Episode 51: Last Time In Venice

Even if you've never been there, you surely know the Piazza San Marco (left), with its signature basilica and campanile. They're as familiar as the Eiffel Tower and London's Tower Bridge, and the city they symbolize has drawn visitors for centuries.
Geezer first stepped onto a vaporetto, the water bus that chugs along the Grand Canal, in 1956. A few months before, I had seen the movie, Summertime, starring Katherine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi, and was thrilled to be in such a magical place, this city with streets of water lined by palaces centuries old, faced with Venetian Gothic furbelows and golden ceramic murals glinting in the sun.

Those fifty years ago, Venice was assaulted by thundering tourist hordes from March to November, thinning only before chill blasts off the Adriatic and frequent appearances of acqua alta, the "high water" floods that routinely submerge plazas and ground floors of buildings throughout the city.
Today, the crowds are far, far worse, millions of visitors all but overwhelming the ever-dwindling local population of less than 65,000. Most of them are daytrippers or overnighters, in town merely to check off the highlights - San Marco, the Rialto Bridge, a couple of churches, a museum or two. They are too often pushy, rude, loud, and ignorant, grumbling when their ways are impeded by mind-bogglingly tacky souvenir stands and Senegalese peddlers of counterfeit Gucci bags. While the worst of them are by no means only Americans, we overhear our countrypeople making such remarks as "They have something just like this in Vegas!"
Fortunately, the most popular attractions are largely confined to the district of San Marco, one of the six sestieri into which the city is divided. Find accommodations in one of the others and the multinational deluge dwindles to tolerability.
We prefer Dorsoduro, on the south side of the Grand Canal. Venetians live there, pursuing what serve as normal lives in a place where everything has to be delivered and distributed by barge and handtruck. There are supermarkets and hardware stores and pharmacies there, hidden within buildings that were old when Casanova was seducing nuns.
We rented a little house down an alley off the corner of Campo San Barnaba (left), quiet but convenient. The campo (plaza) has a church used as an exhibition space, shops, a bakery, a design gallery, tabacconist, three cafes with more tables outside than in, and a newstand whose owner hides the International Herald Tribune below his window. Every morning we picked up a paper (you have to ask), selected a table under an umbrella, ordered two cappuchinos and two brioche, which is, essentially, Italian for croissant. Schoolchildren, merchants, and office workers hustled past, headed down the street to the vaporetto stop or to the Accademia bridge that crosses over to San Marco. This all made us very happy. Every morning.

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"Of all the dreamy delights, that of floating in a gondola among the canals and out of the Lagoon is surely the greatest. We were out one night when the sun was setting, and the wide waters were flushed with the reddened light. I should have liked it to last for hours.'
- George Eliot (1885)
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Eliot traveled when the British pound was the mightiest of the world's currencies. Now, her nighttime glide down the canal and out into the Lagoon and back would set her back the equivalent of $145, as long as the trip didn't take longer than 45 minutes. There is a brief, cut-rate alternative, of a sort. Traghettos (right) are gondolas that connect sides of the Grand Canal along stretches that aren't served by bridges. They carry up to eight passengers, most of whom stand, if they are Venetian. I usually choose to sit, against the real possibility of getting pitched into the water. The ride is short, but it costs only $.78.

Only two workshops are left in the city specializing in the construction and repair of gondolas, one of which is the vaguely Tudor anomaly below. A gondola fact: The starboard side of the boat is several feet longer than the other. This makes the gondola bear constantly to the left, a motion countered by the gondolier with his long oar on the lee side. That's why he never has to switch sides with his oar, which will be understood by anyone who has ever steered a canoe.

