Masks and Monsoons: The Epic Saga of Venice

            As corny as this sounds, there are definitely moments in life when you just can’t. stop. smiling. This condition is usually accompanied by the urge to squeal out loud, jump up and down, and even, in some extreme cases, break into dancing. Throughout my time in Venice last weekend, that is exactly how I felt. The reason why it’s taken me over a week to write this is because the idea of describing such a weekend seemed daunting…and then I also had a very busy week. Brace yourselves, this is a long one: my weekend in Venice.

            We bought tickets for Venice the first week we arrived in Bologna and I am so glad that we got an early start on it. We bought the FrecciaBianca train tickets, which means that by paying a few extra Euros, it only took us an hour and a half to get from Bologna to Venezia. The train was beautiful and although I had to sit across from a short Italian businessman who thought he deserved all of the leg-space under the table (I WAS A WHOLE FOOT TALLER THAN HIM) it was a pretty nice ride. By the time we pulled into Venice, it was already dark out. Then, as per the instructions given to us by the place where we would be staying, we hopped on the vaporetto (a water-bus, because there are no cars in Venice, all transportation is by foot and by boat) and took a thirty-minute boat ride to a residential neighborhood, just about a fifteen minute-walk from Piazza San Marco.

            One of the lovely ladies in my travel group, Megan, had the forethought to look on a website called Airbnb, which allows you to rent apartments in most cities throughout Europe for decent prices. For the two nights that we spent in Venice, I only paid about 35 Euro after the bill had been divided amongst our group. Most hostels in Venice are about 30 Euro each night. This was such a score. I highly recommend renting an apartment if any of you are considering traveling abroad and you want your own space.

            All nine of us settled in the apartment and I got the double bed up in the loft, which I shared with Sami and Skyla. We also had a pull-out couch, a single bed, a regular couch, a full-sized kitchen and a balcony that overlooked a courtyard that we shared with our neighbors. Once we were all moved in, we then set out in search of a restaurant that I had done research on a few days before. Unfortunately, we hit a few snags: (1). Some people were so hungry that they were incapable of speech, let alone going on a wild goose chase; (2) We didn’t really have a map, unless you count the small picture that the travel book included as part of its “Introduction to Venice”; (3) There was no one out on the streets to ask for directions. That was the strangest part; it was only about 8:30 or 9:00 when we started walking around, which is prime eating time in pretty much every other Italian city. But the streets were deserted and not only was this inconvenient for asking directions, it was also somewhat creepy. It was as if the plague had hit Venice again and we were the only survivors. Eventually, we were pulled into a restaurant by a man who, with very broken English, stood outside the door of his place and asked us if we would like to come in for pasta. This was our first encounter with the reality of Venice tourism.

            Despite the fact that I immediately hated the restaurant for giving us menus written in English (I sent it back like a snob and asked for the Italian menu because, well…yeah), the food was actually delicious and it we had a good time. Two girls were actually brave enough to try the linguini soaked in black squid ink (Venice specialty) but I’m not sure if they knew what they were ordering beforehand. After dinner, half of the group went on to explore Piazza San Marco in the dark while the other half of us headed back to the apartment to crash in preparation for the next day.

            Now, I had read the weather reports for Saturday: 60% chance of rain, they said. Light showers, they said. What the weather report failed to mention was the hurricane-speed winds, the piercing rain and the cold that reached down to our bones.  

            Dramatic? Only a little.

            The good news is, Lily, Sami and I made a decision at the beginning of the day that would make the rain and the wind seem like mere inconveniences: we got our faces painted. I honestly think that this singular decision had a huge effect on our attitudes on rainy Venice.

