the Venice post!

 

Mark, the 7-year-old, on arrival:

 

"Just what will tomorrow be like!"

 

We were there for three days, including New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. When I first went to Venice, ten years ago, we stayed in Lido (one of the outer islands where people go to the beach). We took our car to Lido on the ferry and then took a water bus to Venice. So my first view of it was from the sea, of that incredibly familiar low skyline and water the incredible Aegean blue that you don't believe is real until you see it--my first view of Venice looked exactly like a Canaletto painting of Venice, and made me realize why Canaletto paintings look the way they do. My kids' first view of Venice, however, was of the parking lot and closed, dirty, grafitti-covered streets. They loved it anyway.

 

Our in-bound journey went so ridiculously awry it became surreal. Hurtling to the end of the motorway and looking for the Big Multistorey Parking Lot at the End of the Motorway (which is in fact right where you think it is, at the end of the motorway), we somehow managed to get monumentally, olympically, colossally lost. At eleven p.m. on a Sunday evening we drove fifteen miles out of our way, and when we finally discovered our mistake and turned around we followed signs to one of the minor ferry ports, but it was closed. We drove further uncounted miles, literally miles, through an industrial wasteland so vast and relentless it began to make me silly. We had to turn around at the gated security entrance to a chemical laboratory two miles down a dead end road. We cut across a concrete two-lane access road that ran a mile between factories along a plastic fence with empty lots and piles of scrap metal on either side. We passed half a mile of thousands of containers stacked like a scene out of some low-budget sci-fi film. Tim's sense of humor sprang a serious leak.

 

Eventually we made it back to the motorway, found the parking lot at the end, parked on the roof--the eleventh floor--and walked to the hotel (as opposed to taking a water taxi. Sara prefers to walk because she is boat-phobic). Everything was shut and grim and bleak-looking, mainly because it was 30° F and midnight on a Sunday. Tim, who was not having a good day, led us a very circuitous route to the hotel via our ten-year-old map (Venice hasn't changed much, ie it's still impossible to navigate)--when we finally got to our room he sat down on the desk chair and it collapsed!

 

But it got better.

 

The amazing thing about it is how intact it is, despite the grafitti and the tourists; there aren't many Western cities that haven't substantially changed their character in the last 100 years, let alone the last 500.  We did not actually do very much apart from walking---the shops are so full of stuff, remarkable, fascinating STUFF, that even on the trot all day Sara and Mark were entertained. Glass sweets and animals, piles of meringues as big as your head, beautiful hats (there was a hat shop around the corner from our hotel which we saw on our first morning there, and although we looked for it for the next three days, we never did find it again), masks and sculptures--sealing wax and antique maps and pens made of glass--and then when you break free of the shops, bridges and gondolas and shrines and rooftop gardens and tightrope laundry lines. We found ourselves in front of the Da Vinci invention exhibit, which is there temporarily (its home is in Florence). Not only did Da Vinci design flying machines, but he was clearly thinking about how to control flight--among other things we saw were working models of an anemometer (to measure wind speed, or, ultimately, air speed) and another instrument that was more or less an attitude indicator! Plus, WHO KNEW that Da Vinci invented a chain-and-pedal bicycle that doesn't substantially differ from a modern bicycle?

 

We also saw a show in a theatre (a man doing amazing things with soap bubbles, cigarette smoke and colored lights), and went to see the exhibit on terrestrial and celestial globes, and rode a bus right the way down the Grand Canal.

 

We made it to Murano, the island where they produce all the Venetian glass, after 4.00 p.m. on New Year's Eve so all the museums and factories were closed. But the shops were open and we saw so much beautiful glass--beads and bowls and sculptures and chandeliers--that I was seeing it afterwards for two days whenever I closed my eyes. They were a lot of enormous lighted glass sculptures standing in the streets, including (just outside St. Mark's Square) a more-than-lifesize glass Christmas tree. Back in Venice proper we had supper in a café along the Grand Canal, outside, beneath electric heat lamps, with candlelight and champagne and red tablecloths special for New Year's Eve. It was so amazing to be sitting outside, along the Grand Canal in Venice--we all had dessert, too, because as the waiter pointed out, "It's the last night of the year!" Words that speak to me deeply, somehow, for an unnameable reason.

