Venice - April 2024

In April Mrs L and I went to Venice for a few days. I'd been before but this was her first visit,  somewhere she's wanted to go for a long time. I've taken kids before, and surprised my mother there once on her birthday, but somehow we had never been a deux. How exciting! We arrived quite late having taken a flight after work, and for the first time took a boat across the lagoon to the city rather than a coach. This was especially exciting as it meant that she would wake up and throw open the curtains to Venice. 

Ah, Venice. What a place. In the press a lot lately as the inhabitants of the city are fed up with tourists, fed up with people like me. But what can you do? The city authorities are introducing a tax but I don't see how that will change anything. It's a negligible amount, people will just pay it and the crowds will remain. And we found that the Venetians were perfectly happy to welcome us into their restaurants, bars and galleries, onto boats and so forth, and to accept our money. An intractable problem. Maybe think a bit harder about the huge cruise ships at the north end that dominate the skyline and dwarf the city, and that deposit two thousand people at a time.

The view from our hotel

Even in early April it felt busy in the central areas, but you didn't have to stray far in order to lose the vast majority of the visitors, and it many ways it is an ideal time to visit. The weather is nice but not hot enough to make the city unpleasant, the real crowds have yet to arrive even if St Marks might not feel like that, and it feels altogether more relaxed, as if the place has just woken up and is getting ready for the grand opening. A few streets back from the main thoroughfares quite a few cafés and restaurants had yet to open, and you could wander aimlessly through quiet streets and over small bridges and not see another person for several minutes. The layout of Venice is such that you cannot avoid crossing the main drags, but if you plan your day well it won't bother you other than for a few moments. Obviously if you want to see the Grand Canal, gaze out from the Rialto, visit Murano or the like then you will have a lot of company, but there are many many quieter bits

We were staying on the Grand Canal right next to a vaporetto station, so actually we didn't enter the city under cover of darkness as we had sailed right down it from the airport. I should have insisted Mrs L wear a blindfold. But there was still an element of surprise the following morning when we woke up and started exploring our surroundings. It was still, the city just waking up, no groups of tourists following a guide, no gondolas on the move, just a few utilitatarian boats making deliveries. All against this unique water-defined landscape that has no equivalent anywhere. If you have been to Venice you will know what I mean. If you have never been, well that singular experience awaits you still. I'll say it again, what a place. Everyone has seen it films, in paintings, it's an integral part of European culture, but until you are actually there... Never in your wildest imagination could you think that such a city would spring up, yet here it is. A good book on its history and people has been written by Jan Morris, titled simply "Venice", and is very digestible. I read it before and during our trip and it definitely enhanced how we looked at it as well as where we went and the detail we sought out.

Now I could at this point list out where we went, what we saw, what we ate etc, but that's far too much like hard work, especially all these months later. But even though this was my third or fourth visit it still felt new, and we went to parts I had never been to before. It was also an opportunity for lengthy lazy meals on shaded terraces, sunset cocktail bars, art galleries (the Guggenheim should be on any list), things that I would never have done by myself but are particularly well suited to couples. I particularly enjoyed walking east from St Marks to the public gardens and then to Sant'Elena before catching a boat all the way around the bottom tip, past the Arsenal to San Michele and then to Murano. Mainly as this provided almost my only opportunity for birding, and there are actually birds in Venice other than Yellow-legged Gulls and Pigeons if you have the patience to seek them out. This two or three hour period was responsible for 22 of the 33 species I ended up seeing during our three days. 

This lunch lasted at least 2.5 hours!

Nearly 30 years on I can still immediately recognise a Delaunay.

We had a lovely time, and Mrs L wants to go back. In fact when we were chatting about the freedoms of the upcoming post nest-flying environment the other day it came top of the list of places to revisit. High praise indeed. We just have to cross our fingers that we'll still be allowed to go. I reckon it'll be fine.