Day 66 & 67 ~ Venice Overnight!

March 16-17, 2022

High 40's to low 50's, but it's hard to feel cold when you're climbing bridges (read: up and down staircases) every other block! Venice is built on about 120 islands connected by 495 bridges.

"The finest drawing room in Europe!" ~ Napoleon on Venice (Then he proceeded to raid the Doge's palace of every conceivable art work that added to the prestige of the city.)

We called at Venice in 2018 with the Pacific Princess (only 630 passengers on that petite girl. Princess has since sold her to Azamara). At that time, our sail-in was through the Giudecca Canal, right past St. Mark's Square to the new cruise terminal. Then in 2019, the MSC Opera, a 13-decked ship slammed into a dock and a tourist ship, injuring a number of people. (People tend to forget that while coming into or leaving a port, the ship is under the control of the local pilot. It's easier to blame the cruise line than one of your own.) 

It took two tugs to coax the Star into its snug berth in Fusina, Venice's ugly step-sister. Notice the campground right across from this busy working cargo port. Nothing wrong with campers. We have a 24 ft. trailer & pick up of our own which we enjoy thoroughly. We've just never seen camping and cruising in such close proximity.

Enter UNESCO. After the MSC accident, they decided the Venetian eco-system is too fragile for cruise ships, so either Venice had to ban them from their port or UNESCO would stop giving the city their support (read: prestige & cash). Besides, they reasoned that cruisers don't spend as much as tourist who fly in, stay in local hotels and eat in the many restaurants. So Venice moved their cruising visitors to Fusina, which presumably is tough enough to stand up to the threat we represent. It's worse for the bigger ships. They'll dock at Trieste--two hours away. 

This was part of the excitement of riding from Fusina to the totally empty cruise terminal that was built to serve Venice and now is just a place to catch a water bus, board the PeopleMover (if we were allowed to go to the city independently), or to be processed through a TSA-like screening AFTER having been in Venice. Anyway, I had to take a picture of this because I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. It's a roundabout, which I find problematic anyway, with the added fun of having two sets of railroad tracks running smack-dab through it. What could go wrong? 

Well, Venice is right about one thing. We cruisers don't spend as much in port now. Our movements in and around the city are very restricted. We must stay in the Viking bubble, so no independent exploration and no time for shopping unless the guide allows and everyone remains within his or her visual scrutiny. Also, though the residents are not required to wear a mask, we (who are tested daily and still have zero Covid cases on board) are expected to wear them inside and out. AND if we wanted to do two excursions in a day (for example, an afternoon walking tour and then an evening gondola ride) we'd have to return to the Star in between instead of staying in the city and eating a nice supper on land, because we can't be outside of the bubble. 

Obviously, these are tourists who arrived by other means. Only cruisers are required to wear masks.

To get to Venice, we had a 30+ minute bus ride to the cruise port we used in 2018. At that point we boarded a ferry. We learned that Venice has a watercraft analog for each land side vehicle. They have police boats, ambulance boats, fire department boats, delivery boats, even garbage boats, as well as the Vaporetti (small water buses for Venice proper), water taxis, and of course, gondolas.  We took an hour long boat ride around several of the outlying islands that in the past had alternately served as hospitals, quarantine stops for returning sailors, monasteries, and defensive emplacements. Then we left the ferry behind to join  the Venetians, who are all dedicated walkers. Once you move away from the canals, it is a totally pedestrian city.

We met our tour guide four bridges from St. Mark's Square. FYI, that's how Venetians explain how far something is--how many bridges must you cross to reach your destination. Instead of leading us along the waterfront, our guide took us through side streets where the locals live and work. This is a broad way, but our path narrowed till we had to walk single file in case we met another walker going the opposite direction!

It was a fascinating detour and not all the groups taking this tour got to see the less glitzy side of Venice like we did. At one point, school let out and we were surrounded by children and parents collecting them to walk home together.  
   

Our guide was excellent on all counts--informative, entertaining, mindful of those who needed more time to motate (we had two people with walkers as well as me with my O2 concentrator), and his English was very understandable!