 

Possibly our most memorable excursion was a tour up the St. Mark's Clock Tower.  You have to book it ahead of time, which just about killed me (a cranky website, in Italian, combined with a cranky computer), but it was SO worth the effort. The clock itself was commissioned in 1493 and finished in '98 or '99. We went up inside the clock workings--a private tour with our Venetian guide. Originally, where now there are the barrels that turn every five minutes and make this the oldest digital clock in the world (?), there was a procession of Magi and an angel, every hour, around the Virgin and Child who sit between the "digital" hours and minutes. In the chamber behind the turning barrels they store the eighteenth century figures which replaced the originals. Nowadays they pull the barrels back on Epiphany and Ascension Day only, and then what they do is put the Magi back in place. The guide showed us how they all tip their crowns to the Christ child as they pass him by! She was very cavalier about touching everything. She bent these 300-year-old figures over and shook hands with them without a second thought--it was rather spooky when they moved, I suppose because you weren't expecting it--and they're so antique--when they suddenly bowed and offered their presents and took off their crowns, it was like magic. They are nearly life size (and we had been watching The Thief Lord two nights earlier, where all the Venetian statues come alive).

 

Then we got to go out on the roof of the tower--nearly up to the "Moors" (who are actually stone-age characters) who ding the bell right on top. It was a fantastic view of everything, St. Mark's Basilica and the whole square and all the city and the islands and the industrial wasteland where we got lost trying to get to Venice in the first place--rooftop gardens and pigeons and all different color houses (there are rules about what color you can paint your house) and not quite to the snow-covered Dolomites in the background because it was so hazy.

 

Of all of us, Mark was possibly the most enraptured with Venice. (Of course, he's the one named for Venice's patron saint, a thing that was not lost on me when we named him.)  During our midnight walk to the hotel he kept up a running commentary: "I quite like the look of those boats lined up against the wall"--"This isn't exactly how I imagined it but I like it anyway" (he had been picturing wooden walkways)--"This smells JUST like New Jersey and I really like the smell of New Jersey because it means we're near the sea" (it was a Mud-Flat at Low Tide Smell, and while I would be the first to admit that it is a smell that hits you like a faceful of poison, I know exactly what he means about liking it). Later: "Mummy, you were right about there being nice places behind the shut doors because just LOOK at the beautiful carpet on the stairs of this hotel."

 

He loved the gondolas and the canals and the bridges and the water buses--spent at least an hour with Tim poring over the guide book and a map. He was particularly taken with the bell tower in St. Mark's Square (not the clock tower) that collapsed in 1902 and had to be rebuilt--and with the Rialto Bridge, the oldest and grandest of the bridges across the Grand Canal. Mark's one coveted souvenir was a model of the bridge--we got him one in plaster-of-paris or whatever it is they use nowadays, and another, pop-up one, in paper, which he has annotated.

 

Sara got three sticks of sealing wax, glitter ink for highlighting the finished seal, and a seal with the winged St. Mark's lion on it. She also got silver charm in the form of a raven mask charm like Scipio wears in The Thief Lord (the film is co-produced by the younger brother of my oldest friend, so are we big fans) (yes, Sara has read the book, too).

 

I wouldn't want to live in Venice--I know I wouldn't--I would go crazy among all those paved courtyards and no trees or grass anywhere and the water so filthy that you have to go to the hospital if it touches your skin at high tide. But I love Venice. It would be nice to be a student there. Or to be able to speak Italian, and have a bit more of an "in" than your average dumb American. It would be nice to spend some real amount of time there and make it yours. Two or three days every ten years just doesn't count.