Venice: The search for life off the tourist highways

Ahhh Venice... It really is a place you have to see to believe: an entire city built with a series of islands and canals linking it all together, and not a car in sight. It's a Disneyland for adults, and every way you turn there's something to take a photo of. Walking through the back canals is so quiet, you can easily forget you are in a city. But one alleyway over and you're on a tourist highway, and then it becomes just like any overcrowded tourist zone. Except in Venice, you pay for it even more.

Venice is said to have the dubious honour of being the most expensive city in Italy, and after our time here I can see why. Nothing is free. Want to go to the toilet? That's €1.50 thanks. Want to eat in a restaurant or have a drink sitting down? 12% cover charge. Public transportation? €7 per trip, (unless you are doing multiple trips in one day and then suddenly the €20 transport card becomes very appealing). Everything in Venice comes at a cost, and so it was a bit of a mission trying to not get sucked into the tourist traps and pay too much.

After living in a small Italian town (for free), getting back into the throngs of tourists and sneaky italians trying to charge you for everything was a bit of a shock and safe to say we were trying to avoid it as much as possible. One night in Bracciano one of Valentina's friends recommended some places for us to find to see the true Venetians. He told us to source out these special type of bars called 'Bacaro', where Italians get cheap drinks, and tapas-style specialties called ciccheti for about €1 each, and stand at the bar enjoying them with their friends. He also told us that in Venice, everyone gets lost, and that's part of the charm of the city. But if you put those two things together, the chances of actually finding these places he recommended were pretty slim.

Two nights and two failed attempts at finding a decent Barcaro later (although we did find a little jazz bar with 2-for-1 drinks one of those nights), our plan to stay off the tourist paths were not working out so well. Determined to try it one more time, we ventured out with an English guy that we met in our hostel to find Bacaro Ca D'oro on our last night. We caught the vaperetto up the Grand Canal, got off the stop and walked down an alley and lo and behold- there it was! We went inside and stood at the bar, looking over the big cabinet of delicious tapas food, and then realized that nothing had signs, prices, or anything that we could use to communicate with the bar staff. And then we realized this is why people don't stray off the tourist path....

The bar lady, a 40 something grouch with a penchant for tourists, had it in for us from the start. When Mike tried ordering some wine in Italian, the reply he got was simply 'I can't hear you' and a roll of the eyes. Obviously, we weren't locals, and therefore shouldn't have been there in her books. It soon became a bit of a game, to see who could order with saying something to annoy her too much. And for the effort, it was worth it. €0.5 glasses of red wine, €1.5 homemade meatballs with a crispy outside that were the best I've ever tasted, and some good laughs at her frosty looks to us in the meantime. It was all going so well, until the standing-room only bar got overpacked and I didn't realize there was an old Italian man right behind me. When I turned, I accidentally bumped into him, spilling red wine all over his beige shirt. I grabbed some napkins and in my best Italian tried saying 'mi displace signore', but I think he wasn't too happy about his best shirt being dyed red. At that point we decided to cut our losses and get out of there. It was definitely a slice of the 'real' Venice, it just didn't help that they didn't want us there!

It was a really cool city though, here's just a couple of photos of the main things we did:

PIAZZA SAN MARCO & RIALTO BRIDGE
Okay, we did stick with the tourists to see these places, but a trip to Venice wouldn't have been complete without them. Piazza San Marco is dominated by two main sights: St Mark's Basilica, and wayyyy to many pigeons for my liking. I was amazed by how many people let their kids feed them and try to play with them... Aren't they just rats with wings?

As for Rialto bridge, we passed under it a few times on the Vaperetto (water bus) down the grand canal, but only went over it once. It was cool how all the shops lined the bridge.. Don't get that back home!

PEGGY GUGGENHEIM GALLERY
We decided to try and culture ourselves up with a visit to this satellite gallery of the famous Guggenheim modern art gallery in New York. It was nice to see some art that wasn't all about religion (unlike most of Italy's art), and to see some works from Picasso, Kandinsky. But there was this one section of sculptures outside that made us realise we don't know anything about art, and it was fun trying to work out how a metal blob could be the 'horse' the artist intended it to be. Best bit about this place though was its location right on the grand canal, giving some amazing views from the courtyard...

DAY TRIP: MURANO & BURANO
We went to see the home of the famous Murano glass, and all the little sculptures of glass were pretty cute.. We were particularly confused by one shop which had a whole glass sculpture collection dedicated to cartoon Jews.

Burano, the home of lace, was one of my favourite sights though because every house on this island is a different colour. They say the houses were originally painted bright colours so that fishermen returning in heavy fog could tell which house was theirs. These days though, people wanting to paint their houses in Burano have to write and get special permission, and then they are told what colour to paint their house. It makes for some very good photographs at this place.

Next up: Florence!