Venice

Venice

We arrived in Venice after 20 hours of flying.  For twenty hours we had hauled our backpacks through airports and security lines and buses.  It was late by the time we arrived in Venice.  The kids were tired.  I was tired and none of us were interested in being enchanted by anything.  And yet we were.  Have you ever seen a city with no roads?  It is quiet.  And it smells fresh (don’t believe those stinky canal stories you hear).  There are strict laws on how much light is allowed but what little light there is washes and swirls in the canals. 

Our hotel was a little place right off of the Grand Canal with only 7 rooms.  The front desk guy flirted with me in that automatic way Italians have that is somehow neither offensive nor awkward when rebuffed.  And we went up the old stairs to our small old rooms and fell asleep.

We only had one full day in Venice and so we needed to make it count.  We walked to the square taking a circuitous route that was mapped out on my phone.  The challenge of Venice is it doesn’t have straight routes anywhere unless you take a canal.  The houses go right up to the canal so you can’t really walk next to them. 

It took a while but we found St Marks square.  I had downloaded pod-casts by Rick Steves and I listened to them while the kids played with the pigeons.

Venice was made by Roman refugees fleeing the oncoming barbarians.  There is a statue just off  the Doge’s palace of four frightened men huddling near each other.  In art history we learned these were the four tetrarchs of the quickly falling Roman Empire.  I wonder what that would feel like to see your civilization melting away into chaos.  How desperate they must have been to have seen the marshy island that was once Venice and think “yeah…we could live there….at least it will be safe…sigh”.  How bleak it must have felt for people who had seen (and possibly lived in) Rome with all of its splendor to try to build a city in muck because it was the only place possibly safe from the barbarians.  Did their kids grow up in that wet cold place hearing tales of aqueducts and Colosseum and when the glory days were here.  Did they spend long looking back at what they had? 

They built a different government here in Venice.  Everywhere that Rome fell was filled with dictators.  They may have been named Kings or Dukes but they were all dictators.  But in Venice they did something different.  Somehow the group of scared refugees,. found a way to create a democracy.  Fear usually doesn’t lead in this direction.  Usually we want the central power in times of war.  Venice didn’t.  The Doge (kind of a mayor) had severely limited power.  Legislative branches filled with merchant classes ran Venice.  And somehow Venice managed to navigate being near Byzantium and Rome without ever paying tribute to either.  “The only mid-evil city without walls” one sign proclaimed.  I don’t know if that is true.  But I am proud of them for not building walls.  The came from a place of fear during a time of chaos and they did not become xenophobic or hostile.  They became more welcoming.  And that is what gave them strength.

Floating down the grand canal we listened to Rick talk about each of the different palaces.  They weren’t really palaces by the way.  The top floors were living quarters but the bottom floors of most palaces were warehouses and shops that took in trade out of the grand canal. 

It is perfectly safe in Venice even at night.  I think the lack of cars may have something to do with that.  It is just too hard to perpetrate a crime without a getaway vehicle.  So we walked to a pizza place where I ate tortellini smothered in cream sauce and my kids had pizza (their third pizza meal of the day).  We went up to back to our hotel where a new lobby guy asked “How was the beautiful woman’s evening?” I smiled (bless you Italian men) and I told him we had a lovely time “Of course you did!” he sounded a little shocked “Everyone has a lovely time in Venice”

Train Ride

We were up early.  Like 5 am early.  But I had naturally been awake all night because I have a fundamental distrust of iphone alarms.  It was cold at the train station but I had the chance to watch the sun rise over Tuscany.  There was something so stunning with the light hitting the hills.  I realized that I have been to Italy more often than I have a right to…but never have I been to the countryside.  I have a friend who wants to bike across Italy in a few years.  I may need to join her.