Our airplane made a low pass over the lagoon as we banked towards the mainland. As I looked out below I saw a cluster of at least a dozen large islands with a long highway connecting the largest with the mainland. Through the center of the main island flowed a gently curving river. Catching the sun’s reflection as we flew lower, I could see that the river was connected to hundreds of small channels crisscrossing throughout the island. We had arrived in Venice.
Since the airport was located on the mainland we needed to take a shuttle into the lagoon to find our hostel. The bus took us along the long bridge and dropped us off at a parking lot on the main island cluster. After crossing a bridge and leaving the busses behind we would not see another vehicle for nearly three days.
Venice is the world’s only true all-pedestrian city. Sitting in the middle of a lagoon a few miles out from shore the city is made up entirely of narrow roads connected by hundreds of bridges that cross the canal system which goes throughout the entire city. All tasks that would normally be preformed by trucks or cars are replaced by a combination of man-powered carts and boats. Many families own a boat that is moored in the canal directly outside their home. Garbage is collected by hand carts and loaded into garbage boats that cruise up and down the canals before returning to the mainland full. Deliveries for stores and restaurants are unloaded from the nearest dock. Police, fire, and even ambulance services are all accomplished using waterborne vessels.
I don’t believe a single person has visited Venice without getting lost in its vast maze of small alleyways and roads that wind amongst the land between rivers and canals. Even the best map of the area can only show so much detail making navigation between landmarks more of an educated guessing game than anything else. However, many will say that this is the charm of the city and that by getting lost in its back roads one finds the best plazas and the most picturesque canals.
Transit in such a city is very interesting. Walking is obviously the primary form of transportation much to the chagrin of tourists with large bags who wish to be dropped off directly in front of their hotel instead of wheeling large suitcases up and down small roads and bridges. There are private taxis that one may take, of course in the form of motorboats painted in a taxi color-scheme with an “on duty” light and a meter in the wheelhouse. However, the main form of public transportation is the city’s vaporetto system which one can equate to a metro system but taking place on the water instead of below ground. The ‘stations’ are floating platforms either along the main river or the outside perimeter of the islands. Each station has a color-coded route number and direction, much like a regular metro station. A map shows the different routes, labeled with numbers like in New York City, their stops, and a timetable. A vaporetto will arrive and get close enough to touch up against the side of the dock at which time a worker will open a gate letting people on and off. I can only assume he also says the Italian equivalent of “mind the gap”.
Since you are on an island there is a limit to how lost one can get. In addition, at every major road and plaza there are signs pointing to the two nearest vaporetto stops that you can orient yourself with. At any given point you have a fairly good idea of your general location so if you meander long enough in one direction you will find your destination. The address system is smart in it that it uses island cluster numbers, rather than relying on the small and short streets for location. To find an address one just has to get to the correct island and follow the numbers either going up or down.
We did just the same thing to find our lodging for the night. From what I could tell online, Venice does not have a single hostel, so we chose to stay instead in another Bed & Breakfast. The building we were looking for was located at the end of an alleyway off the main road so narrow that if you stretched out both of your arms, you could touch the walls of both buildings on either side. There were several homes along this road with the large door at the end of the alleyway belonging to our lodging. It was funny to see a building so hidden away like it was and it must have had the same effect on others since we had our picture taken by passing tourists coming and going from our hotel several times throughout our stay.
The large door opened up to a small garden surrounded by a high brick wall and two buildings, one for our host, and the other the guest house. Both were very old, as we would find nearly every building in the entire city to be. Our room was nice, hosting two large beds and a private shower.
Being a small city starved for living space, there was not much in the way of large attractions nor huge parks or gardens as one is accustomed to in other European cities. Aside from two large plazas by the universities, there is no notable nightlife to speak of. Thus, the majority of our visit consisted of walking around the streets discovering old buildings, churches, hidden plazas, small gardens and squares, and looking at the luxurious shopping and eating that was available for the extremely wealthy tourists that the city attracts.
Like Rome, all of the people in the tourism industry spoke several languages including English and French. True, we noticed that the majority of tourists there at the time were speaking French, I even found a discarded Paris metro ticket on the ground outside our hotel (I almost didn't notice it at first since I had become accustomed to seeing these small tickets littering every public space in the city and surrounding suburbs). Though we didn't have the time in our short stay to leave the main island, we adventured through as much of it as we could occasionally stopping in to museums, churches, and, for Kaitlin, Italian shoe stores of which there was an abundance. The Italian bakeries were out of this world and made fresh pastries, pizzas, and focaccia breads that we opted for instead of an actual meal a few times.
