are in for a surprise if you visit the Gesuiti. One looks at the drapes over the pulpit, thinking “I hope they can keep the moths from eating that fabric”, and then you realise that they are carved marble. It is really only the slight sheen on the stone that gives them away. It’s brilliant and Ann, I owe you thanks for telling about this marble confection.

And I saw an Ambulanza blast out from the canal beside the hospital, lights and sirens, full noise as it thrashed its way across the lagoon towards Murano. The Dolomites in the background being just touched by the sun.

Sant’ Erasmo to Burano, with lace shops a’plenty. I don’t think that there are that many lace makers on Burano, certainly not enough for the quantities on sale, and so some of that lace will likely have more Oriental origins. On foot over to Mazzorbo, take on caffeine and wait for the ferry. People seem to materialise when the ferry is due, stand around nattering and chuck their cigarette ends in the canal as the ferry docks. The campanile on Torcello looks, from a long distance, as if it has grown a coat of fur. When a bit closer, you can see that the fur is actually scaffold, and the scaffold has been up for at least two years.

In the next life, I want to be reincarnated as a Venetian scaffolding contractor. It’s got to fantastically lucrative. Sure, hard to erect, but once it’s up, you can be pretty certain of getting some years of hiring fees for the scaffold before stripping it. And maybe a few euro on the side for charging for advertising space on it. Yep, Pietro al’ Scaffoldo has a nice ring to it.

San Marco has serious scaffolding on the north side, along half of the Procuratie Vecchie, which will be causing grief, along with the aqua alta, to Quadri’s. Those white coated waiters might be a tad grumpy. Work continues on the Campanile, and is likely to go on for ages, ages being measured in at least demi-decades.

One of my cherished beliefs about Venice was trashed in the Piazza – an actual motorised vehicle, towing a skip of rubble towards the Molo from the works on the Campanile. Moving very slowly, leaving confused tourists in its wake. Maybe none of us expected to see motorised wheels. In Australia, part of the contract conditions would be a dedicated, tourist free, path from the site to the Molo, with an adjacent concrete batching plant, and the Works would be completed in about twelve months. They do things differently in Italy.

There’s something of a conundrum with travelling, visiting, touring. The purpose of travel is to see things that are different from home, wherever home is. And yet if one says that “that’s not the way it’s done in my country”, then there tends to be criticism. It’s OK to notice that things are different, but better not to comment on them. Small examples – builders using pulley and rope to lift loads – outlawed in Aus by our Occ Health and Safety authorities, as it’s dangerous. Not a single life jacket being worn buy all those guys messing about in boats. Complete lack of floatation aids on the traghettos. Guys erecting Christmas lights from a cherry picker in Vicenza without wearing safety harnesses and with no pedestrian diversion. I chair our company’s OHS Committee, so I notice these things.

Yet I can’t be critical. In spite of the apparent chaos, Italy seems to get on pretty well. It’s the way things are done here.

The lagoon is populated, Loch Ness style, with monsters. Monsters in the shape of backhoes on barges, and they, along with suction dredges, fight a continual battle with silt. On the short trip from Fond. Nuove to Sant’ Erasmo, I must have counted a dozen working, and as many idle. I suppose it is work like this that makes Venice expensive to maintain, and also to visit. The ferry service runs like clockwork – so long as the dredging is maintained – and navigation at night must be tricky. Another little point of difference –in my home town of Melbourne, the last trains and trams run at about mid-night. In Venice, the “N” – Notturna – ferry completes its last run at about 2:30 AM. That’s pretty good service for the people who live on the outlying islands.

wow, what an absolutely gorgeous trip report. I'm going to Venice for the first time in September and while it's not November, hopefully I'll be able to experience a bit of this atmosphere, too. This is definitely one that I'm printing out every word. Can't wait to read the rest.

Peter, I am so pleased that you enjoyed the Gesuiti as much as we did. finally I have introduced you to something in venice, rather than the other way round!

you have however beaten me to Sant' Erasmo. Strangely it featured briefly in the last Venice-set novel that i read [forgotten the name of it, sorry] so i would quite like to go and have a look - but perhaps not in late November. I do love Torcello in the winter though - as we left we could see the Dolomites in the distance, which was just beautiful. [I said this to my italian teacher, and I don't think she beleived me - she is from Ischia though!]

the Venetian night boats compare extremely well to our local ferries in Cornwall - the last ones to/from Falmouth to Flushing and St. Mawes leave at about 6pm. no late night carrousing for us [well, not by boat]. however in nearby Fowey, the last one back to Polruan goes at about 11pm, which is rather better. 2am though - forget it!

hikrchick, while you're waiting for Pietro to add more, in his unique style, have a read of a previous report he offered:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...st-verbose.cfm

(Signed: his agent when he publishes!)

In many ways, Venice could be a pretty tough town to live in. Visitors don’t see so much of the difficulties, although I saw three women dragging suitcases the size of small refrigerators along the Merceria the other day. I think they’d had problems finding their hotel and the comment from one was “I’m ready to burn Venice right now!”

And of course, the visitors make it hard for the locals. Strolling across the walkways in the flooded Piazza the other day, a group stopped to take photos. Escalating cries of “Scusi”, “Permesso” and finally “Avanti!” – the locals needed to get through to the dry Molo. The response from the visitor was interesting – “Who the hell is she?” Visitors maybe think that the walkways are erected for their exclusive convenience, but all Venetians need them.

Venice both exists on, and suffers from, the visitors – and this is a quiet time in terms of visitors. Summer must be horrible.

Our closest supermarket, Billa on the Zattere, is five minutes, plus one bridge away. The better supermarket (COOP) is at Piazzale Roma, and that’s fifteen or twenty minutes, and half a dozen bridges. Heavy stuff (wine!) comes from Billa, and we take the trouble to get to COOP because the range is better and prices slightly lower. Now the interesting thing – we drive to the supermarket in Melbourne, or take my Vespa with limited carrying capacity – and park as close to the door as we can. Most others do too. Would we park fifteen minutes and half a dozen bridges away from the supermarket in Melbourne? Nope, we’d think that was a bridge too far.

Yet when we go camping, we drag our kit through a river to get away from other people. It’s amazing what we’ll do when we are having fun. http://www.fodors.com/community/fodo...-australia.cfm refers.

Things that I would find unamusing at home become part of life. We are staying in an apartment, and the facilities include a shopping trolley. It failed the other day, as the axle had rusted through, seeing too much salt aqua alta. No big deal – buy a new one, only fifteen euro, a donation to the apartment when we leave. But at home, we’d think that was unreasonable.

The thing that makes it all interesting is that we’ve spent a bit of time here, and so we can see the small changes. Bits of pavement that were dug up two years ago have been replaced, the scaffold on the Torcello campanile is still in place, they’ve commenced some works on the roof over the way, the guy over the road is home from hospital. They pour me a spritz of an evening at the local bar without my asking.

All small things in the grand scheme of the cosmos, but nice. And I can get around without using a map much. Now that’s grand.

Annhig, Monumento alla Partigiana Veneta (La Partigiana for short), the monument referred to by Peter, was inaugurated in 1969. It had been under restoration, but was re-inaugurated on 6 June 2009. The statue is by Augusto Murer, on a floating base designed by Carlo Scarpa.