Venice!

[Warning: this is a long post. And, like a French coming-of-age movie, there's no action -- nothing really happens. It's just the way it has to be.]

I crack open the door to the room. She had asked what I wanted to eat and I told her – just simple stuff. Bread, maybe a cappuccino?
With jam?
Yes, okay. And maybe fruit. But I want her to keep it straightforward. Time is of essence and she knows it.

I look outside. Good. The weather’s holding nicely.





It’s all thought out, prearranged ahead by me. Even back in Madison, I knew I’d find a way to get to Venice. Bus schedules, train timetables – they’re all online these days. I needed a good weather day and timely connections, that’s all.

The hotel proprietor here, in Gargnano is very sympathetic. If I want to catch the 8 am bus for Desenzano (from where I am hoping to catch the 9:07 train to Venice), he’ll make sure someone brings a tray with at least coffee and breads for me before I leave.

The tray comes, I gulp down what I can, I’m off.




My, but it’s a lovely morning! Shimmering in the early light!





I’ve been up since 4 and my adrenaline is pumping big time. I’d been writing, wanting so much to post before leaving. You could say that I’m insanely devoted to Ocean, but it’s not that. I just did not want Venice to overshadow my Sunday notes. Each day is important, each day deserves my full attention. So I’m up early. That’s OK. Plenty of time to sleep after you’re dead.

Does that sound morbid? You should have been with me when I was younger. I wrote tearful journals and carried a copy of Death in Venice in my bag. Can one be happy and melancholy all in one breath? I perfected the art of it!


On this morning, the bus driver is moving along nicely. Yet he’s a tad late pulling in to Desenzano. I have my train ticket in hand (purchased already in Milan) and as he pulls into the train station I fly. Just in time to hear the announcement: the train to Venice, coming in on track no. 1.





An hour and a half later, we’re crossing the lagoon. The thrill is there, as always. Venice, crazily beautiful Venice is in sight.


I didn’t always think it was beautiful. When I first came here, freshly 13, I hated it. We’d been slowly making our way back to Poland (after my father’s diplomatic stint at the UN) and my parents thought it would be good to see as much as possible of western Europe. Future travel would be limited. These were tough years in Poland.

We didn’t stay in Venice proper then. No hotel was affordable. We stayed in industrial Mestre in rooms with shared bathrooms and beds that were infested with bedbugs. Step aside New York, Mestre bugs came first!

Venice itself made me shudder. I thought the canals looked dirty. And that summer, back in 1966, they smelled. You call this place beautiful? How can any place with a foul odor be beautiful? (A funny comment coming from a 13 year old who truly was sorry to leave Manhattan – that pristine oasis of good air.)

But I changed my mind about Venice and once I did, I could not put her down. Hooked on potent stuff.

It passed. Violent crush receded, a calmer, more reflective love developed (Paris knocks out Venice. Now I could add Sorede to my love list. I’m getting staid).

But today, I step out of the station and behold! There is Venice!





A crowded Venice. I suppose April is no longer winter and in any case, I do not think Venice has a quiet time anymore.

And yet, it’s better now. I buy a ticket for the vaporetto – the public transportation for this place (at 6.50 Euros, I had to blink...ah well, we need to support this sinking art treasure!). What’s this! The best seat in the front (there are only a handful) is empty! How could I be so lucky?

I have a front row seat to the best show in town. So ride with me down the Grand Canal. And forgive these rather standard shots. We all take them. We can’t help it! With free space on our digital cameras, we go nuts here now! A woman keeps popping up with her camera to get a better angle and the boat captain raps at the window – you can’t stand, it blocks my view! Me, I’m lucky -- I'm not standing. And here’s my view!
























I just can’t stop grinning and, too, I get kind of teary. Venice is so dramatic!  See Venice and die!  I was never one to avoid thinking with exclamation marks.

















They’re not careful shots. This is point and shoot, from the hip material. The event is being in Venice, the camera is a sidekick.