Walking down the stone-paved side streets with children playing soccer, women hanging laundry out to dry, and men chatting and smoking cigars, one could feel that they were in a small seaside town. On the other hand, the main roads along the water were thriving with life, street performers, cafes, and all sorts of goods for sale.
We enjoyed some time at a cafe on the waterfront with outside seating that looked over one of the main roads of the city. We also were able to see a funny cat and mouse game between the local police and the gentlemen illegally selling knockoff goods in the street. The venders would set up ‘shop’ on a park bench or bridge for a while then all of the sudden would gather their goods in their arms and start walking quickly in one direction. Some ran when the police grew closer. We saw one guy being chased in circles around a kiosk like in Scooby Doo before eventually darting off into in alleyway away from police.
I find street vending amusing because each city seems to have a specific item that people tend to sell. For example, in Madrid every block you would run into a man selling whistles whereas in Rome all the people were selling gel animals that when thrown on the ground would flatten out completely before returning to their original shape. Of course in Paris everyone sells Eiffel tower keychain rings usually walking around with a large ring of them like a warden would keep his keys on simply jingling them back and forth. Then there are always the people selling “authentic” Louis Vuitton handbags and Prada sunglasses for 10% of the price. I am always surprised how many people seem to sell the same trinkets in each city. With so many sellers, I would think the market would quickly saturate, but there must be enough tourists buying these things to keep them in business. Of course, none of these people who sustain themselves by selling these goods can afford to live within the touristy parts of the city and thus must make a commute in from the less affluent suburbs. The funniest sight in Venice was seeing the main train station just after dark when crowds of people with handbags, boxes of sunglasses, toys, and costumes for street performances were all waiting together for the next train to the mainland.
It is hard to pass through the center of Venice without running into Piazza Saint Marco, with its basilica and bell tower. Once called “the drawing room of Europe” by Napoleon, it is one of the only places in Venice that can hold sizable crowds of people. We were lucky enough to happen upon the city not only on the day of the founding of Italy, but on the exact 100th anniversary of the restoration of the tower. To celebrate there was a full concert orchestra and several other musicians playing from the balconies in the square accompanied by a light display from huge projectors onto the sides of buildings. We stayed an watched for a while before heading back for our last night in Italy.
The next day Kaitlin woke up early to catch a plane back to England. I slept in a bit later and checked out of our bed and breakfast. Stopping at a café for some breakfast I noticed many people out carrying or selling roses. As it turns out it was St. Mark’s Day, where the tradition is to give a rose to your sweetheart. All morning I saw men buying roses to bring home later and women walking in groups each holding on to a rose given to them earlier. After a great breakfast and my last Italian coffee I made my way out to the train station. I made sure to grab a sandwich and drink for the road since it would be a nearly eight hour train ride that would bring me through Austria all the way to Germany for the next and final leg of the trip.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Rome
Our plane arrived on the eastern side of the Mediterranean and on the outskirts of the city of Rome in the late evening. After the usual hassle of getting between airport and city we found ourselves at the main train station, Termini. We walked the short distance to our hostel and found ourselves in front of another apartment building with a buzzer noting the hostel’s name. We pressed the button on the intercom. There was no answer on the intercom, only the sound of the door being buzzed open into a dimly lit hallway dusted with construction debris. In front of us was a small elevator, the kind with the metal gate that you pull across, with a sign that said “All guests, use the elevator at your own risk, it’s not reliable.” Not wanting to test if “not reliable” meant possibly getting stuck or suddenly plunging us to our deaths, we opted for the stairs. At the top of the first stairwell we found a glass door that had the name of our hostel painted on it, except the ‘s’ had been scraped off. I guess that they had “upgraded” to a hotel in the time since we had made our bookings.
We were greeted by a friendly Indian gentleman who helped us check in while informing us that he spoke seven languages all of which learned solely “listening to people talk, asking questions, you know.” Upon inquiring about our majors he was glad we were not studying abroad for something such as language studies since that was stupid and “not a real subject.” After catching a bit more life philosophy we headed upstairs to our rooms. The second floor of the building were the living quarters of the hostel complete with three bathrooms, a kitchen, and a desktop computer.
