Nellie Windmill

Apparently in centuries past this city glowed with bright colours. What a site that must have been! The romantic decay of the city recalled to my mind the Japanese philosophy and style called wabi-sabi. As described by artist Serena Barton, wabi-sabi refers to the qualities of imperfection, aging, cycles of nature, and cycles of life. It values rust, patina, burnishing, tearing, staining, and even decay. Venice is a wabi-sabi city. This same quality seems to lend it beautifully to HDR photography.

I was quite keen to do the Itinerari Segreti or “Secret Tours”. According to the Lonely Planet the Ducal Palace is reputed to hold dark secrets that can be found through a passageway disguised as a filing cabinet in the Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci (Chamber of the Council of 10), which to me, sounds deliciously like a Dan Brown novel. Alas, tours only run once a day in English and we didn’t quite make it in time. Reason Number 1 to come back to Venice.

Our next destination proved to be a rather elusive little boutique selling marbled paper called, “Carte”. A blogger friend of mine had coincidentally suggested I try my hand at making some papers a few days earlier so I thought it would be pretty snazzy to check out this ancient craft brought to Venice from Japan via Turkey and Florence. Unfortunately navigating the warren-like streets and canals of Venice in the rain with dodgy GPS proved to be too much for Mike’s sanity. I found the rain rather atmospheric and enjoyed the novelty of wandering around deserted lanes and back alleys rarely trodden by tourists. As we huddled under shelter from the drizzly rain, we once again poured over the puzzling map while a grocer with a cart stocked full of produce rattled by singing a loud tune with obvious relish. For some unknown reason we only own one umbrella and when it rains we huddle under it together. This is usually cozy and fun but today Mike was on a mission and he marched on ahead as I bemusedly followed along behind. We passed what must have been a school or kindergarten two or three… maybe four times during The Hunt. Each time we were amazed at the cacophony of tiny little voices all speaking at once emanating from inside. For full effect turn the volume waaay up.

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We aborted the attempt before Mike went completely postal and spent some time wandering the streets of Venice, blessedly without a destination in mind in now very soggy shoes. Despite sogginess, we were delighted to have the opportunity to linger and take tons of photos of the beautiful grunge of Venice’s lanes, canals and buildings.

I’d resolved, during our visit to Venice the day before, to buy a carnevale mask. I’d seen one that was decorated with card suits and was hoping to stumble upon it or something similar again. I did a spot of window shopping but decided to leave serious shopping to the end of the day once we’d done a bit more sight-seeing.

After wandering around in circles a bazillion times we finally managed to find the super cheap pizza place from the day before with a little help from Andrea. Navigating in this place is near impossible. I was super stoked that we’d managed to eat for under €10 in Venice! We even managed coffee for a couple of euros! We chatted for a bit about combatting grumpiness and making the most of less than ideal conditions when sight-seeing. A handy life-skill too me thinks.

Two unsuccessful plans down we decided on our next destination, something that is impossible not to find in Venice – the Piazza and Basilica di San Marco. As we approached we noticed a whole bunch of tourists huddled underneath the arch leading into San Marco, sheltering from the rain.

We made our way through the tight huddle and out into the wide open and blessedly empty expanse of Piazza San Marco, the rain having emptied the piazza of tourists except for those speedily making their way across the void to shelter. If there was ever a reason to visit Venice on a rainy day this is it!

We’d barely noticed San Marco when we were there with Silvia and Andrea the day before as we were distracted by hordes of tourists and interesting conversation with our new friends. This seemed rather startling as we looked on it as if for the first time.

We’d downloaded an audio tour of Piazza San Marco by Rick Steves to listen to once here but noted with some consternation that the iPhone’s battery was dangerously low – all that navigating to find marbled paper! Damn you marbled paper! We’d listened to his audio tours at the Colosseum and The Forum in Rome and found them immeasurably more entertaining and informative than any of the dry, cheerless, uninteresting and gratuitous detail-gushing, date-quoting audio tours we’ve been subjected to by the official tourist offices. While Mike wandered about trying to find free wifi to set up my iPod (the backup option) with our silver bullet for important historical sites we don’t understand the significance of I meandered around the balcony that surrounds the periphery of the piazza happily snapping photos. Audio tour backup almost-but-not secured, we took our chances with the weary iPhone and waltzed out into the centre of the piazza under cover of our umbrella, blessedly un-jostled by the masses. While the rain pattered on our umbrella, we listened intently to all the fascinating reasons why Venice exists in the first place, why it is famous, and very special.

A couple of interesting tidbits we learned from said tour:

As probably everyone knows acqua alta (high tide) in Venice means Piazza San Marco becomes completely submerged. Maybe something most don’t consider, and I certainly hadn’t, is that the water also seeps into people’s homes and other buildings. After the water recedes one must be very careful to wash everything it touched to protect it from the sea water’s corrosive influence.

The bell tower we were to ascend later had actually collapsed in 1902 and the golden angel which adorns it landed right at the front door of the basilica, standing up. The cynic in me wonders if someone came along unseen and respectfully righted her.

