Another Venice Visit.

On NPR's Morning Edition today Sylvia Poggioli explored a fabled city.



"Venice is a seductive city that has bewitched artists from all over the world. One writer who has settled in "the city on stilts" is the American author Donna Leon. The sinking Renaissance jewel is the backdrop of her "Commissario Brunetti" detective stories. Leon recently gave a visiting reporter a tour of her Venice. The story is part of a series, Crime in the City, about crime novelists and the places they and their characters inhabit."

"Leon stresses there are two separate Venices.

"One has quiet campielli (squares) and barges that deliver fruits and vegetables; that Venice belongs to Brunetti and its 60,000 other residents.

"The other Venice is filled with the booming voices of tour guides with microphones and attracts up to 20 million tourists a year."

"Leon describes a "Bermuda Triangle" of San Marco-Accademia-Rialto.

"'Most tourists spend the major part of their time in that triangle,' she says. 'That's where it's very, very unpleasant to be at almost any daylight hour, at almost any time of the year,' she says."

I agree whole-heartedly. During my visit last year, I found the most highly-anticipated part of the Venice itinerary, San Marco, deeply disappointing. Huge crowds, disrespectful behavior in the chapels, and merchants jaded from catering to daily throngs of tourists. I found the quiet side of Venice, far from the Bermuda Triangle Leon describes, walking around Cannaregio at dusk. [Read it here: Finding the REAL Venice. (You have to look for it!!)]

This was the real Venice I enjoyed, the place where real people hang their laundry out on a line over the canal.



One can also glimpse real city by watching Venetian dogs and their owners.

Read my posts on Venice here, and listen to my impressions on my first evening in the city.

Horse lovers, avert your eyes.

Did you happen to catch any of the recent Senate debate on the slaughter of horses for human consumption? H.R. 503 is the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.

This is what the Washington Post's Dana Milbank had to say about it.

The debate was emotional. And really sentimental. Equine admirers spoke out.

Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.): "They are as close to humans as any animal can get," asserted

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.): "I have as much appreciation and admiration for these creatures as anyone in this body."

Jonathan Swift would have whinnied his approval. However, this horsemeat shop in Venice's Rialto Market would have really upset him, and probably many Americans as well.




The store also had some cured donkey (or mule) sausage hanging in the window.

I vaguely remember seeing another Macelleria Equina while walking through Milan. Apparently, Italians don't bear the same sentiments about consuming horse meat.

Gillian Coldsnow

I love Bellini and Bellini (and Bellini).

Bellini, "the lovelies," so to speak; bellino means cute, charming or lovely.

What an appropriate name for some artists bearing this name, creators or incredible beauty.

One of them is Vincenzo Bellini, opera composer:



In 1831 this Sicilian composer gave the world "Norma," a work that defines the bel canto style of opera. This work demands a lot of the soprano: the big hit aria "Casta Diva" is more closely identified with Maria Callas than any other prima donna.

In Venice, though, the Bellini who shines bright is the founder of the Venetian school of art, Giovanni Bellini, (c.1430-1516). He turned Venice into a center of Renaissance art, and took realism and color to a new level of sensuousness. I saw some of his breathtaking paintings in Venice, including the Pieta in the Palazzo Ducale:



Not much of Bellini's work remains in the Palazzo Ducale: his greatest canvases, six or seven of them, were destroyed in a huge palace fire in 1577.

Though Giovanni was the best known of the Bellinis, his father Jacopo and brother Gentile were also noted artists whose work was deemed worthy of being placed in the Palazzo Ducale, so the Bellini dynasty is at the core of Venetian art.

And finally, there's the Bellini born in Venice in 1934, in a bar near San Marco, a real peach:



Of course, I didn't order this one at THE Harry's Bar where it was first concocted, and where it remains the most popular drink for those making the pilgrimage to to Ernest Hemingway's old haunt. For one thing, nothing could convince me to fight the hordes of San Marco to get to the storied bar; for another, I'm not sure a cocktail of peach juice and bubbly prosecco ever justifies a bill of nearly $30 (or so I was told, more than once, by a disgruntled visitor.) And let's face it, you aren't going to see Hemingway there anyway.

