#venice

Here’s an important thing to know: I romanticize (and sometimes Romanticize)everything. I get sighing and poetic and starry-eyed over things like trains and hostels and rainy windows. Cities are especially bad. If I’ve read the name in an old book, even once in passing, I’m going to be imagining intrigue and antique maps and winding streets and merchants of unimaginable riches, and no one can stop me. Of course, this being A. the 21st century and B. real like, it’s never quite what I imagine.

Here’s another important thing to know: Venice is the only place I’ve ever been that was exactly what I’d imagined.

Venice (La Serenissima, the Bride of the Sea, the Pearl of the Adriatic, the City of Bridges… I’m not the only one who gets all soppy and prosy over it) is an absolute labyrinth of bridges, milky jade-green canals, and ornate 14th century architecture. Lit with rose-colored street lamps and awash in Adriatic fog, it’s eerie and heartbreakingly beautiful. Without exaggeration, there is nowhere like it in the world.

• The city appears virtually the same as it did six hundred years ago. It’s a large part of its charm. Unfortunately, this architectural stasis also applies to the septic system, which in many cases still empties into the canals. Never touch the fucking water.
  
• Incidentally, the best times to visit are spring and fall. You’ll miss the majority of the tourist crowds, and the weather is mild and pleasant, if not necessarily sunny. In the winter the city often floods, and in the heat of summer the canals reek.
  
• If the city floods (l’aqcua alta, the high water, caused by rain and exceptionally high tides in the winter months), you may want to buy waterproofing covers for your shoes (usually about €20).
  
• You can find L’Acqua Alta maps at the railroad station and Piazza San Marco, showing you the routes still accessible, either because they’re naturally higher ground or because of second sidewalks that can be folded out during the high water. At the vaporetti terminal (the ferries that function like public buses), you can find a calendar predicting l’acqua alta over the next month.
  
• You get from the airport to the Venice  proper by public bus or by train. Both bring you to the small station at the edge of the city. The rest of Venice is strictly pedestrian.
  
• Climb the bell tower in Piazza San Marco. It’s not expensive, and it’s a beautiful view of the piazza, the city, and the surrounding ocean.
  
• Venice the perfect city to get lost in, because it’s gorgeous, impossible to go in a straight line, and impossible to actually leave. For someone who once held a map of Paris upside down for a literal hour before realizing why it was taking me so long to find the damn hostel, that is an ideal combination.
• A useless navigation tip is to watch the house numbers. If they change dramatically when you cross a bridge (e.g. 13, 14, 77, 78) then you’ve just crossed from one island to another. If they stay the same (e.g. 13, 14, 15, 16) then you’ve only crossed one of the later man-made canals.
  
• It’s virtually impossible to walk ten feet without passing a store selling Venetian masks. The intricate designs and empty, staring eyes contribute quite a lot to the general eerie, era-out-of-time atmosphere.
• Gondolas are quite expensive, used for tours rather than getting around (and haggling down the price means they’ll more than likely cut out the best parts). But to ride in a gondola for only about €2, look for traghetti: worn down gondolas used to ferry people back and forth across the Grand Canal, usually as people are coming and going from work.
  
• If you need to get around, take the vaporetti along the Grand Canal, or a more expensive water taxi. I recommend you get on a vaporetto during sunset to see the city from the water.
• Thevaporettican also take you to the islands: Murano, Burano, and the Cimetario. Murano and Burano are famous for glassworking and laceworking respectively, as well as houses painted every color of the rainbow, to help fishermen find the right home in the fog. (At low tide, when there’s a tiny crescent of beach by the Murano vaporetti terminal, you can see the ‘sand’ is almost entirely seaglass). The vaporetti also stop at Cimitero, Venice’s cemetary, which is silent, beautiful, and eerie.
  
• The Doge’s Palace is beautiful inside as well as out, but honestly, if you’re on a tight budget it’s not worth the €16 admission ticket. 
• If you want to visit the Basilica di San Marco, book a reservation online (€1.50) to save yourself literal hours in line. Bring the printed reservation. No photography is allowed inside.
• Surrounding Piazza San Marco, you can see the astronomical clock, Basilica di San Marco, the Doge’s palace, the column topped with the winged lion of Venice, and thousands upon thousands of pigeons. Nearby is the Bridge of Sighs, which connected the prison to the interrogation chambers of the Doge’s Palace.
  
• In January/February there’s the famous Venetian Carnival; in September there is the Regatta ‘Storica.
• Venice is very expensive and many of its restaurants are frankly garbage. Instead, find one of Venice’s many bacari where you can have a drink and cichetti (small, savory finger food). Basically, you pick out the ones you want and they’ll make a plate for you. Locals tend to have two or three while chatting with friends, and then possibly move to the next bacaro and repeat. Tourists often get ten or twelve for a full meal. Either way, the seafood is almost always delicious, and a glass of wine or spritz shouldn’t set you back too much here.
• If you do want to sit down and have a proper restaurant meal, some local specialties are polenta, risi e bisi (a dish of peas and rice), and several different plates seasoned with cuttlefish ink (alla seppia).
  
• Tryspritz, a traditional Northern Italian drink made of Aperol and Prosecco. I recommend a small bar called Al Merca, right by the Rialto bridge, which is quite cheap at €2 a glass.
• Only four bridges cross the Grand Canal. The most iconic is the Rialto, which in the morning is surrounded by a busy market of fruits, vegetables and cheeses. Be careful in the rain on Ponte della Costituzione; the turquoise glass is pretty but gets as slippery as if it’s been oiled.
• The oldest cafe in the world, Café Florian, is in Piazza San Marco. It’s gorgeous, dates back to 1720, frequently offers live music, treats you like royalty, and charges somewhere between €10-15 for a coffee. If you have money to burn and some nice clothes, get a bit fancy and go have an espresso.
• There is no such thing as cheap accommodation on the island of Venice. You can pay upwards of €30 a night, you can stay in Mestre (the mainland extension of Venice), or you can couchsurf. That said, if your heart is set on staying in Venice proper, I would recommend the Ostello Santa Fosca. It has a lovely garden and courtyard overlooking the canal. Get a bottle of wine and some good bread and watch the gondoliers go by.
• On a map, Venice looks vaguely like a fish. At the eastern end, the tail of the fish, there’s a beautiful park. If you’re getting sick of the bustle and narrow alleyways and tourists, it’s a lovely walk along the ocean to a calm green park.