Feeling in much brighter spirits after our very successful audio tour despite sloshing with every step we took we headed to San Marco Basilica hoping the iPhone would hold out for another audio tour in there. Alas the Basilica had closed not long ago. Reason number 2 to return to Venice. Bugger, I was reeeaaally looking forward to that!

We approached the bell tower (the Campanile) hesitant to hope that it was still open. It was! And what a view – a damp, cold, view.

I love that this looks like a vintage photo:

We’d originally planned to stay after dark in Venice as this is invariably described as magical. Alas, feet that had been soggy for an entire day and thoughts of a comfy dry Nettle begged to differ so we resolved to grab a mask and get going. Reason number 3 to return to Venice. I half-heartedly perused mask shops but The One continued to elude me and I didn’t have the heart to prolong Mike’s soggy misery. Aaand reason number 4 to return to Venice!

We stopped off for a pick-me-up coffee and gaped at the exorbitant bill. I guess we didn’t quite make it out of Venice without being ripped off. So close! I made a quick purchase of two blank Carnevale masks – the long-nosed mask of the quack doctor and pretty columbina – to paint myself and we sloshed our way to the train station.

We left Venice with 3 objectives out of 8 achieved but I think we excelled at the most important one of all – just wander, get lost, and soak it all in.

We had a whole weekend with our new friends all to ourselves in store and we couldn’t wait! We hadn’t spent a good amount of time with people our own age – or close enough – since we traveled with friends in Italy very early on in our trip. This is one of the downsides of motor-homing – whilst most travellers our age are meeting peers in youth hostels we’re hanging out in some field with retirees. Both Silvia and Andrea have lived in Padova all their lives and made very good guides as they showed us around their lovely city. We were all constantly impressed with the random wikipedia-like bits of trivia Andrea kept coming out with. Silvia told us of a famous local saying that describes Padova as the city that has “a meadow without grass, a saint without a name and a café without doors”. The tour took in each of these three things and we were baffled to find that the “meadow” is the city square which does have grassy areas, the saint’s name is Anthony and the cafe does indeed have a door. Huh.

I found Padova, in a strange way, to be a bit like our home town of Melbourne in Australia. It doesn’t look like it at all but I found that Padova didn’t seem to have any grand tourist attractions to it’s name – just like Melbourne – but what it does have is a sense of “liveability”. It’s a nice city. It has pretty parts, it has a pleasant atmosphere and there seems be a lot going on. This was interesting to me as the longer we’ve spent in Italy the more I’ve come to feel that I wouldn’t want to live here. I’ve become very aware of the general lack of space – doors opening right up onto the road in towns, the “country” still being quite populated with at least a house or two always in view. To me, this has amounted to a general sense of crowdedness. This is something I love about travel and learning about other cultures – it shines a new light on our own country and culture. Intellectually I understood that Australia has a tiny population and is massive with wide, open spaces but I didn’t understand what that felt like until I felt what a large population in a small country feels like. It may have been because of our friends’ presence but Padova felt like one of the few places in Italy where I could live – I say “I” as Mike has felt there have been plenty of places that he would be happy staying put in.

It was absolutely wonderful spending time with locals and gleaning little insights we otherwise wouldn’t have gleaned. I love my coffee, I come from a city that has a well-known and respected coffee culture but I can’t for the life of me understand Italian coffee – the espresso. “Sip” and it’s gone! Andrea shed some light on it for me when he likened it to a small gourmet chocolate – it doesn’t last long but it’s a taste sensation for as long as it does.

We had a traditional “spritzer” – a cocktail – at “spritzer o’clock” – sometime in the evening before dinner – and watched the “fighetti” – comically fashionable Italian youth – strut and generally stand around looking rich and beautiful in “The Uniform” – the wardrobe that it seems all Italians have agreed to adopt. I asked Silvia, who expressed exasperation at “The Uniform”, where she does her shopping. Her answer – she doesn’t shop! She proceeded to point out her hole-ridden Doc Martins that were The Thing to have in the 90s!

Just as Andrea finished explaining to us what “fighetti” means, a very expensive looking car that barely came up to knee-level came to a screeching halt right in front of the busy cafe and a trendy young thing strutted out in The Uniform. Everyone in the vicinity turned and stared. Andrea turned back to us, shrugged, and announced, “fighetti”. We all cracked up as the guy sauntered off nonchalantly.

We talked for a while about the band they were in in their twenties, “K”. Turns out our new friends were quite the rock stars back in the day! Later that night at their apartment we watched a concert they played at to a massive audience, Silvia on guitar and Andrea the lead singer! That night we introduced the guys to some Aussie bands – Clare Bowditch and The Cat Empire. It was fun seeing Andrea rock out to a song about our home-town “The Crowd”.

We had a wonderful home-cooked meal with a couple of Andrea and Silvia’s lovely friends and the best strawberries I’ve ever tasted with nothing but a bit of water, lemon and sugar. After dinner we went to the “Gelateria da Bepi”, a gelateria with a very unconventional array of flavours, including basil, carrot, sweet potato, pepper, tomato, rosemary, sage, celery, pumpkin and salmon!

We discussed our plans for Sunday and couldn’t pass up the opportunity of visiting Venice with locals – both Silvia and Andrea went to university there, the lucky things!