            With glitter on our faces to celebrate Carnevale, we proudly marched through the crowds of tourists until we decided that doing something educational would be a good idea. I personally have a hard time making it through wall after wall of art paintings and sculptures that all start to look the same to me after approximately fifteen minutes, so instead of going to one of the many noteworthy galleries of Venice, we went to the Palazzo Ducale (the Ducal Palace) which has a good balance of those paintings and sculptures, but also grand rooms, large displays of swords and, of course, the Bridge of Sighs. We managed to get half-price tickets (thank you, student ID’s!) and somehow ended up going into the bookstore and moving backwards through the tour of the Palace. Lily and Sami are convinced we snuck into a section of the Palace that required extra payment, but I’m not entirely sure. Regardless, we were definitely going through the Palace the wrong way, seeing as we had to constantly fight against the stream of tourists who looked very confused as to why we were coming from where they were going. This made walking through the Palace even more exciting; with the extra thrill of sneaking past the guards, it felt like we were contributing towards Casanova’s legacy of Palazzo Ducale escapes. We got through the Palazzo without being yelled at, with the added bonus of having seen some beautiful rooms and depressing jail cells, circa 16th century.

            After walking in the rain (again) we began to make our way through Piazza San Marco towards the Rialto for food. Again: tourists everywhere. And I am only emphasizing the amount of tourists (while ignoring the fact that I myself was a tourist as well) because in Bologna, there are none. When walking the streets of the city that we’ve started to call “home,” English is hardly ever spoken; if it is, we tend to spin around and stare at the other Americans/Brits/Aussies/etc. with the same amount of fascination as the local Italians. However, in Venice, we’re everywhere—English-speakers, that is. After having spent just about a month in a city where the only Americans around are those in my program, walking through the streets of Venice was a small reminder that yes, America is still across the ocean. We are not alone, someone said at one point during the trip; and although this sounded sort of ominous, it was exactly how I felt in regards to the large amount of Americans that we bumped into throughout the day.

            With all of us American tourists comes those slightly-insulting moments when local Italians insist on speaking English with you, even when you’re clearly doing fine in Italian. We got a nice break from that when we stepped into Trattoria alla Madonna, a restaurant that my parents and I used to go to when we visited Venice.

            Despite the fact that Madonna has menus in almost every single language, the feeling of extreme tourism that comes from the stands of cheap masks and glass-sellers on the streets seems to drift away when you step through the tiny door of the Trattoria. All the walls are whitewashed, with massive, dark wooden beams holding up the ceilings. It’s a bustle of noise and movement and the smell of fish (which is, obviously, also a Venetian specialty). All the waiters are in white suits and black bowties and are probably some of the most polite people you’ll ever encounter in the service industry. As soon as we walked in the door, looking like drowned, stray dogs, they immediately whisked our coats off to be dried and led us to a small, cozy side-room filled with all Italians and one Chinese family who was having some serious problems figuring out the menu.

            It was really nice going back to a place that I remembered from when I was younger. I have a lot of memories of being in that Trattoria, since my parents and I would stop in there at least once every time we went to Venice. The food is spectacular and costs almost nothing. We spent over an hour in the restaurant, warming up with our fresh gnocchi and bread. We couldn’t stop talking about how, despite the inclement weather, this day was simply amazing. There’s something about the windy streets of Venice that makes you fall in love with it, no matter how rainy or touristy it is.

            After some helpful directions from our waiter, we set off looking for a famous pasticceria (pastry shop) that had been in Venice since either the 1400’s or the 1700’s (there is some conflicting information regarding its date of origin). The important thing to note: it was old. However, streets in Venice do not go straight and locals’ directions are less-than-accurate. They usually include the words: “Left, then left, then straight. It’s right in front of you.”

            LIES.

We took many lefts and lefts and lefts and also went straight and yet we somehow still ended up lost and confused. At this point, Sami—who had decided to only wear a thin shirt and a windbreaker for the day—was really struggling with the idea of continuing to walk through the city. We stopped inside a book shop, where the owner not only told us how to find the pasticceria (which was, admittedly, right in front of us), he also taught us about his work: the very Venetian tradition of marble book designs and bookbinding. His work was beautiful and I ended up buying a book from him that also had paper in it from a family down on the Amalfi coast that has been making paper for centuries. In fact, they were the first Italian family to learn paper-making from Arabic merchants, and they still make it to this day. Their family name is printed very lightly on the center page of my notebook, and this added bit of history just makes it all the more beautiful.

