The Merchants of Venice

The merchants of Venice are many. There are hundreds and hundreds of shops, street stalls and once again the "unofficial" Indian and Nigerian "portable street stalls". Venice really only has 4 things; lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of boats (including the obvious gondola tours), shops (that sell souveniers, pastries, chocolates, fresh produce etc), hotels and Italian Restaurants.

The boat system in Venice is impressive, as is the public transport full stop. There is not a single car in the city of Venice (other than on the bridge to Venice and the carpark right after it) and it would be a very weird experience staying in Venice for a week and not seeing a single motor vehicle. Everything in Venice is either done on foot or on a boat. The public transport in Venice consists of huge boat ferries that hold over a hundred people and are extremely popular. They jam onto the ferries like sardines and, at first, I was paranoid we were going to sink the boat with the amount of people that jumped on board. Once you get used to it though, the ferries are a great way to get around Venice and I can see why they're so popular. Aside from the public transport there are hundreds are water taxis that are just little speed boats, lots of boats used to transport around goods (like supplies for the restaurants and building materials for construction) and the requisite 1.2 million gondolas. Boats and the water are such an integral part of life for the people in Venice and I could see living there becoming quite tedious unless it was all you've known and were used to.

As I alluded to before, the merchants of Venice are legion. There are hundreds and hundreds of shops on every street corner of Venice. Most of the shops sell the same sorts of things and it would be a very tough market to stand out in. I would imagine a lot of the business generated for the shops would come down to position and whether or not you are lucky enough to be on a canal or next to a ferry stop. There are the usual wares here in Venice that you would expect, things like amazing Italian nougat (called Torronatta by the Italians), plenty of Venetian Masks, lots of "I Love Venice" paraphenalia in the form of t-shirts, hats, aprons etc, and plenty of fresh produce of both the vegetable and seafood kind. And then there's the Indians and Nigerians again. It was actually quite comedic to watch the "dance" of the police and these guys, it was like watching the tide go in and out. As the police walk along the boulevardes, the Indians and Nigerians watch for them, as soon as they see them they whisk up all their goods and walk away and set up further down the road. When the police walk back the other direction they then pick up again and move back to the better locations. Mariya and I entertained ourselves a little simply by watching for the police and then turning around to watch the Indians and Nigerians freaking out and scurrying in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the Indians and Nigerians really do take away from the Italian experience and the Italian government really needs to do something about this but I'd imagine it is very tough to combat.

All the restaurants in Venice are once again Italian as is to be expected. I've been enjoying the pasta and pizza but there's only so many days in a row where you can eat like this. Strangely enough, there's 3 very big stand outs for us about the Italian dining. The first is the very apparent lack of garlic bread, we have not seen a single garlic bread on any of the menus so far. Very strange, considering in Australia we define Italian food as Pizza, Pasta and Garlic bread! The second thing is the distinct lack of garlic in general. Almost all the Italian food in Australia is very heavy on the garlic, it's almost non-existent here in Italy, something I'm loving but something Mariya doesn't like so much! The third glaring omission in Italy seems to be the lack of a spoon to eat your spagetti with. It seems everyone in Australia (except me) uses a spoon to twirl their spagetti, clear the Italians don't! All my years of eating spagetti without a spoon has adequately prepared me for my spagetti eating experience in Italy!

Venice itself was pretty in it's own way. The city is made up of small alleys with lots of dead ends resulting in a canal or building wall with no door. Luckily for us, we once again had Google Maps employed and our navigation of Venice was easy with GPS assistance, it would be much more challenging simply by map. The architecture in the first half of Venice is very simple with many tall buildings and tight alleys with some big beautiful buildings with pretty stonework and sculptures built along, and facing out to, the canals. We didn't think Venice was very pretty until we jumped on a ferry and headed out to San Marco, this must be the older part of Venice. The streets are much wider and built of marble. There are enormous buildings here like the large Basilica's and regal buildings were saw in Rome. This is a much more beautiful part of Venice and a must see. If you head to Venice, make sure you jump on the ferry and head out to San Marco.

So, what did we actually do in Venice? Not a huge amount actually, there doesn't seem to be much to do in Venice and if you had more than 2 or 3 days here you'd probably find yourself browsing the Internet in your hotel room.

On our first day in Venice after strolling through the city, looking at the stalls and shops we jumped on a ferry out to Murano. Murano is a little island near Venice that is world famous for glass blowing. One of Mariya's friends visited Murano years ago and bought a glass ring which she broke awhile ago. We spent a few hours walking through the Murano Glass Shops seeing if we could find something similar for her to replace it. Eventually we found a shop that made custom glass work and he made us up a similar ring and it only took just under an hour. While on Murano we also checked out a quick Glass Working demonstration which was really cool, these glass workers certainly have skills.

After Murano, we headed off to another little island near Venice, Burano. This was actually my favorite part of our Venice visit. Burano is a quaint little island that seems to be mostly residential with a few stalls, a Gelateria and a restaurant or two, but this isn't why the place stood out to me. What I really loved about Burano is that it's a small island with lots of little 2 and 3 story houses along the canals ... every house painted in a different bright colour! It looks amazing with the houses in reds, flouro greens, bright yellows, deep blues, purples, oranges, any bright colour you can think of. The place glows and it looks fantastic, we took plenty of photos of Burano and they're all on Mariya's Facebook so make sure you do yourself a favour and check them out.

Our second morning in Venice we were greeted with sunshine and decided to head to Venice and jump on a lovely gondola ride. We got to Venice, jumped on the ferry and pulled up at the main gondola area of Rialto. Walking up to the first gondola guy we saw, we asked him how much and how long? The answer was quite unexpected ... 200 euro ... umm wtf? Wow that's a lot more expensive than we'd expected but then he proceeded to tell us about his other options at 150 and then 100 euro. Hmm still too expensive for us, so we told him we'd keep looking. He then offered us 80 euro for the tour, afterall we would be his first customers for the day! No thanks we said, determined to get a reasonable price for our gondola ride. We wandered away and then his offsider caught up with us 50 meters down the road and offered us 70 euro, still too much we figured and continued onwards.

Walking off the main strip, we found a gondola guy and had a chat to him. He started out at 80 euro, a far cry from the 200 we'd started at with the other guy. This guy didn't seem very negotiable though and when we decided we'd continue on offered us a 60 euro fee as his first customers of the day, where have I heard that before? Mariya and I figured we probably wouldn't get much better than 60 euro for a 30 minute gondola ride and jumped on board. The gondola ride was lovely, nice, slow and very scenic. We oared around the canals and saw a number of sights including some of the old churches and Marco Polo's house. It was a beautiful cruise and we both enjoyed it immensely. As an aside, it appears the Venetians also claim ownership of Marco Polo. Petar told us in Croatia that Marco Polo was from an island in Croatia so I had to go home and research the origins of Marco Polo! It appears nobody actually really knows where Marco Polo came from, whether it was from Venice or the island in Croatia, very weird, you think there would be definitive information on his origins. As another aside, Mariya reckons the Marco Polo game came from the Gondoliers in Venice. Before the gondolas go around blind corners they yell out something that sounds like "Oar-ah", if they don't hear anything they figure the canal around the corner is empty and proceed around the corner. However, if another gondalier is around the corner he'll call something out in reply to let you know he's there. Marco?! POLO!

After our gondola ride we jumped on a ferry and spent some time at San Marco looking at the old architecture before heading back to our hotel to organise the next leg of our trip, to where, we had absolutely no idea! But considering we were leaving the next day we decided we better figure out where to head! I guess our next destination will be a surprise, even to us!