Half an hour later, the Grand Canal show is over. I'm at San Marco.







San Marco. It is what it is. At least I don’t need to stand in lines for the museum or the Campanile. Forget that. Just give me a few minutes here and I’m done. A nonstop, frenzied party.





Indeed, at one of the café tables, I see a propped bottle of champagne. The musicians break into a round of Happy Birthday. Someone’s child turned two today. Will you remember this moment decades ahead? Will it be a story for you to tell? The year you turned two at San Marco?

And the band plays on.


Time to leave this chaos. Despite the artistic merits of the square, for me, Venice is better than San Marco. My Venice is the Dorsoduro – the “left bank” as it were. I move away from the square, weaving my way past the small canals, congested here with gondolas.


 


(Though there is an ever ready gondolier to whisk you away,  nearly at every turn...)





... And over the Accademia bridge (it gives the classically perfect view onto the Canal)...






...And now I am in the land of sweet memories. Here’s the Nico ice cream shop. I dragged my family to it a long time ago. On a huge splurge we sat down at the tables and ordered off menu! Let it not be said that an Venetian ice cream in a dish is a fleeting thing. It’s vivid for me still, twenty years later.






This is the waterfront that the crowds neglect and old timers come to.












And here, deeply buried in the neighborhood is this simple glass store. There are thousands of them in Venice, but for some reason, we liked this one and put all our souvenir money into a glass plate made by the guy who still does glass blowing here.





You look as young as you did then! I tell him.
Thank you. Time passes quickly though. A trace of sadness. I’ve stopped making those plates, he continues. Too expensive.

My seven year old ate a peach here and it dribbled all over her... The veggie boat, still here...












It's a place where you can find tranquility. Still waters, reflecting the vivid colors of a sunny day. An empty alley.

















Oh, and this is the place Ed and I ate dinner on our first night in Venice. No, sorry – I ate the dinner. It was only our second trip together. We’d been hanging out barely six months. I did not yet understand that Ed sometimes skips protocol. My book told me we should have a memorable meal on our first night here. His book said – not hungry for it. It was threatening to be one of those wickedly unresolved nights, but we saved it. I don’t remember how, but we did. Venice magic.

Okay, enough. I need new memories from this six hour fling here. Food – I need food.

But where? The sweet pizza place by the bell tower? No, that’s a rerun. Here’s something: Do Farai. With faded old reviews in the window and a lively crowd inside. And here’s a new observation: Italians like to make babies in early July. Must be that first blush of summer. I’ve witnessed more birthday celebrations since I’ve come here than in the whole past decade! Three today alone (one still ahead of me)!

The crowd of some fifteen is a young one – all twenties and thirties except for the mom and dad. The birthday person appears deliriously happy! A few small gifts, lots of easy banter.

The restaurant owner moves between the tables with grace. He talks for a while with these guys --  the gondoliers (they really eat a lot! -- he later tells me)...






... talks to the French couple off in a corner (you’re from Paris? Hmm. But I’m really from the coast! I’m a boat captain of a yacht... they exchange cards), and shows a photo of his old family to the birthday girl.






Meanwhile I order just an appetizer – an assortment of all the seafood offerings – octopus shrimp over polenta, scallop, ohhhh I can’t even list it all! Here, look!






And I get talked into a salad. The owner tells me there’ll be baby artichokes in it from today’s market.

At the end, he brings me some house specialty concoction. Raisins soaking in potent stuff. I need a coffee after all this.






Time’s flying from me now. I have a 16:50 train to catch. Six hours of pleasure, nearly done.












Leaving Venice is never really a wrenching and sad affair, because if you walk to the station you’ll gradually let go of her as you leave behind the beauty and reenter the schlock of fast retail closer to the trains. Some have said of course that Venice is one big shopping mall. But it’s a glorious one! The window gazing in this city can get quite sumptuous.
















