Wandering in Venice

So, here are for you some suggestions and hints that may be useful for visitors that already know the city, but also good if one goes there for the first time and is not in a hurry...

If a were a tourist I'd say that in Venice I've seen all there is to see: I was there many times, I stayed there for long periods, living like a Venician as well as like a tourist, and also wandering in search of special places of literary memories. Anyhow, now that I'm going back there regularly once a year, I keep finding her every time at once reassuringly the same and surprisingly new.
So, here are for you some suggestions and hints that may be useful for visitors that already know the city, but also good if one goes there for the first time and is not in a hurry.

If possible, at least for once, arrive there by aeroplane and not in the night: from the sky you'll appreciate the originality of the lagoon. The relationship between earth and water produces elaborate designs, determined both by nature and by the work of man, who during centuries exploited in thousands of ways this relationship.

- At your arrival at the airport you may at once make your weekly ACTV pass, so that for a whole week you can travel by nearly all public Venetian means; then take the bus going to Piazzale Roma. If you decide to spend a little more money and time you may take the motorboat to Piazza San Marco (not included in your weekly pass). That way you'll start your holiday by a nice little cruise across the lagoon.

But many are the cruises you may do using wisely your weekly pass:

In summer at sunset take the line 1, which is a slow one, making a long tour and stopping everywhere. After two or three stops you are sure to seat in the front places and enjoy sightseeing Canal Grande, the Giudecca and the beautiful ancient palaces.

During the day take the boats going to the islands and disembark everywhere, they are all different, without worrying about how to get back: there are lots of them!

Try (it isn't easy, there are not many) to take the motor vessels: on their deck you'll really feel like a cruiser.

Soon after lunch take a motorboat to Lido, from there the bus to Pellestrina, which at a certain point gets on board of a ferry, and finally lands at the beginning of the "murazzi".

The last are thick stonewalls that were build soon after the second world war to protect the small lagoon fisher villages, after that a violent sea storm had nearly swept them away.
A comfortable pedestrian path runs at the top of the wall, and you see the sea on one side and the lagoon on the other. At the base, along the lagoon, the road runs where the above said bus rides for about six kilometres .
Depending on the hour you get there, my advice is after a while to leave the bus and then walk on the top-path between sea and lagoon as far as Pellestrina, and possibly have dinner there, enjoying the sunset with seagulls over the lagoon.

Paying only the last portion of the journey (not included in your weekly pass) you may also go as far as Chioggia, a very nice and characteristic fishermen ancient little town, only mind not to go on Thursdays: there is a very confused weekly market lacking of any attraction and spoiling the atmosphere of the old town.

- Among the innumerable museums don't lose the one of the Navy. You'll find there maps and models showing the changes in the city during the centuries, large scale models of ancient ships, gondolas, the old ceremonial "bucintoro", and all that may give you an idea of Venetian Republic and of its past splendours.
May be amusing also for children.

You may take a walk also by the side of Giudecca, dominated by the Stucky Mills great brick mass, today under reconstruction, and go and see the nice residential developments recently built. Enter the pleasure craft building, that offers a suggestive landscape of industrial archaeology, in which recently some craftsman settled down.

- You may go as far as Santa Marta, where an ancient cotton mill was adapted into one of the most beautiful European Faculties of Architecture. Before getting in, visit the nearby church of the "mendicoli" (beggars), a very original structure and one of the most ancient in Venice. All the surrounding area is very nice and absolutely yet unspoilt by tourism.

If there is the Biennale, take advantage to go and see the ancient dockyards, magnificent buildings (some of them by Sansovino) that you cannot otherwise visit.

Go to Piazza San Marco and enter one of the front doors of the Procuratie Vecchie, possibly the one of the Town Library: you'll discover that this building we are used to think of as a lovely façade, is in fact an enormous original office building, served by a suggestive series of elegant courtyards. In the courtyards a rich "lapidarium" is placed, where traditional Venetian and Lombard medieval stone elements (statues, well stones, door frames, etc.) are collected.

Go and see the beautiful spiral-shaped staircase of Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, where Orson Welles' Otello was shot.

Worthy seeing also the Gass hisorical museum in Murano.

Now, if you are not bored and still reading, some practical hints:

Accommodations:

Hotels, especially central ones and near the railway station, are quite expensive. Some of them, very small, are delightful, but you must book years in advance. Mind that luggage has to be hand carried, so an accommodation near to Station or to a motorboat stop is highly recommendable.
There are in the centre several opportunities of renting flats for weeks or even week ends. There are also residences kept by nuns, two or three stars hotel like, but much less expensive, in very central areas (near Campo S. Stefano, near Campo S. Barnaba, etc.), only you have to get back before eleven at night. If you write I can give you some address.
For young people there is the hostel at the "Zitelle".

To eat:

Venetian between twelve and one o' clock p.m. are used to take a glass of wine with a snack, the best of it you may find in places called "bacaro", which are halfway between a wine shop and a small restaurant. Ask some native. (I have some really good address, but strictly for friends, write to me to ask). The snack is made of tens of tasty typical hors d'oeuvre, varying from place to place, from fish to all sorts of vegetables, meatballs, mixed fry, etc.. The ideal thing to break a wandering day.

There are also some original inns, where to eat traditional dishes, chiefly seafood, but it isn't easy to find them, and it's also easy, getting there the following year, to discover they have changed into tourist fast food.

A good way to detect them is to peep in at twelve in places that look like inns: it's the lunch time for workers and technicians busy in the many restoration works going on in the city. If they are full of men animatedly speaking Venetian, you should definitely try them.

For dinner the good non-tourist restaurants where the price is proportioned to the offer are really few, and also if you have Venetian friends the trend is to keep the secret. It happened to me to say to a Venetian friend "this evening I'll have supper at such and such restaurant", and be looked at with a mixture of reverence and suspicion, the unsaid question being "How did you find it?"

If you've rented a flat and you intend to prepare meals at home, mind that grocer's shops have very different prices according to the different areas of the city: somewhere they are really jewel shops. The best place is Rialto's Market and shops nearby, where you may also find excellent cooked foods, as for instance roasted duck (not to lose horse "sfilacci"), then the Via Nuova in Cannaregio area and the Via Garibaldi in Castello area. Quite reasonable prices you'll find also in Campo S. Margherita.

Shopping:

Many goods products of a rich and refined craftmanship
- Glasses. You'll find of any sort and any period, on the whole the quality is ggod, sometimes very good, and prices are reasonable. Very beautiful, for fans, glass animals and insects:brigt coleoptera, multicoloured fishes, sining butterflies. The most specialise artisan you'll fin din Calle del Fumo.

- Peculiar glass jewels I found in several shops in Calle Lunga of Santa Formosa.

- Masks. Of these also you may find of any kind and price. Personally I found the most beautiful at Mondo Nuovo, nearby Campo Santa Margherita.

- Objects, frames and staues in gilded wood. A nice gilder shop is in Campo San Barnaba, but of course there are many.

- Stationary articles in paper but also in papier maché. Tere are many shops of these articles. You may as well get personalised greeting cards or writing paper, for instance at Gianni Basso's, printer in Calle del Fumo.

- As for embroideries I'm not an expert, if you go to look for it in Burano remember that if they are cheap they're probably coming from China.

To end wit: if you want to see Venice from high in a clear day and the queue to climb up St: Marco's bell tower frightens you, take te shuttle to S. Giorgio Maggiore and go up that bell tower: usually there is scarcely anyone and the view is equally splendid. (you'll notice that nearly all the bell towers are crooked!)