Dreamy Venitian days

Venice has been a dream place for Hari and I to visit. I guess that is probably the case with most people. It was to be one of the highlights of this vacation. The train to Venice was just a 6 hour ride from Munich through the lovely Austrian Alps. We rode through some snow covered areas in Austria which were very pretty especially when looking from the inside of a well heated trainJ. Hari did decide to be adventurous and ventured outside along with some anxious Japanese train-mates to take some pictures.

The weather was slightly warmer at Venice than Germany. Our train took us to the heart of the city from where we took a water taxi (Goa style ferry) to a quiet neighbourhood where our B&B was. We were greeted by a really sweet old host called Franco who inspite of much insistence on my part refused to let me carry my suitcase up to our room and he wheezed up the stairs with it instead.

Venice was all that I had imagined. Beautiful architecture, cute alleys, quaint stores and churches lined the streets and gorgeous canals! The way I figure, anything in Venice would look adorable because of the charm of the place. We were put up very close to Santa Maria Formosa cathedral which is one of the most important in Venice according to Franco.
The first couple of days we didn’t see many Gondolas in the water as it was a little cold and rainy but there were many boats and water taxis. All homes are made of the same characteristic stone and most were lined with potted plans and flowers along all the windows. Homes were either 2 or 3 stories high and the ground or the first floor was generally empty as winter time brings a lot of floods.

Being in Italy also brought pasta back into our livesJ Wasting no time, I got my much needed dose of Pesto for dinner on our first night there. Hari vowed to have as many Spaghetti meals as possible.

The next day we walked a short walk up to Venice’s main attraction ( other than the gondolas) to San Marco square wherein lies the beautiful San Marco Cathedral which aside from being a regular cathedral also houses some amazing pieces of art and frescos made of gold. The main attraction here (atleast in my opinion) were the mosaic art works.

Around the square, there were some exquisite stores with glass displays. Venice and its little neighbour Murano are well known for blown glass work. How I kicked myself for being an unemployed student with no budget for Venitian glass sculptures at the time you will never know! But it was a pleasure to just take it all in as well. I guess we didn’t quite look convincing as unemployed students. So we were accosted by a salesman who offered us a free water taxi to take us to Murano to see some glass sculptures being made in a glass factory. After that of course we would have the privilege of perusing the factory’s large galleries of items for sale which we could choose to purchase from. Somewhat suspiciously, Hari and I agreed to go and were treated to some skillful glass blowing. The ‘master’ at the factory blew glass to make a horse sculpture. After that came the uncomfortable feeling of being chased around the galleries by a nosy and imposing Italian lady. She kept trying to push us to buy some sculptures and when we finally obliged her by buying a glass pendant, not quite what she had hoped for I suspect. We quickly beat a retreat and returned to Venice.

The next day brought some sunshine and soon the gondolas were out and Hari and I joined the eager tourists in trying to hail down a gondola at the beautiful Rialto bridge. We had a beautiful half hour tour by Gondola of lovely Venice and forgot about everything else during that time. During our time in Venice, we also saw the Chiesa de la Salute (Church) and the local Chirstmas market.

Venice truly lived up to all the hype. No let down here whatsoever.….

Some things that we noticed/ learnt-

* Gondola drivers own their own Gondola. There are a total of 400 gondolas in Venice. At any given time, 300 are active and the other 100 are rested.

* Venice has garbage and trash lying around in places and lots of graffiti on the wall but somehow the place is so beautiful, so you never notice anything offensive.

* Murano glass shops are competing (as are most places in the world today) with shops with similar glass artifacts made in Taiwan and China.

Next stop – Florence!

- Maya