Instead, this lovely drink was served at a little bar in a campiello somewhere in San Polo, after a whole morning walking around the Rialto and surrounding neighborhoods, up one bridge and down another, down one narrow alley after another, and then through countless squares. I just could not take another step in the suffocating humidity, and simply had to have something cold.

The Bellini really is a great cocktail (made all the better by an hour of very interesting people-watching). If you use pomegranate juice instead of peach, then it's called a Tintoretto, named for another of Venice's greatest artists. Gotta love those Venetians!

Gillian Coldsnow

On street signs, Venetian addresses...and advertising.

After the first week in Italy, I got used to the place naming systems. Common terms are via for street, piazza for square. I didn't see a single sign on a post, as we do in most countries; rather, the street names were on marble blocks set into building walls, such as this one in Milan:



Many of the street plaques list the birth and death years of the person for which the street was named, and sometimes, their profession. In Milan, a major street is sometimes called corso, as in the city's longest street, Corso Buenos Aires (where we stayed.)

Here's a pair of street signs at an interesection in Verona. Because the city was controlled by Rome, Verona has many depictions of the empire's symbol, the she-wolf suckling twins Romulus and Remus:



Then, some cities use unique street nomenclature, as in Genoa's caruggi and vicoli, terms which come from the Ligurian dialect.

Venice, however, takes the cake when it comes to this subject.

Here, a campo is a public square; a small one is called a campiello.

A Venetian bridge is street is called ponte. A street is a calle; a particularly narrow one a calleta. However, I also saw narrow streets named rame, riva and fondamenta. The three days I spent in Venice didn't allow me enough time to observe the distinctions between them. However, here's a good primer on the mysteries of Venetian addresses.)

Still, the place names are a good indicator of the sort of activity that took place in a particular area. Near the Rialto, for example, place names around the vegetable market indicated where fish, bread and other foods were sold. Some of those words were in Spanish or Arabic, so one could also surmise the origins of the merchants who did business in those locales. (La Serenissima has always been cosmopolitan.)

Here's where a greengrocer (l'erberia, from erbe, vegetables) set up shop, in a covered walkway through a building (sotoportego):



Our Venice guide Laura gave us a very good idea of what we would have seen on those streets five hundred years ago; from Jewish moneylending tables to bakeries (panataria) and orange sellers (naranzaria), to more venal pursuits. Campiello de la Stua was one example.



Laura told us stua means "stove" in the Venetian dialect. Apprently, way back when, this little square was the site of big stoves which heated water for bathhouses. As with many bathhouses today, it was also the red light district. So you can walk through the adjoining sotoportego (a covered walkway going through a building) to the neighboring street.



Translation: "Street of Breasts." Only the word is the colloquial term for mammary glands. You get the gist. The prostitutes who lived around this fondamenta and its adjacent bridge, Ponte de le tette, advertised their wares by baring their breasts at their windows. And there were many. Laura told us there were approximately eleven thousand prostitutes in Venice in the 1500s - to a population of about two hundred thousand.

The ladies are gone now, but their memory lives on. This painting was in an art gallery on Fondamenta de le tette.



Gillian Coldsnow

Opera. The drama doesn't end with curtain call.

In Venice, our opera experience was a small and fairly intimate event held in a 15th century church.



This church is part of a school founded in 1261, Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista. It was renovated in the 1600s, and has been an art museum since (I believe.) It's chock full of incredible works of art, even by Venetian standards: statues, tapestries and paintings created by the likes of Tintoretto, Veronese, Tiepolo and other giants. (More images of the Scuola's treasures here.)

This was the ceiling.



The performance was by Musica in Maschera, a fine 8-piece chamber ensemble with a soprano and tenor, and a ballet dancer, performing in authentic 17th century Venetian costumes and masks. All were fine performers, but honestly, the dancer had so little room to maneuver at the front of the church that she ended up looking ridiculous. The musicians were great, helped out by the fabulous acoustics of the building.