Or at least it’s varied. There’ll be the immigrant sellers with their knockoffs, packing up and running when the police walk by. And there’ll be the “I love Italia” shirts, the gondolier hats – all that. And there’ll be glass. Murano glass, jeweled and beautiful. And the foods. Macaroons and cakes (including special breads for Easter), take out foods, parma hams, Veneto wines.

Toward the station it’s cheaper, more prosaic, functional too.

I have five minutes before my rapid train departs (these Intercity beauties haven’t the punctuality issues of local trains).





I find a newsstand and ask for some writing paper – a notebook maybe? A tablet? Fine, a tablet. This post is mostly a product of my writing in it. The freshest spill of words on the Milan bound train. Except I remember to get off at Brescia.

I have just three minutes now to catch the Gargnano bus, but once you’ve been to a city, a town, you learn the shortcuts. I run, literally run to the bus station, gasping just as the bus pulls in.

And now I'm home.


 


Truth is, I’m not really hungry for a big meal. Grand days have to end simply, quietly. With a pizza maybe. Here, with Marilyn Monroe posters. A pie with eggplant and garlic and olives...





At the table next to mine, a family of four is finishing their meal. The waitress brings out a cake with lit candles. It’s the youngest daughter’s birthday. You put one too many candle, she laughs. I’m only nine!





Everyone should be this happy, this light at heart, this forgiving of mistakes...

Everyone should, too, have a chance to walk home, sometime soon, by the light of a half moon and consider how beautiful the stuff is under its muted light.

mist, spritz and tiramisu

If the last two days had a mist in the afternoon, this day has one in the morning. Well, true, also in the afternoon. And a wind that really whipped things around by the water. And clouds over the summits. And my ambition level is set at the low end of the continuum.

From my breakfast table, I look out at the lake... There is a boat out there, but you can hardly see it. The mountains on the other side? Forget it.





I want to slow down today. Sunday calls for easier stuff, no? It calls for eating a big meal in the middle of the day. And for people watching. This is the day when you rub shoulder with civilization.

A boat trip! There’s an idea. Cross the lake, see another town.

There is a ferry that runs from one end of the lake to the other. At this time of the year it pulls into Gargnano only once a day. Further north, there are added boats that crisscross the lake on a fairly regular basis.

You could say that making this trip on a hazy day, when the clouds roll in luxuriously and mostly cover the mountaintops is not ideal. But truthfully, it would be boring if it were always the same. I’m seeing Lago di Garda in all its shades of mist.

I walk over to the ferry landing. It's always such a lovely walk through the quiet streets of this town by the lake.


 


I note that the peak from yesterday's climb is behind a faint cloud cover. I'm glad I'm not there today.





The ferry is huge and nearly empty now. A dozen of us get on. Most people huddle inside. It really is windy out there. I have a scarf and a fleecy so I stay out on the deck. Initially, it looks like the sun will take hold.





Not for long though. Light clouds roll right back and stay clustered around the cliffs and peaks. And still, it’s a fascinating landscape out there and the haze adds stealth and mystery to it.











It’s about a 45 minute trip to Malcesine – a town further north, on the eastern shore of the lake. As we approach it, I think – nice. Colorful. And we're having a moment of sunshine!





As we dock, I change my mind. It’s crowded. And not in a good way. If there are local people out and about they’re lost in the swarm of visitors. Italian, yes, there are those, but the dominant language is German. In fact, the locals just assume that if you’re a visitor, you must be German. When I ask for directions, always in my non native sounding Italian, I get an answer in German. I don’t speak German and so my standard phrase, used more than any other on this day is – could you please say it in English or Italian?

The tipping point for me is when a huge swarm of middle or early high school kids descends, out of nowhere, onto the village square. Boisterous (to give them credit -- appearing to be having quite a fun time of it) American kids wearing "I love Italia" sweatshirts in various colors. I'm smiling at the scene, but I'm also in a hurry to find another corner to explore.

I wonder what’s so special about this town. It has dozens of stores, souvenir places, clothing and food places, all that, but surely that’s the result, not the cause of people coming here!