            Our efforts to reach Pasticceria Rizzardini paid off. The little pastry shop had a lot of character, but this was mainly because of the baker, who insisted on choosing our pastries for us. Lily and Sami got the infamous “Casanova’s Balls” (chocolate and hazelnut and all sorts of deliciousness) and I got traditional Carnevale pastries, which were out-of-this-world-amazing. Please imagine fried balls of dough, studded with raisins, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and filled with the lightest, sweetest cream (panna fresca) imaginable. It was Heaven. So much so, that we each had two pastries. No shame.

            We then asked the pastry shop man where a good mask store was; we wanted to go to a mask store that wasn’t extremely touristy (which made the baker-man laugh, since we were obviously tourists) and so he pointed us in the direction of a bridge, that was just a few left and right-turns away.

            Surprisingly, we made it to the store with little problems, where we found two rooms filled with masks, from the ceiling to the floor. Unfortunately, the owners were very strict on taking pictures so I couldn’t capture the extreme claustrophobia that can sometimes come from being stared at by thousands of empty eyes, but it was amazing. We spent a good thirty minutes in the store, trying on masks and marveling at the craftsmanship.

            While happily cradling little bags of bubble-wrapped masks, we headed back to our apartment. Originally, Lily and I were going to dry off and then head back out into the rain to eat out, but once we got inside and peeled off the layers of soaking clothes, staying in started to seem like a much better idea. When we then looked out the window and realized that the rain had mutated into some sort of hurricane-monsoon-maelstrom-hybrid, we decided to stay in the apartment with the other girls. We spent the night listening to 90’s music and cooking risotto and chicken (which Skyla has now taught me how to make!). It was a nice, relaxing night after a long, long day.

            The next day, we woke up relatively early and set out to explore the city again before going back to Bologna on our three o’clock train. Waking up early was the second-best decision we made all weekend, after the face paint. Being able to explore the city in its quiet hours before the hordes of tourists got off the boats was such a gift. And what was even better was that the skies had cleared: slowly but surely, the sun began to fight its way up into the sky. With the sun, everything seemed new. We got lost in the back alleyways searching for a particular tower that our book-man had recommended to us the day before and it was definitely worth the search. We then spent twenty minutes trying to find our way out of the maze to go back to our apartment to pick up our stuff (check-out was at 11) and then return back to the center of the city for a few more hours of exploration and lunch.

            The thing about Venice is that if you get pulled into its little streets, the buildings start to learn into one another. You’re always craning your neck, squinting up at the windows and small balconies of the apartments above, where trellises of purple and red flowers hang down like moss. It really is like being in a maze, albeit a beautiful one. While the Grand Canal offers wide streets, views of the Rialto, and plenty of opportunities to inter-mingle with fellow tourists, the back alleyways are the closest thing to your childhood’s dream of an imaginary world. There is a definite sense of being closed off from the rest of the city, as you carefully inch around the next corner or street, not knowing if you’ll end up facing a street of water or another alley. You follow the old, yellow signs and wall etchings that have arrows pointing towards Piazza San Marco and you hope that they’re right, because at this point, even that 3 Euro map you bought won’t help you. Other tourists brush by with the same dazed look in their eyes, and I think it’s the mystery of this city that keeps people coming back for more. What a conundrum Venice is: a hodgepodge of grand, white marble staircases and slimy fish markets that reek of raw octopus, fish scales littering the ground like silver. The gondoliers paddle down the almost-turquoise water of the little canals, singing loud renditions of Andrea Bocelli when they have tourists in their boat, but quiet little lullabies when they are alone, bending over as they glide beneath the bridges. It’s peaceful back here, in the alleyways with the little mask shops and the doors that have lion heads with snarling jaws that open to the keyhole. It’s the kind of place you never want to leave, on the off chance that there’s just one more discovery to be made over the next bridge.