In one of the side streets, our guide showed us one of the old cisterns the city used to use for gathering and storing drinking water. Rain would flow from the flagstone lanes into the waiting grates and people could come draw water from these communal wellheads. Venice has always been subject to flooding (it is not a climate change thing!) so each area had someone who was responsible for plugging the grates so sea water wouldn't befoul the fresh water stored below the street level. 

One of the other travelers on our tour asked what they did for a sewer system. The guide had the grace to look a little sheepish when he admitted that they only have that about 90% figured out yet. Which means 10% of the waste of a city of almost 300,000 people is dumped into the lagoon daily. 

Why isn't UNESCO worked up over that threat to the Venetian eco-system?

Our guide for the first day in Venice left us with the story of why St. Mark's Basilica was built. Originally, the private chapel of the Doge (an elected leader with no real power except as a figurehead), it became St. Mark's when a pair of Venetian merchants smuggled the body of Mark the Gospel writer out of Alexandria in a basket hidden under pork meat. As you can see, the pork insured the basket wasn't inspected too closely by the Muslim authorities and Venice finally had a patron saint worthy of such a great city! I confess to being bewilder by why stealing a body will benefit a community, but given Venice's history of confiscating pretty much whatever it wanted from the lands it conquered, perhaps this patron saint is a good fit. 

On the 17th, we negotiated the same bus/waterbus/walking the bridges as the day before and met out guide for the interior of Doge's Palace and the Basilica. After huffing and puffing up four flights of stairs, we went through room after room of incredible art. Titian, Tintoretto, everywhere we looked, there was the work of a master. But, it was all designed with a purpose--to overawe those who came to deal with Venice. 

Our guide pointed out this ceiling panel in particular. It shows Juno, the wife of Jupiter, tossing crowns, coins, the doge's cap which symbolized peace, and all manner of good things into a woman's lap. 

The woman, of course, is Venice. 

The Venetians wanted to create a sense that the gods, both pagan and Christian, favored their city in all its dealings. There is an inevitability of good fortune depicted in this canvas, and the Republic of Venice did have a very good run, existing from its founding in 697AD to 1797 AD. They held sway over most of the Dalmatian coast (present day Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Montenegro) as well as Greece & Cyprus. They were a trading power house throughout the middle ages and only declined when Spain & Portugal opened new ways to access the spice islands.

That's the Bridge of Sighs that links the doge's palace with Venice's jail. Prisoners who passed that way, had one last chance to glimpse their loved ones before they disappeared into that dark place. We crossed the bridge during our tour & the DH has some photos of it in his montage.  

You know how I love to explore sacred spaces, but I confess St. Mark's didn't move me. From its stolen saint's body under the altar to the four stolen bronze horses that decorate the Byzantine exterior, it seemed less like a place where souls could seek God, and more like a place where people wanted to impress God with their wealth and importance. 

Venice is like no place else. Yes, I know Amsterdam is called the Venice of the North, but for sheer opulence, for over the top ostentation, no place can beat Venice. It's a study in contrasts. It's beautiful. It's cruel. It's crammed full to bursting with cultural riches. It doesn't have an adequate sewer system. I honestly don't know what to make of it. If it were a person, I'd say Venice has self-esteem issues because it's always showing off a bit. It's a fascinating place, but it doesn't strike me as particularly romantic. (Of course, that may be the masks talking. No one can be romantic with those things hanging on your face!)  

That's not to say we haven't had some interesting times in the city. Even masked and in a bubble, this was a wonderful couple of days. For comparison purposes, here's our 2018 photo montage when we were able to explore on our own. It was Easter Sunday, so we attended mass at St. Giorgio's. We ate lunch near St. Mark's Square, wandered around and rode the Vaporetti under the Rialto Bridge.

Would I like to visit Venice again? Yes, particularly if we could attend an opera or symphony concert. Or wander through an art museum on our own without having to keep up with a group. In other words, after Covid has become just a bad memory. 

More soon...