By hostel standards, our room was huge. There were only three beds in a space that could fit six and the other half of the room was deserted and being used as a storage area for dressers and light fixtures. Since the wireless router was unplugged and sitting atop a dresser we correctly guessed that the building did not have Wi-Fi.
For two out of three nights we did not have a guest in the third bed in the room, but there was an older Spanish gentleman whose room was next to ours. To our knowledge he neither slept nor left the hostel since between the hours of 6pm and whenever we went to bed he was sitting at the desk in the common area using both the desktop computer and his personal laptop. We noticed him on a variety of websites including Spanish single men’s chatrooms, but none of which involved any pressing work as far as we were able to discern. Occasionally he would take a twenty minute break to ignore the hostel’s no smoking policy by lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette in the bathroom. He neither cared to let others use the computer during that time nor to ash his cigarette anywhere but on the ground in the bathroom. He took a brief break around 8 each night to cook himself food leaving both his leftovers and dirty dishes to be found by the cleaning staff the next day.
Undeterred by rude guests we made the most of our time by enjoying everything Rome could offer, especially great architecture and excellent Italian food. We found it interesting that Italian restaurants would have two courses: the first being a pasta dish and the second a meat dish with a side. Restaurants around the touristy areas of Rome (that is to say almost the entire city) stand outside trying to entice potential customers with food and drink specials. On our first evening we were standing in the plaza in front of the Pantheon admiring the exterior as a restaurateur near us had conversations with customers in Italian, French, English, and Spanish. I was just about to point his linguistic prowess out to Kaitlin when I saw him walk up to a Japanese couple reading the menu and say a friendly “Konnichiwa, O-genki desu ka?” or “Good evening, how are you?” Thoroughly impressed, we decided to have dinner there. Just as we were served our first course an accordion band struck up in the plaza and played for almost the entire meal!
Rome is a somewhat overwhelming city to visit. At first it is hard to believe that this is the actual city of the Romans, once arguably the capital of the entire civilized world. It is hard to miss the presence of thousands of years of history in the city. Monuments, landmarks, and ancient buildings are found on nearly every city block spreading out a very far distance from the city center.
It was still a surreal experience to be able to walk down a modern city with shoe stores and restaurants lining the sidewalks and to look to the left and see the forum where Julius Caesar was killed or the field where the great Roman fire began. Rome is known for having several distinct hills in the city that were once a home to the members of powerful governing families such as the Medici. The houses were constantly in a power struggle for control of the city for much of their history and the pope usually found himself in a balancing act to keep the peace. Much of our stay was spent walking around the city learning of its history and seeing the fabulous architecture some of which is centuries old.
Of course no visit to Rome would be complete without seeing the Wonder of the Ancient World found in the city, the Coliseum. After chatting with the staff of our hostel who told us that during the spring the site could become exceptionally crowded we decided to go in the late evening a few hours before it closed. This proved to be a good decision as the lines were fairly short at that time.
One of the most amazing things about the Coliseum is that the structure that one sees today is just the underlying framework of the building. All of the original seating, balconies, and concourses throughout the stadium were made of more fragile material and were either lost to the centuries or reclaimed for other building endeavors. Artist renderings of the show the intricate detail of the structure as it stood centuries ago.
The Coliseum actually has a very interesting history. The site originally was just a normal residential block of the city until the year 64 AD when the Great Roman Fire destroyed much of the quarter including the houses of the aristocracy on nearby Palatine Hill. On the cleared land of the hill and surrounding lowland areas the Emperor Nero designed his grounds and built his palace, the Domus Aurea (literally “Golden House” in Latin). After Nero’s death, his successors built the amphitheater to turn some of the lands of the Domus Aurea into a place for the people of the city to use, probably to help shake off some of the bad rap that the emperors got after Nero’s rule.
The tickets to the Coliseum also gave us access to the adjacent Roman Forum, a large park that is home to many old preserved architectural sites including active archeological digs. In the park we walked among houses of Roman nobility and their gardens, an old sports pitch that was still almost fully intact, and a stretch of the massive aqueduct that once carried water into the city from the far away countryside.
