Venice is kind of a romantic cliche by this point. One of my parents’ favorite songs has a chorus that puts having (or not having) interesting travel experiences in the perspective of a long, good marriage: “So we never went to Venice / and strolled the streets alone / but we built our worlds together and we got the best of both.” David and I are blessed enough to both build our lives together and to stroll the streets of Venice which, despite its status as a major tourist destination, was actually even more romantic and awesome than we expected.

We arrived in the afternoon around 3:00 or so, after a very worried couple of hours. There was a strike and so we didn’t know if there would be any trains going through to Venice – a girl in my class had her plans to go to Paris ruined, because she was unable to take the train to get to the right airport. Fortunately, it’s such a popular route there were still trains leaving. We took the high-speed train and paid the extra 10 euros each for the quick (about 70 minute) and comfortable trip. We called the B&B proprietor after we arrived, and he met us at one of many Renaissance churches in the city and led us to our room. Our room was big, air conditioned, and had a great bathroom with a jetted shower. He also left us a half-bottle of prosecco (Italian sparkling wine) as a gift. It was really a great blend of hotel professionalism with the personal service of a small B&B. Everything in the room spoke of an attention to detail – high thread-count sheets, nice pictures, recently remodeled interior but exposed wooden beams in the ceiling. The air conditioner worked great, which was pretty amazing for us since we had both just spent our first summer week ever with no air conditioning in 90-100 degree heat. We luxuriated in the air conditioning until it got a little later outside, and then we set out to enjoy the city.

It had cooled off maybe to the mid-80s by the evening when we went out, around 7. We had read about a specific osteria in our trip guide that we were curious to try, so we went in that general direction. Our B&B was close to the train station, so we struck out to the north-east of the city. We knew not to count on finding this specific place to eat- Venice is a complete maze, full of dead-ends, impassable canals, and completely arbitrary street names and numbers. It is, in short, my dream city to test my sense of direction and challenge myself to get to places in interesting ways. To our extreme pride, after only an hour or so of wandering we found our osteria. It was off the main tourist beat (if there is something off the main tourist beat in Venice) and had some interesting local food. We had prosecco with dinner and an antipasti (appetizer) of mixed sea-thingies. I ate a tiny octopus and some sardine that was in vinegar and onion. There were other things I didn’t recognize but ate anyway in a spirit of adventure. Then my spaghetti with clams and David’s calamari in a tomato sauce with cheese came. We decided to switch and enjoyed each other’s dinners immensely. For dessert we went to the Alaska gelateria and picked up some gelato. We decided against trying to find the ghetto because we were tired and we made our way home. On our way, we enjoyed the moonlight on the canals and the sound of the water lapping as boats cut through the water. We paused at several small bridges to look at the canals and we took interesting back-alley routes with barely enough room to extend the elbows. The entire city feels extremely safe and is always active.

Saturday morning we went up to the dock and got on the city bus – which happened to be a large boat. We took it all the way down the Grand Canal (the big s-shaped canal cutting through the middle of the city) and enjoyed watching Venice unfold in front of us. St. Mark’s Square is the city’s major tourist hub and for good reason – it has one of the most resplendant churches in the world(allegedly containing the bones of St. Mark himself, stolen in the 9th century from Muslims) and a huge ducal palace which was the seat of Venice’s ruler during its stint as an independent nation.

In the morning we went to the ducal palace and we were like kids in a candy shop, looking at the biggest array of antique weapons we’ve ever seen. After this, we ran back to teh B&B (a 20 minute walk that actually took closer to an hour and a half because of the nature of going anywhere in Venice) because we were supposed to meet with the B&B proprietor to make arrangements for our dinner that evening. It turns out that we didn’t really need to rush back since he had already put the vouchers in our room, which was a little frustrating. We enjoyed another nap in the air conditioning over the hottest part of the day, and then we fortunately decided that we should probably go to St. Mark’s Basilica and see what all the fuss was about, even though we felt lazy.

We took another water-bus to get to St. Mark’s, this one was much faster since it wasn’t going down the grand canal and making lots of stops. The basilica line was shorter than it had been in the morning, and moved extremely fast. Admission to the main part was free, but you had to pay a little extra to see the treasury and the place where they keep St. Mark’s remains. Both were definitely worth it. Fortunately, we met the modest dress requirements and were not required to drape flimsy squares of red fabric over our shoulders or tie them around our waists to cover our legs. The basilica is indescribable, but I’ll just mention a couple of details anyway. Gold. Gold. Gold. Everything was plated in gold. Amazing frescoes, amazing mosaic floor patterns, and sheer opulence. Apparently the very wealthy Venetians tried to outdo each other for over a millennium on donating to make this church one of the richest in the world. In their treasury, there were various relics from different saints. It was a little strange to see so many dried up hands. They also had Egyptian and Persian urns vessels from centuries B.C. and incredible examples of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque craftsmanship in huge candle stands of gold, various reliquaries, book covers for important books (like, for example, an early manuscript of the gospel of Mark). I’ve never really enjoyed museums before, but maybe that’s because the museums I’ve been to just don’t have stuff this cool. I also think that there’s something just more enjoyable to me about the artifacts that I see in a church. I can “read” them – I know what the various scenes they depict mean, who the people are, what the message is, etc. I have much more context for trying to appreciate what people are doing with the things they make.

After St. Mark’s we went to another museum, but it only had a few examples of arms and armours – you can’t win them all! By this point, it was getting closish to time for dinner, so we headed back to the B&B and changed. Dinner was included in the price of our stay (we got a great deal on the whole weekend) and we sat inside and watched the World Cup with the waiters, while the other customers enjoyed the outside seating. It was fairly yummy and we had 3 courses. I had amazing Gorgonzola gnocchi (you can’t go wrong with Gorgonzola out here). The salmon for my second course was a little disappointing -it had lots of bones and was basically just baked and not very flavorful by California standards. Overall, a great deal and a good meal, though.

Sunday we wanted to go to mass but chickened out because we didn’t want to do anything too Protestant or rude and we weren’t sure of the etiquette beyond not taking communion. Instead we had our breakfast and took a morning nap in our room. Then we wandered out to a da Vinci museum (kind of a generic one that just had a lot of wooden replicas of his inventions that you could play with. A little bit of a rip-off but I was actually glad to get a better idea of how some of his ideas worked). Then we went back to a lunch place I had noticed in our wanderings the day before. We had very yummy pizza and INCREDIBLE chianti (the best I’ve ever had) in a garden setting with outdoor tables framed in vines and shaded by trees. It was very enclosed and bower-like.

Then we went to the second-coolest church in Venice (purportedly), Santa Maria Dei Frari. We also really enjoyed this huge, rambling church. There wasn’t a crowd here and we took our time looking at the nifty statues and frescos. I’ve got a much better feel for what 14th-century frescos look like now!

We decided we didn’t want to get back to Verona late so we caught an afternoon train back. The whole adventure may have been one of my favorite trips ever – everything went really well, and we got to do everything we wanted to do at our own pace. Also, Venice is not interchangeable with any other city in the world. It is unique and fascinating, totally worth the July heat and the crowds of other tourists. I would like to go again some day, maybe in late March or in September when it’s slightly less crowded and the weather is a little cooler. Who knows, maybe we’ll actually spring the 120 euros for a gondola ride next time?