Venezia!

What I have learned about Venice....Throw out the map...it is no good! After you spend the first five minutes trying to find your way in the winding streets, narrow walkways and canals of Venice, you realize that you should stop looking at the map and just start looking around. For every sight, every street, every house, every campo (square), every fondamenta (walkway next to a canal) and every little bridge is a wonder in itself. So give up trying to get to your destination, give yourself over and just start walking. Venice IS the destination itself. No stop, no sight is better than the whole city itself! As you walk, you will find streets as narrow as you that open onto squares full of people sipping cappucino or drinking wine. You will stumble onto a dead end street where a balcony full of flowers will cause you to pause. You will find yourself suddenly at the end of the island with a view of the Adriatic sea and the surrounding islands. You will cross a bridge as a singing gondolier passes underneath you. You will stop in the stores with baubles, Murano glass, hand-printed paper and antiques. You will jump on the Gondola taxi to cross the grand canal. You will sit in a Trattoria drinking wine with your pasta and wonder how a place can be this beautiful! And guess what? Invariably, you find what you were looking for, whether it is the Piazza San Marco where you can watch people walking on rows of tables to avoid the flood caused on the square by high tide or the Rialto bridge which is wide enough for shops to line both sides. You will stumble on endless squares and churches that you can walk through at will. You will find the museums and music halls. It is all a matter of having faith in the island that is Venice! A magical place with boats for buses, canals for streets, special names for bridges, dead-end alleys and no cars!

How did our romance with Venice go? It was a wonderful, if brief, affair. It started with finding our flat which we had rented via an associate of Matt's. We walked through a crumbling courtyard...remember everything is crumbling a bit in Venice...to a beautifully furnished apartment in a 16th century building. The apartment was full of antiques and charm. It was perfect! Since it was already late, we had a nice dinner close by and went to bed thinking that we would get up early. Well, we didn't count on the darkness caused by shuttered windows and we all slept in and awoke to the bustling sounds of the Venetian day. We got up and had croissants and coffee in a little cafe and wandered to the Piazza San Marco where we had our first reminder of the differences between Italian and German culture: the slowness of progress made while standing on lines (and the lines were standing on tables), being turned away at the door and sent to the back of the line because you had a bag, no information about cost or access and little organization made us say "Toto, I don't think we are in Munich anymore". Then we remembered, this is Italy and we are in Venice...so we walked. We stopped in shops, meandered around and found a nice spot to eat. While the food tends to be only mediocre in Venice, the wine that flows with every meal is a treat...So lunch lingers. Then we walked again marveling and enjoying. Wine, walking and waiting can only really be resolved in one event...a nap followed by dinner and a wonderful Vivaldi concert in an intimate setting in a converted church. It was the kids first real classical style concert and they both liked it very much...Imagine that!

Our days continued like the first. Amongst our meanders, we had a chance to visit the Peggy Guggenheim collection of 20th century art, the Rialto bridge and many churches. Our dinner the second day was a memorable event. Matt's associate, Giorgio, picked us up on his little boat (really just a dinghy) to take us to dinner. He stopped just outside our flat and took us into the Grand Canal amongst the boats, buses and taxis. We turned off into a little canal and had a wonderful meal of fish and risotto. William even tried octopus! To finish it off, Giorgio took us home through little canals where we got a close up of Venice from the water as we ducked under bridges. The next day, we were awoken by the sound of metal being dragged through our little street and a siren going off. It was raining!!! The dragging metal was tables being set up in the streets for people to walk on and the siren was informing the residents to expect flooding at high tide. Those of us with Gore-Tex footwear were not to be dissuaded and we tramped through the streets and launched on the water bus to Murano to view the glass factories in the pouring rain! We arrived at lunch time and as we warmed up/dried off in a little Trattoria, Matt asked the waiter to recommend a factory for a tour. He gave us a name and pointed out the owner sitting next to us. Well, one thing led to another and we got a personal tour of a glass factory and showroom from the owner himself...Right place/Right time! Our wet ride home ended up being a wet walk when the water bus was forced to park early and let us off due to an accident ahead of us. So we went for our last wander of the trip and ended the evening with a lovely meal in a very nice restaurant. During dinner, Audrey's wit caught the attention of our neighbors at the next table (I say them laughing when in response Matt's question "How did you like Venice?", Audrey replied"Its really pretty but ya know, when you've seen one alley you've seen them all"!) Soon we were chatting with them. They were a nice older couple from Ireland and we all so enjoyed the conversation that we bought more wine and closed down the joint! William took the opportunity to draw a really beautiful Venetian landscape. He obviously found the place inspirational and drew constantly while there. Audrey was great and seemed to really enjoy it! All in all, it was a wonderful trip...If you go, enjoy and you must have the hot chocolate which is a cup of liquid chocolate with a touch of bitter at the end
.