So it was a concert performance. Where's the drama?

OFF STAGE.

The singers, for the most part, took turns to sing at the front of the church. When he was not "on," the tenor, a thirty-something in fine voice, was carrying on with his much-younger girlfriend seated in the audience. My friends told me they were actually making out between arias!! And this was a church, mind you.

Now the drama begins.

After the enjoyable evening, our group walked through the little alleys towards the Rialto. Suddenly, we we heard an approaching commotion and saw the tenor, now out of costume, running towards us as fast as his legs would carry him, casting glances backwards as he pushed past us.

A few seconds later we saw what he was running from - his girlfriend, with a look on her face that would turn Medusa's blood cold. Just as she passed us her beau went over a bridge and out of sight. With a heartfelt snort and a look of absolute fury, she abandoned the chase, threw up her hands in disgust and stomped her way toward the canal.

I'd pay good money to find out what happened when she caught up with the tenor.

Is he singing castrato now?

This is the audio spot I sent from Venice on this incident.

Gillian Coldsnow

Move, over, dogs. Here come the cats.

Venetian doges/dogs had their turn in an earlier blog post, but the cats of La Serenissima should get their due. After all, there are lions lying all over the place! The lion is the symbol of the Republic's patron saint, Mark the Evangelist. But you can see some live Venetian felines at this site.

One kitty that caught our attention lived in a bar near our hotel. Ljiljana was especially taken with Martino, and even took Melinda there the following day to meet that fine cat.

You don’t need fava beans and chianti to enjoy fegato.

Okay. So who goes to Italy to eat liver and onions?

I know, I know, my odd tastes are nothing new. But for years I’d read (again, damn you, La Cucina Italiana, for getting me so obsessed) about the utter delicacy with which Venetians prepare calves’ liver. So one evening, I dined at a little trattoria in Venice with Sanni, Barbara, Beverly and John, with Blaine and Sandy at the next table. I ordered fegato alla Veneziana.

I made sure my dinner companions all got a taste. The verdict: very positive.

The liver was tender and mild, thanks to an overnight soak in milk. It was sliced thinly, the cipolle (onions) sautéed to just the right degree of caramelization, and the pan deglazed with a good white Veneto wine. Mine came with a side of Arborio rice, a perfect foil for the rich pan juices.

My dinner was made so much better by the fabulous company. We laughed and roared, and giggled when the suave, charming, devilish waiter Lucio decided to anoint us with new names: Barbara rose to canonization immediately as “Santa Barbara,” Sanni was “Sonia,” and John was “Don Giovanni!” I was dubbed Giulietta. (Beverly – I can’t, for the life of me, remember what he called you!)

As the plates were cleared away, I introduced the group to the joys of caffe corretto, or ”corrected coffee,” set right with a little splash of spirit. That night we chose Sambuca. And why waste an evening with a devilish waiter without introducing flames? So in broken Italian I asked for “sambuca la fiamma.” Float a few espresso beans in a shot of the sweet anise liqueur, then flame it. I had my saucer in hand, ready to snuff the flame, but we were having such an animated conversation about sambuca that I failed to actually put out the flame. Our glass broke – in a perfect straight line around the circumference of the glass. Italian crystal, man!! It even breaks with style.

Oh, sambuca la fiamma? A big hit with the group. Almost as much as Lucio.

Finding the REAL Venice. (You have to look for it!!)

Venice can be hard to take, especially if you go to THE tourist areas.

Piazza San Marco is a surging throng of tourists pushing their way to the Palazzo Ducale, or the Basilica, which dates to the 9th century.

I found it absolutely impossible to take in the Basilica treasures. I'd been waiting decades to see the mosaics and sculptures, but a few minutes is all one can get. You are part of a continuously moving line which begins at one door, snakes its way through the immense structure then ushers you out through another portal. The whole experience lasts just a few minutes. Even though Mass was in progress in one of the chapels, the constant hum of a thousand whispers never subsided. In fact, it was even punctuated by ringing cell phones. I was really annoyed by the lack of respect.