Among the preserved sites we encountered active digs with archeologists slowly cataloging finds in their sites. As with the rest of the ancient part of the city, the level of complexity in the architecture was astonishing. Despite being several thousand years old a large part of the structures still stood to this day (obviously with a little help from preservationists over the years). Just to engineer something as the aqueduct system must have taken a great knowledge of physics, architecture, and mathematics impressive for the day and age in which they were constructed.
Before we could leave the city we had to make a trip to the smallest country in the world, Vatican City. Lying in the northwest corner of the city, the head of the Roman Catholic Church had long been just another part of the city in Rome. In 1929, the Vatican was split for the rest of the city and made an independent city governed by the pope alleviating many socio-political problems caused by the conflict between the government and the pope.
The approach to the Vatican was impressive. Crossing over the Tiber, the road ahead of you leads straight to St. Peter’s Square with the Basilica and the city directly in front of you. Of course, most of the Vatican is not open to tourists, the only things that we could visit that day were the Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica. Security into the city was tight and everyone was made to wait in a queue to pass through metal detectors and to have one’s bags scanned.
In addition to the modern security officers at the entrance, one could find the Swiss Guards throughout the city guarding the entrances to important buildings in their traditional striped baggy dress and carrying large pointed pikes. Of course, if any situation calls for more than a sharp stick the guards also have a well-stocked arsenal of assault rifles just in case.
Our visit inside of Basilica di San Pietro took a while due to the volume of people going through. It was difficult to take a photo that captured either the size or intricate details of the building. Afterwards we made our way down to the Tomb of the Popes, a solemn and plainly decorated grotto beneath the basilica which contains the tombs of many popes from Peter to John Paul II. We also found it interesting that Vatican City is the home to the only ATMs in the world with Latin as a selectable display language.
Around the late afternoon of our last day in Rome I took a long look at our tourist guide for the city. After three days filled with walking, we had only made a dent in all that one could see. The city was simply too big and too historical. Taking solace in the awesome things we did get to see and do we boarded the train to the airport early the next morning to head to our next city.
We were greeted by a friendly Indian gentleman who helped us check in while informing us that he spoke seven languages all of which learned solely “listening to people talk, asking questions, you know.” Upon inquiring about our majors he was glad we were not studying abroad for something such as language studies since that was stupid and “not a real subject.” After catching a bit more life philosophy we headed upstairs to our rooms. The second floor of the building were the living quarters of the hostel complete with three bathrooms, a kitchen, and a desktop computer.
By hostel standards, our room was huge. There were only three beds in a space that could fit six and the other half of the room was deserted and being used as a storage area for dressers and light fixtures. Since the wireless router was unplugged and sitting atop a dresser we correctly guessed that the building did not have Wi-Fi.
For two out of three nights we did not have a guest in the third bed in the room, but there was an older Spanish gentleman whose room was next to ours. To our knowledge he neither slept nor left the hostel since between the hours of 6pm and whenever we went to bed he was sitting at the desk in the common area using both the desktop computer and his personal laptop. We noticed him on a variety of websites including Spanish single men’s chatrooms, but none of which involved any pressing work as far as we were able to discern. Occasionally he would take a twenty minute break to ignore the hostel’s no smoking policy by lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette in the bathroom. He neither cared to let others use the computer during that time nor to ash his cigarette anywhere but on the ground in the bathroom. He took a brief break around 8 each night to cook himself food leaving both his leftovers and dirty dishes to be found by the cleaning staff the next day.
Undeterred by rude guests we made the most of our time by enjoying everything Rome could offer, especially great architecture and excellent Italian food. We found it interesting that Italian restaurants would have two courses: the first being a pasta dish and the second a meat dish with a side. Restaurants around the touristy areas of Rome (that is to say almost the entire city) stand outside trying to entice potential customers with food and drink specials. On our first evening we were standing in the plaza in front of the Pantheon admiring the exterior as a restaurateur near us had conversations with customers in Italian, French, English, and Spanish. I was just about to point his linguistic prowess out to Kaitlin when I saw him walk up to a Japanese couple reading the menu and say a friendly “Konnichiwa, O-genki desu ka?” or “Good evening, how are you?” Thoroughly impressed, we decided to have dinner there. Just as we were served our first course an accordion band struck up in the plaza and played for almost the entire meal!
