That's A Moray!

One more thing about Venice.  It’s one of those places where there are sufficient numbers of tourists to support a market for wandering accordion players.  They stand on the fringe of the seating area, play for awhile, and then come in and pass the hat.  They all seem to play from the same songbook—Volare, the theme from The Godfather.  C.C., little biologist that she is, got confused upon listening to the lyrics of That’s Amore.  “Mama, why is that man singing about moray eels, and what does it have to do with the moon hitting your eye like a pizza pie?”

Venice!

Arriving in Venice by boat is pretty fantastic.  We began to enter the canal sometime after 8 am on Sunday, and we all went up on deck to get our first glimpse of the city.  It is a beautiful approach—I felt as though I was floating into a Renaissance painting.

A young man from our hotel met us at Piazzale Roma and walked the kids and I to our room with our luggage, while Alec went to park the car.  He ended up getting lost, and nearly two hours had transpired by the time he got back.  Which meant it was time for lunch. 

I had read about a place to get really good pizza, and it seemed like a reasonably close walk, but then again we had never walked in Venice before.  It is incredibly easy to get turned around, so what should have been a 10 minute walk ended up being closer to a half hour.  It was super hot, and after many promises that we were “really close” which turned out not to be true, Milo finally sat down in the middle of the street and announced that he would not walk another step.  Fortunately there are no cars in Venice, so while his move was dramatic, it was not dangerous.  It turned out that he had staged his sit in a mere block from the restaurant, so we were able to cajole him from his position to a seat at the table.  A big glass of water and a few bites of bread revived him.

Aside from the absence of cars, which means much easier walking with the kids as well as no vehicular noise and pollution, the best thing about Venice is that the canals are everywhere.  And canals, as we quickly learned, are instant entertainment. On our very first walk to our hotel, C.C. and Milo had discovered crabs in the canal.  It is nearly impossible to go to a restaurant that is not right next to a canal, so our kids spent the majority of every meal emptying our bread basket and feeding the fish and crabs.  It worked for all of us.

We spent most of that first day in the general vicinity of our hotel—walking punctuated by stops for meals and gelato breaks.  Venice really is an enchanting city.  But it also feels more than a little unreal.  Virtually everyone on the street is carrying a map of the city, and you are much more likely to hear people speaking English, German, or French than Italian.  The population of Venice has been declining and is currently about 60,000—not very big at all.  And, 15 million tourists visit every year.  I don’t know what the tourist/resident ratio is for other cities, but I would be willing to bet that Venice’s is very high.  Walking around, you don’t see much of the stuff of real life—grocery stores and hardware stores, doctor’s offices and schools.

On Monday we decided to brave the crowds at Piazza San Marco.  I had read on one website about visiting Venice with kids that a Magic Treehouse book takes place there, so I had downloaded onto C.C.’s Kindle and read it to them.  I had hoped I had read my last Magic Treehouse book—they are beyond formulaic.  But it turned out to be a good move because the book features the clock tower and the Doge’s Palace—it may have been hard to get our kids to get excited about sightseeing without the motivation the story provided.

We started out at the basilica—we had gotten tickets online so were able to walk right in.  Well, almost right in.  I was stopped because my sleeveless dress failed to cover me up sufficiently.  It’s a nice dress, really, but I guess there just wasn’t enough of it. The lack of sleeves and the fact that it did not reach my knees obliged me to plunk down 2 euros for a wine colored disposable “cape” and a clashing rust colored square to tie around my waist, sarong style.  I am quite certain that these items were actually disposable tablecloths—a smaller one for my shoulders and a larger size for my legs.  Many of the other female visitors were wearing tank tops, but most were magically pulling scarves and shawls out of their bags to cover their shoulders.  Somehow I missed the memo.

The kids hung in pretty well—they were fascinated by the jewels in the Pall D’oro and the remains of one of the saints—anything involving bones goes over pretty big with them.  They are also quite convinced that the white-robed priest they saw crossing the sanctuary was the pope.  It all started on our first ferry to Croatia.  It seems that the pope rode one of the ferry line’s boats, and the boats all feature a photo of the pope disembarking and waving.  Ever since then the kids think they see popes everywhere, and I can’t seem to get them to understand that there is only one pope, and that he is unlikely to be walking around the streets of Greece, or wherever we happen to be.