            And then suddenly a huge crowd of people dressed as mushrooms rushed by us singing and we were pulled with them and the rest of the crowd into the chaos of Piazza San Marco.

            The piazza was an explosion of colors and music and costumes and people. To the right, there was a huge stage where commentators were yelling loudly over the melee, announcing different types of costumes and parades and traditions of Carnevale. There were at least three different types of music playing. The costumes surrounding us were stunning. And it was all lit up, amazingly, by sunlight. The skies were clear and Venice was giving us one last show to make up for the bad weather the day before.

We walked around, completely overwhelmed, trying to find some sense in the crowd. As the parade began, we realized that we had to get our stuff from the apartment. We walked/ran as quickly as possible back to our little quiet corner of Venice, grabbed our over-stuffed backpacks, and ran back to the center. I use the term “ran” loosely, seeing as I had really over-packed (lesson learned: you only need one pair of boots) and Sami was somehow trying to carry her Vera Bradley duffle bag (which is made for looks, not for comfort) as a backpack. The crowds had multiplied and now we could barely push our way through, there were so many people. As we shuffled over bridges, I tried to snag a few pictures of the costumed people walking the streets. Some of the people who are dressed up are paid to walk around by the city, but others are just locals who do it for fun (or tourists who are fulfilling a life dream—a.k.a., me in ten years, when I have enough money for one of those costumes).

            While the rest of the group was off in some distant part of Venice that we didn’t have the energy to find, Sami, Michelle and I grabbed a quick lunch and got directions from our waiter on how to walk to the train station, as opposed to paying the money to sit on the vaporetto for thirty minutes. Our route included a short gondola ride across the canal that was sort of like a ferry-service. They were supposed to charge us 2 Euro for the trip, but no one asked us for the money that we awkwardly held in our hands as we stood on the dock, waiting for someone to tell us what to do. So we eventually just walked away and got a free gondola ride (and almost tipped the boat over, with our over-packed bags).

            We then walked through a residential neighborhood of Venice, which was really fun. Here, Carnevale was also in full swing, but rather than hordes of American, Chinese and German tourists celebrating, it was the Italians themselves. This area was much less chaotic than Piazza San Marco, but it had that same feeling of excitement that Carnevale seems to create. There were a lot of families in costume, street musicians, pastries being sold from vendors, and explosions of confetti and streamers everywhere.

            On the way, we happened to find the Jewish Ghetto, which has been around since the 14th century but obviously became a much more significant part of the city during the 1930’s and 1940’s. It was the quietest part of the city, with a piazza filled with small boys feeding pizza to pigeons beside a wall commemorating the Jews who were sent to Nazi concentration camps.

            We then made it back to the train station and took a relaxing ride back to Bologna. It felt nice to come back to something familiar, but it was also heart-breaking, leaving Venice. I’ve heard a lot of people say that Venice is like the Orlando, Florida of Italy: a tourist trap, with nothing to offer but plastic masks and the chaos of long lines at the art museums. But I think that if you can look past all the tourism, there is a truly beautiful city hiding behind the street vendor’s carts. There is so much history and culture to Venice and it is singularly unique in the fact that there was a day when a bunch of Italians had the nerve and the ingenuity to look at sinking lagoon and say, “Yeah. Let’s build a city on that.”

            Venice is still, and I think will always be, one of my favorite cities. The brief 48 hours I spent there this past weekend was a whirlwind of rain and sunshine and masks and music. I love the city even more than I did when I first saw it as a ten year-old little girl, clutching my copy of The Thief Lord and peering down a crooked alleyway, wondering where it led.

© Copyright Danielle DeSimone. 2013.