Rome is a somewhat overwhelming city to visit. At first it is hard to believe that this is the actual city of the Romans, once arguably the capital of the entire civilized world. It is hard to miss the presence of thousands of years of history in the city. Monuments, landmarks, and ancient buildings are found on nearly every city block spreading out a very far distance from the city center.
It was still a surreal experience to be able to walk down a modern city with shoe stores and restaurants lining the sidewalks and to look to the left and see the forum where Julius Caesar was killed or the field where the great Roman fire began. Rome is known for having several distinct hills in the city that were once a home to the members of powerful governing families such as the Medici. The houses were constantly in a power struggle for control of the city for much of their history and the pope usually found himself in a balancing act to keep the peace. Much of our stay was spent walking around the city learning of its history and seeing the fabulous architecture some of which is centuries old.
Of course no visit to Rome would be complete without seeing the Wonder of the Ancient World found in the city, the Coliseum. After chatting with the staff of our hostel who told us that during the spring the site could become exceptionally crowded we decided to go in the late evening a few hours before it closed. This proved to be a good decision as the lines were fairly short at that time.
One of the most amazing things about the Coliseum is that the structure that one sees today is just the underlying framework of the building. All of the original seating, balconies, and concourses throughout the stadium were made of more fragile material and were either lost to the centuries or reclaimed for other building endeavors. Artist renderings of the show the intricate detail of the structure as it stood centuries ago.
The Coliseum actually has a very interesting history. The site originally was just a normal residential block of the city until the year 64 AD when the Great Roman Fire destroyed much of the quarter including the houses of the aristocracy on nearby Palatine Hill. On the cleared land of the hill and surrounding lowland areas the Emperor Nero designed his grounds and built his palace, the Domus Aurea (literally “Golden House” in Latin). After Nero’s death, his successors built the amphitheater to turn some of the lands of the Domus Aurea into a place for the people of the city to use, probably to help shake off some of the bad rap that the emperors got after Nero’s rule.
The tickets to the Coliseum also gave us access to the adjacent Roman Forum, a large park that is home to many old preserved architectural sites including active archeological digs. In the park we walked among houses of Roman nobility and their gardens, an old sports pitch that was still almost fully intact, and a stretch of the massive aqueduct that once carried water into the city from the far away countryside.
Among the preserved sites we encountered active digs with archeologists slowly cataloging finds in their sites. As with the rest of the ancient part of the city, the level of complexity in the architecture was astonishing. Despite being several thousand years old a large part of the structures still stood to this day (obviously with a little help from preservationists over the years). Just to engineer something as the aqueduct system must have taken a great knowledge of physics, architecture, and mathematics impressive for the day and age in which they were constructed.
Before we could leave the city we had to make a trip to the smallest country in the world, Vatican City. Lying in the northwest corner of the city, the head of the Roman Catholic Church had long been just another part of the city in Rome. In 1929, the Vatican was split for the rest of the city and made an independent city governed by the pope alleviating many socio-political problems caused by the conflict between the government and the pope.
The approach to the Vatican was impressive. Crossing over the Tiber, the road ahead of you leads straight to St. Peter’s Square with the Basilica and the city directly in front of you. Of course, most of the Vatican is not open to tourists, the only things that we could visit that day were the Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica. Security into the city was tight and everyone was made to wait in a queue to pass through metal detectors and to have one’s bags scanned.
In addition to the modern security officers at the entrance, one could find the Swiss Guards throughout the city guarding the entrances to important buildings in their traditional striped baggy dress and carrying large pointed pikes. Of course, if any situation calls for more than a sharp stick the guards also have a well-stocked arsenal of assault rifles just in case.
Our visit inside of Basilica di San Pietro took a while due to the volume of people going through. It was difficult to take a photo that captured either the size or intricate details of the building. Afterwards we made our way down to the Tomb of the Popes, a solemn and plainly decorated grotto beneath the basilica which contains the tombs of many popes from Peter to John Paul II. We also found it interesting that Vatican City is the home to the only ATMs in the world with Latin as a selectable display language.
Around the late afternoon of our last day in Rome I took a long look at our tourist guide for the city. After three days filled with walking, we had only made a dent in all that one could see. The city was simply too big and too historical. Taking solace in the awesome things we did get to see and do we boarded the train to the airport early the next morning to head to our next city.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Le Sud de France
French Riviera, a set on Flickr.
Marseille, Nice, Monanco, and other villages in the French Riviera.
Monday, June 4, 2012
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