Finally, a few notes about the Veneto’s largest and most famous town. We must talk about Venice: this is as inevitable when posting about the Veneto region as it is inevitable to visit Venice when travelling there.
No matter what you may have heard about the floods of water and visitors that threaten to destroy it: Venice is well worth your time. In fact, it is one of the wonders of the world.
I am not sure about the floods, but no number of tourists will ever be able to spoil it.
Venice is the only major city in the world where you can spend a whole day without seeing a car, but this is only one reason why it is best explored on foot.
Here are a few tips on what to bring on a day trip to Venice and how to of how to go about your visit.
Bring your walking shoes
If you have allocated several days to your visit of Venice, you can afford to visit the six districts of the city (the sestieri: “sixths” rather than “quarters”) one by one and at leisure: San Marco today, Cannareggio (featuring the old Jewish Ghetto) tomorrow, that sort of thing. This is the best way to explore the city.
If, however, it will just be a day trip to Venice on your visit of the Veneto, you must be warned: for your walk from the train station, your most likely point of arrival, to the town centre – the Piazza San Marco – you should count at least 90 minutes. That is a lot of walking, but there is no real alternative strategy.
Unless you want to … well, you know.
You are, of course, free to climb on board one of those, but be aware that you are putting the control over your holiday experience into the hands of somebody else – somebody who is a total stranger, somebody who knows nothing about you, your interests and your “likes”.
You will also see very little (standard tours are no longer than 30 minutes) and nothing from the “photographer’s angle”: everybody who has ever taken a photo knows that all types of scenery look better from a meter or two up.
Bring a map
There are two strategies of how to make your way from the train station to the town centre. One is to simply follow the arrows that point to the Piazza San Marco: you can spot them on every street corner.
Even if you miss the occasional signpost: all you need to do is to follow the flow of the crowd, because this path is the one trodden by the vast majority of day trippers.
On your day trip to Venice, you can also go your own way. For this, you will need a map, ideally an electronic one such as the one provided by Google, one with a blue dot that tells you where you are at any given moment.
In the narrow streets of Venice, the signal comes and goes, but this is still better than having to search your whereabouts every twenty seconds or so on a hard-copy map. Because in Venice, you can rarely continue in a straight line for more than one block.
At almost every corner, you will have to decide: do I turn left or right? A single wrong turn can lead you on a lengthy detour, and after several wrong turns, you may find that you have been walking around in circles for the last half hour.
Be aware that most of the canals have no footpath on the side: where a street leads to a canal, there is either a bridge or an impasse at the end of it.
Neither can you use the Canale Grande as a shortcut – the Venice equivalent to walking along a straight highway rather than criss-crossing the forest – because even here, some sections are closed to pedestrians, and you must re-enter the maze of narrow lanes.
Only a map will allow you to manoeuvre this labyrinth and give you the confidence to leave the beaten path.
Straying away from the multitude, you will find streets that are astonishingly calm and serene. Only one block away from the scrum of thousands, there is a different world down there, a world full of wonder and surreal encounters.
Bring a plan
The worst thing you can do on your way to and from the Piazza San Marco is to follow the signs on both legs of your journey. Instead, you should pick one route going there and another route for your return.
The ideal shape for such a route is an (approximate) “8”, a double loop, with the Rialto Bridge in the place where the two circles meet.
The Rialto Bridge is the one sight in Venice which is most difficult to avoid. This has to do with the topography of the city.
The Canale Grande, which cuts through the centre of town, is only crossed by four bridges: one just opposite the train station, one each at the start and the end of the canal (i.e. a long way out), and only the Rialto Bridge to connect the two parts of the Old Town.
On your way to and from this bottleneck, you should pick a few reference points around which to structure your walking route.
If, for instance, you are a fan of classical music, you may want to see La Fenice, one of the world’s most famous opera houses.
If you want something more obscure: why not plan a tour of the five Scuole Grandi, the most powerful civic institutions of the Venetian republic?
The Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista …
… is, like its four peers, nowadays a museum and open to the public.
Or you can search out the images in the most complete visual record of ancient Venice: the paintings of Canaletto.
This will allow you to establish how much Venice has changed over the past 400 years (spoiler: not very much) and also to develop an appreciation for how cunningly Canaletto played with the proportions of the city: extending or shrinking this building, moving that tower to the left or the right, and, sometimes, literally cutting corners.
If, having completed the first leg of your walk on your day trip to Venice, you find that you are too tired to walk all the way back to the station, there is an alternative: the Vaporetto. At 10 bucks a head, however, even this communal version of Venetian boat-travel does not come cheap.
Once you have given your walk some sort of a structure, you should feel free to improvise a little on your day trip to Venice.
Think Duke Ellington, not symphony orchestra, and allow La Serenissima to unwind a little, revealing her hidden charms.
Yes, such hidden charms still exist. It may come as a surprise to you that even Venice – the world’s “best-trodden” tourist attraction – still has the power to surprise.
It does so with its fashion …
… its modern art (it is the home of the Biennale, after all) …
… and things that may be even more puzzling than that.
It can surprise you even with its urban fabric: just when you have worked out that the old town represents a never-ending maze of just-about-wide-enough-to-walk-in-double-file side streets, you will walk into this.
And finally, Venice is also a great place for people-watching. There are not many places in the world where you can observe as many folks from different nations.
It takes all kinds to make a Venice street scene, and for every wide-eyed student from Wisconsin who carries all of his belongings on his back there is somebody who travels in the style of a 1950s movie star.
And all these folks have come here for one reason only: to have a great time. Isn’t that wonderful? Think of the good vibes this must create.
And yes: this holiday atmosphere, too, is something to enjoy. Venice is no place to be grumpy but a place to remember that not everything enjoyed or created by large crowds must be automatically shunned.
