What was I thinking? Bringing my wife to a town full of canals as a romantic getaway? Would I be able to get through three days without giving into the temptation to push her into one?
As it happened it's the safest place for her. For some psychological reason the constant access to water makes the desire to shove her into it all but disappear. For the first day at least.
I had been to Venice once before, but only very briefly. It was when I was Inter-railing with Geoff Quigley in 1986. We had arrived at the train station only to discover that it was Easter weekend (we had no idea) and that there was no accommodation to be had. Even baby Jesus wouldn't have got a stable, which would have been ironic given that the town was full up because of him. We looked at one canal before getting back on the train and heading to Padua in the hope there'd be a hostel with some room there (there wasn't, but it was on the way there
that I was the victim of a mild gypsy curse).
This time I had planned ahead (to some extent) and we had somewhere to stay and I wasn't going to risk going on public transport so that the old lady (she'd be pretty old by now) or her grandchild could finish off the work she'd started.
The real challenge in Venice is to try to get through three whole days without absent-mindedly singing or even thinking "Just-a One Cornetto". There is a prize of one million euro offered for anyone who can achieve that. But of course, anyone knowing of that prize will be bound to think the phrase at some point, as it will be impossible not to think "Just one more day of no Just-a one cornetto and I win a million euro".
It's a prize that I failed to win within the first hour of being in the city. I can't believe that they don't actually sell Cornettos here. They'd clean up. There's just rubbishy cornets that men have to make for you with a scoop. Not pre-packaged ready-made ice creams at all.
The most noticeable thing about Venice is the huge number of shops selling carnival masks. It's what the city is partly known for, but it's hard to believe that the economy can sustain every other shop in the city being largely dedicated to fancy masks. In Prague the same was true of puppets. Yet somehow enough people want a mask in Venice to make this possible without driving mask prices down to rock bottom. I have no real desire to own a mask and they all look a bit too fragile to transport, but other tourists must feel differently. Or there are just a lot of perverts in the city who like to have sex with masks on but then full of shame destroy the masks after every sexual encounter.
Our hotel is pretty near to the Piazza San Marco and we spent most of the afternoon there, having an expensive coffee in the Cafe Florian (reputedly Europe's first coffee house) - but everything is expensive here so there's no real need to point that part out. We then looked around the Basilica, a cathedral with extraordinary Byzantine domes. I particularly enjoyed the Treasury which houses cabinets full of bizarre religious relics which would have scared the shit out of me when I was 6 and still gave me the heebie-jeebies as a 45 year old. The skulls and bones of various saints preserved in jars or strange metal hands - there was also a little withered hand which I think was once attached to a living thing, be it a man or a monkey. There was supposedly part of the true cross in there somewhere, but I didn't see it. But I admire the enterprising person in 33AD who recognised that Jesus' cross would be worth something in years to come and so nicked it and cut it into splinters. In true miraculous fashion there are enough bits of the true cross in the world to make dozens of crosses. But don't be suspicious. The cross belonged to Jesus and he could make stuff multiply with his magic.
The Basilica Museum is also worth a visit if only to see the original four bronze horses from the front of the Cathedral (there are copies there now) which purportedly are booty from the crusades and once graced the Hippodrome in Constantinople.
We packed a lot in to our first half day and were recommended to dine at the
Osteria al Mascaron which was fantastic. Great house wine, delicious spider-crab pasta and a complimentary dessert. It seemed like an authentic and non-touristy Italian restaurant but was welcoming. So I am sure it was cynically designed for tourists who want to think that they are experiencing the genuine Italy, but if so then it had found its perfect customer in me. We drank too much wine and I am not sure how we found our way back to the hotel, nor how I failed to dream about withered hands or wives being pushed into canals. But so far this trip to Venice is at least twice as good as the last time I came here, saw nothing, got cursed by an old woman and ended up vomiting into a plastic bag all night long. Obviously I'd rather I was with Geoff Quigley than my wife, but you can't have everything.