Venice doesn't bristle with bargains

even in the best of times. When we were there, a euro cost $1.55. That's in contrast to 2001, when a certain incompetant pinhead walked into the Oval Office and set about wrecking the American economy. When George II took over, a euro cost only $.86.
There are a few scattered ways to trim costs, though not by much. Psychological: Think of the euro as on par with the dollar. That won't do it for you? Then rent a room or apartment instead of staying in a hotel. With a little care and research, you can save 20% to 40% in total lodging costs for stays of three days or more. (More about this in the next episode of Geezer Wisdom.) After that, sustenance is the focus for cost-cutting. Start by resolving to have your big meal at midday, when prices are typically 20% less, and to order no more than two courses. The standard Italian meal is (1) antipasti, (2) primi (soup and such), (3) secondi (pasta or risotto), (4) main course, and (5) dessert, but no one really needs that much food, and you won't be pushed to order more.
Take at least one meal a day in a cafe or bar, where sandwiches and snacks are always available. Types of bar food associated specifically with Venice are cichetti, two- or three-bite munchies routinely compared to Spanish tapas. In truth, they fall short in taste and complexity from the great Spanish invention, but three or four of them can easily constitute a meal and, with jiggers of wine called ombras, can cost less than $15 per person, if the more expensive seafood morsels are avoided. Examples are chunks of marinated octopus, cubes of mortadella or salami, cheese, meatballs, grilled mushrooms, and calamari. (Avoid the snowy-white strips that look like noodles - they are pure lard, the kind of food you have to grow up eating to like.)
Look for cichetti ("chi-KET-tee") down narrow lanes and side canals off main squares and intersections in wine bars called bacari. A very popular bacaro (wine bar) is Cantione Gia Schiavi, a storefront whose walls are lined with thousands of bottles of wine and spirits. Cod puree spread on bread was a good choice, as was the rolled anchovy toothpicked to a pickled cipollino onion.There's a bar, but no seats, so patrons tend to drift outside with their glasses and plates despite signs imploring them not to. It's at a bridge across a narrow canal near the Accademia Bridge, at Fondamenta Maravegie 992, but as for all Venetian addresses, have clear directions or a detailed map.
Not far away, a short block off Campo San Barnaba, is the Osteria-Enoteca Ai Artistic. It's fairly new, with a stand-up bar and outdoor tables bordering the canal. The cherry peppers stuffed with anchovy paste were a hit, as were the leaves of boiled and air-dried ham topping slices of bread and garnished with chopped olives or artichokes. It's on the Fondamenta della Toletta, lined with businesses that included a mask shop, a gelateria, deli, cafes, jewelry stores and three bookstores.
In the San Polo sestiere is the Cantina do Mori, said to date from 1462. It looks like it, with the dark, worn, woody aspect that is catnip for seekers-after-atmosphere. Dozens of copper pots hang from the ceiling. Various wines are drawn from the row of big casks behind the bar. The place fills with vendors after the nearby Rialto Market closes at 1pm. They go for spicy meatballs, tuna on bread, fried vegetable croquettes - good, if unremarkable. But eight of them and two ombras of vino bianco went for only 14 euros.

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"The gondolier's cry, half warning, half salute, was answered from far within the silence of the labyrinth. They passed little gardens, high up the crumbling wall, hung with clustering white and purple flowers that sent down the odor of almonds. Moorish lattices showed shadowy in the gloom."
- Thomas Mann



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YouTube Alert
Capoeira is an athletic blend of dance, games, and martial arts from the Bahia region of Brazil. Here's a compelling example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2VwnBU1-iU.
It's good to have friends, but when they weigh 400 pounds?
Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr1pWzoLvT8 (If this link doesn't work, go to YouTube.com and search for "Christian the Lion - Reunion!").

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From Gary:

McCain can't remember how many houses he has. He had the number written down, but he left it in his other plane.

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Behind the News
Did you catch this? It wouldn't be surprising if you didn't, given the Olympics, Russia's invasion of Georgia, and John Edwards' confirmation of the truth that men are dogs.

A woman by the name of Bemann McKinney paid South Korean scientists $53,000 to clone her departed pet canine, presumably in the belief that what the world needs now is five more pit bulls.
In publicizing her successful effort to replicate her beloved "Booger", McKinney, who lives in Utah, attracted unexpected attention from British tabloids. Turns out that 31 years ago she was a minor beauty queen who had won the title of Miss Wyoming USA. When enrolled at Brigham Young University she became romantically obsessed with a fellow Mormon student. She followed him on his obligatory proselytizing mission to England. With a male accomplice, she abducted the young man and spirited him away to a Devonshire cottage, where she chained him to a bed with fur-lined foot- and handcuffs. Sex ensued, repeatedly, until he was able to escape.

After her arrest, she jumped bail and got back to Utah, where she picked up the trail of the object of her rabid desire. About to stand trial for stalking, she disappeared again. When she reappeared with the artificial progeny of old Booger, she responded to the revelation of her amorous history with:
"It's taken years of therapy to get past this. We go to church and serve the Lord and try to lead good lives and do good things."

************************************************************************************* Get Lost
Don't fight it. You will get turned around in Venice. Led astray. Perplexed. Street numbers are infrequent and rarely appear where expected. Most maps are incomplete, fuzzy, or too small-scale to include every alley. Spoken and written directions often start with "find so-and-so bridge or campo, cross over the canal toward the church of whatsis, turn right at the fountain, then ask someone where to go from there."
No matter. As long as your legs and wind hold out, many of your most memorable discoveries result from unintended detours and wrong turns. Shops both beguiling and chic show up at every turn (yes, those are snakeskin shoes down there), and always edgy Italian design takes over small show windows punched into 500-year-old walls.
Go before it's gone.