However, there still is a lot to enjoy in Venice, far from the madding crowd. Having grown up on a small island, I adored the ubiquitous proximity of water. As you probably know, there are no streets in Venice (well, there are streets in parts of Venice, such as Lido, out of the main tourist thoroughfare.) Instead one gets around on foot and by boat.



Above: pull your boat right up to your doorstep!

One evening, I saw a couple of men standing by water's edge with a leather sofa and love seat. They were obviously waiting for transportation to take their newly-acquired furniture to their home. Venetians probably wouldn't do well with massive Costco shopping trips.



Above: one of the larger canals in a busy area.

The next two shots, though, show a very different canal scene - one I loved. A narrow little canal in a residential area, at dusk. All the boat motors were silent, and the only sounds I heard were of peoples voices - talking, laughing, some singing in the distance.



(Love that laundry line hanging out ACROSS the canal!)



This is another little canal, in daylight. I took this picture while riding the back of a private "taxi" to a great glass factory on Murano Island.



Here's the audio spot I sent from Venice about the difference between San Marco and the quiet areas.

I was last in San Marco at the height of tourist season, in July 1971. I don't remember it being choked with people. Arianna told me that these days, the Piazza is just as busy in January as it in July. And Niccola (a local) told me that Venice can accomodate 20 thousand people a day, according to environmental studies....yet there are at least 40 thousand visitors daily! No wonder it's sinking.

I Gondolieri

Enjoy!

Arriving in Venice.

Earlier, I wrote about arriving at the pier in Venice. After that we boarded a little water taxi to our hotel, the Amadeus.

From L-R: Blaine, John, Sanni, Arianna, Sandy, guide Christina (back to camera), Venetian boatman, and Melinda.



Our luggage went on a different boat. As I was boarding the water taxi, a little skiff loaded with our luggage zoomed off. I was rather alarmed to see the skiff was named the "Trashbagger!"

There were no mishaps with our suitcases. Maybe because of the strong presence of law enforcement.

The Doges of Venice.

Being a Republic, Venice never had a king. Instead, it was ruled by the doge - a word which comes from the same root as duce and duke.

Our Venice guide Laura pointed out pictures of the various doges in the Palazzo Ducale. They'll all gray-haired men! It was the practice to pick an old man as doge, to make sure that his reign would naturally be short. Here's more on doges, in the audio spot I sent from Venice.

Here, then are some pictures of the Doges of Venice.

Whoops! Better makes that "The DOGS of Venice."

Hey, if Verona's top ruling family was so into dogs, why not see how the canine has thrived under Venetians?

But seriously, we all noticed more dogs in Venice than in the other cities we visited. They were better groomed, and very well behaved. I remember hearing just one dog barking during our time in La Serenissima. On our walk to the Rialto on Saturday morning, I loved seeing how dogs fit into daily routines. Couldn't help but take some doggy snapshots. This one below is one of my favorite pictures.



I just love the way this little one below is patiently waiting for its owner, who runs a vegetable stand at the Rialto market. No leash - dog knows to stay close. That's a box of mushrooms behind this lovely dog, labeled "funghi."



While most were small dogs, I did see a couple of larger animals, including this one who gallantly hiked up the steps to the Rialto bridge with owner and shopping cart.


Canine duo waiting while owners sip caffe at a bar.



Walking by a souvenir shop. See the little hand-written notice advertising toy gondole?

Calgon, take me away!!! Please.

Thursday, May 25th.

Okay. So we get off the autostrada in mainland Venice, and come to the end of the auto portion of the trip. We'll next take a water taxi to take us to the islands. Here in the Piazzale Roma, what do I see?


Good heavens!! (For my non-Palousian friends, I work on the Washington State University campus, in PULLMAN.) Thanks to Sandy for drawing this bar to my attention!

As it turned out, we ran into more reminders of home. This one tickled the Scandinavian Lutherans in our party. (Roger and Dennis - are you sending your people to check up on me?)