As you walk around the basilica, for which entry is free, you have the option to plunk down 4 euros here and 4 euros there to see the chalice collection, the big horses on the roof, the gold and jewels.  Once Alec gets going, he wants to see it all.  Milo was super thirsty and I was starting to get hot in my tablecloth schmata—whatever it was made of, it was not breathable.  So we moved quickly through the mosaics and made our way out to the piazza again.

We got some lunch, after striking out at three places that we had targeted that were closed for August, and then hit the Palazzo Ducale.  It is impressive and overwhelming—sort of a Who’s Who of the Italian renaissance.  And hot.  It was a broiling hot day and we didn’t spend a minute of it in air conditioning.  The palazzo has an impressive arms and armor collection, and we spent more time there than any other part of the place because C.C. has recently become fascinated with knights.  I think it is a consequence of her interest in dragons which is somehow connected to her dinosaur obsession. In any case, we looked at a LOT of swords, crossbows, helmets, daggers, and shields.  The kids were also fascinated by the prisons.

Alec really wanted to go to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, but the kids needed some down time and, frankly, so did I.  After a very long and crowded water bus ride back to the Dorsoduro, we revived ourselves with a little gelato, picked up our laundry, and went back to our room.  Our air conditioning had not worked for the first day, and we were beyond ecstatic to find our room to be chilly as an ice box.  I commanded the kids to strip down and take a cool shower, then set them up with the Rocky and Bullwinkle videos I had downloaded—I really like Rocky and Bullwinkle, and it seems to have stood the test of time.  I stood under water as cold as I could manage and then just lay flat on the bed until Alec returned.

We had promised the kids a gondola ride, and decided to take one to dinner.  Milo, in particular, beamed the entire ride.  It was the perfect time to go—out of the direct sun, just as the shadows were beginning to fall.  As we pulled up next to our restaurant, one of the waiters opened up a canalside window, and we exited the boat through the window, which was pretty cool. 

We ate at Osteria la Zucca, a restaurant Jody and Matt had recommended from their trip to Venice two years ago.  It was perhaps the best meal of our entire trip.  While not a vegetarian restaurant, la Zucca is a place that celebrates vegetables.  We shared an outrageously good pumpkin flan—its creamy texture underscored by the crunch of toasted pumpkin seed sprinkled on top, as well as carrots cooked with curry and yogurt, and spinach with butter and sesame.  I had a fabulous vegetable lasagna and Alec had a duck confit with apples.  It was a truly outstanding meal.

Today, we wound our way through several neighborhoods before getting on a water bus to take us to the Biennale. It was much, much cooler today, so perfect for lingering in the gardens. 

I really enjoyed much of what was in the central pavilion, and the kids dug right into the Norma Jeanne installation, which started out as an enormous block of Play Doh in stripes of red, black and white to evoke the Arab flag but which is now a room covered with the Play Doh creations of visitors.  A sign on the wall invited visitors to do what they wished with the Play Doh, and to either take the creations with them or leave them in the room, but not to leave them in other parts of the biennale.  We left the kids there for awhile to play, and when they met up with us, Milo had an enormous block of the stuff which he wants to bring back to Brooklyn.  It has made it back to our hotel room, but Brooklyn?  I don’t know.  We saw a lot of the show, but by no means all of it.   Not surprisingly, much of the art was overtly political—the Egyptian artist, Ahmed Basiony, died while documenting the uprising in Cairo in January. The American pavilion, an installation by Allora and Calzadilla, comments on war, capitalism and consumption.  We all liked “Algorithm”, a piece that consists of a pipe organ in which an ATM machine is incorporated—the organ plays loud, churchy cords when you take money out.  We stretched the kids as far as we could, and then retreated back to the hotel for a little rest before dinner.

After we got our mojo back, we walked to the Jewish ghetto, found a playground for the kids, and ate dinner in Canareggio.  Once again our top restaurant choices were closed, and we ended up having a truly mediocre meal, which is always unfortunate in Italy.  There is much more to do and see, but it’s time to get back to Barcelona.

Venice Photos