(Short-term) Residents of Venezia

At the end of our last visit to Venice, just two short years ago, EP had trouble getting me on the plane to go home, so much did I love it there.  This time it was a little different.  Not bad, just different.  Well alright, there were elements of bad there as well. And plenty of ugly.

So let me get the bad and the ugly out of the way first.  We had three days of spectacular sunshine (no this is not the bad bit yet), and awoke on Wednesday morning to find it pouring, and I mean absolutely pelting down.  Not a problem thought we, until we went into the dining and living room of our apartment to find it absolutely awash with water and my computer sitting in its own private plunge pool. 

 Anyway, we dried everything (including the computer) off, called 

the landlord to say that appeared to be raining inside (she said 'yeeeeees....' - stopped short of telling me 'this is Venice, what do you think happens when it rains???', but I know that's what she was thinking!) and then decided that since it was raining, we should get one of the key chores for the week done and go to the train station and get our tickets to Florence.  

This we managed to do without a hitch. The hitch came when we were walking back to our apartment through Piazza San Marco and, having pulled over to the side to let EP catch up to me (we were walking single file because of the rain and the fact that we were sharing Venice with just a billion of our closest friends...), I noticed that her little leather backpack was undone, and

upon investigation, we found that her wallet had been stolen.  She'd been to the bank the day before, so there was quite a bit of cash in it, and then also lots of cards etc that had to then be cancelled, and a wallet to be replaced.  The travel insurance people insisted that we had to go and file a police report, so we headed back to San Marco to talk to

the Police (who were of course vitally interested...'This is Venice, what do you think happens here?') before slinking off back to our apartment to feel a bit sad and sulky for the rest of the afternoon. So that was the bad, along with a little fall I had the afternoon before (now far overshadowed by the wallet incident...) while reading a map and crossing a bridge at the same time, that culminated in the death of my favourite pants and a bad graze on my knee a la grade 3.  

The ugly is the fact that Venice is almost a city without a soul.  I'd been there before, so I knew about the hoardes of tourists (although it was much much more

crowded this time, in September, than last time, which was in November), but the really disturbing thing was that even having an apartment there for a week you couldn't get beyond it.  We were staying in Castello, which is meant to be the last remaining residential bit of the city, but even so it didn't happen that we heard anything but english-speaking voices (usually with loud American accents) in our local supermarket or restaurants and cafes, except, of course, from the people who worked there.  I had to find a cobbler to fix two pairs of my shoes while we were there and in my search on the net for somewhere to take them found about a thousand blogs and newspaper articles about how it was impossible to find hardware stores, shoe repairers etc in Venice because the rent on shops is so high that the only people who can afford to pay are those selling imported Murano glass objects and mass-produced masks, and that this was part of the greater problem that has seen thousands of people move to the mainland in the past decade.  It's made me think (and will continue to do so) about the impact that '24 hour tourism' can have on community and social capital - Venice is absolutely stuffed with people taking happy snaps of the Rialto, San Marco and the Accademia bridge, but when you move beyond that there doesn't seem to be a lot left.  I'd like to think that if we'd stayed for a month we would have seen it differently, but I'm not at all convinced that that's the case.

Which brings me to the good.  Or should I say the excellent, because when Venezia is good, she's very very good.  Our apartment was fabulous. Having a bit more space than the one room after three weeks of travel was wonderful, the actual apartment itself (when it was not raining inside!) was beautiful (check out the local view, above), and hanging our washing out on the washing line outside the kitchen window three stories up was pretty cool too, although

 unusually it freaked EP out a bit.  Our neighbourhood was also fantastic - the street view you see above is of our street, complete with our friend the fruit shop

dog, and there was also a little supermarket and a shop next door that sells fresh pasta made daily, which we indulged in quite a bit...  And the Biennale, which we were lucky enough to be able to spend two days at was also just wonderful.  We saw many of the national pavilions which each house the work of one artist - Australia's was Daniel von Sturmer, and it was great - and most of the Padiglione Italia, which houses a collection of some of the best contemporary art from around the world. Some of the shots you see above are of some of the pieces we liked the best.  Other things that fitted into the 'good' category was the food (expensive but excellent), the water, the architecture and just taking little walks around calles a little off the beaten track.

Oh, and the other bit of 'good' was surely this bread roll that we bought to have with dinner one night and that we discovered bore a striking resemblance to a koala bear.  Do you think we've been travelling for too long at this point???

Onward to Firenze, but that will have to wait until tomorrow...

Slinky. xx.