I think the roads on this side of the lake are better and so if you are to see Lago di Garda, you come here. And there are frequent ferry services as well.

I began to truly appreciate the beauty of Gargnano on this day. One book called it a sleepy little town. Yes it is. I miss it already.

So forget the Sunday meal here. I’m taking to the hills, misty haze or not. There is a very nice and very open tourist office (in Gargnano we have a one room operation and it’s been closed the whole time I’ve been there) and I get good directions for a several hour hike up the hills.

The peaks here actually are higher than that of Comer. Some have traces of snow. Later, toward the middle of the afternoon, a few poke through the cloud cover. But initially, they remain hidden. And as I head up the streets, then cobbled paths (nothing ambitious today – I top out at 500 meters), I see that the mountains across the water are also muted by some combination of mist and cloud.






I don’t have a particular goal. There was to be a chapel, or a rock named after a chapel, or the other way around (“Rocchetta Madonna” – who can tell...) that the tourist office suggested as a destination point, but I quickly lose the trail to it and so I’m left with basically going up. Even after an hour or two of climbing, I never leave the perimeter of the town. True, the houses are sparse and there is a thicket of olive groves, but I’m in a funny sort of distant way indeed amidst civilization after all.





It’s always the case that when you come to a congested spot, you need only walk 1000 steps and you’ll be alone. People like to stay clustered to the hub. And so my walk is gently quiet, with only the occasional passerby. A hiking tourist like me, a local taking a dog for a walk. Good kind of encounters. Far better up here in the hills than down there with the “I love Italia” crowds.






I am aiming to catch the boat at 4 and so eventually I have to turn around and head down. I didn’t take any photos of the little harbor. Nor of the town itself. Just one, as I am coming in after the hike. Off on a side street, a mom is taking her little girl to a party. I like watching the little one's excitement as she prances forward.







And now the wind has really picked up so I am glad to have put down the additional three Euros for a fast hydrofoil crossing. Here’s the little boat, coming at us from across the shore.






My second and final destination is the village of Limone. Sounds like lemon, translates to mean lemon. This was the northernmost outpost of lemon cultivation some 100 years ago. It’s blustery cool today, but it is Sunday and there are people out and about – fewer than in Malcesine and so I mind it far less.

It’s a cute little town, though a bit cramped at the foot of rocky cliffs. There are shops here as well but somehow they don’t overwhelm you in the same way that they did across the water.






Yes, there is a lemon theme to the place. You can even buy large lemons grown here, but it’s all rather contrived, given the fact that serious lemon cultivation has left the area many decades ago.

Which does not prevent me from purchasing a lovely Italian cotton tablecloth with prints of lemons on it for the farmhouse. At 8 Euros, it is less than the price of the Sunday afternoon meal that somehow I never sat down to eat

There is a bus that makes its way through many many tunnels piercing the cliffs here, all the way back to Gargnano. Twenty kilometers later, I am home (for this week).

And because it happens to be six and because I haven’t had a bite to eat or even water to drink since breakfast, what better way to celebrate a return then to have an Aperol spritz at the café by the shore.





I have it in the intensely orange interior. Only three tables here – all empty. The mass of Gargnano humanity is huddled outside under the awning, but I’m cold from the winds of the day and moreover, if you are a nonsmoker, the worst place you can be is under a (partially enclosed) café awning, because that qualifies as outdoors and there are plenty of people who like to mix their Aperol spritz with tobacco here.

Besides, I love watching the proprietor and his wife in this place. The spritz at the neighboring café has a better orange slice, but this one has the friendlier staff. It makes for an overall warm and cozy respite.


My dinner (and I am so ready for it!) is at the hotel. There are now three couples in the dining room and we have all preordered out set meals (you have a choice, always of two pastas and two main courses and a handful of home made desserts), so that all remains is to decide which wine to add to your foods. I am no longer surprised that all the guests around me are speaking German.

The food is, as before, quite wonderful. I have the mushroom risotto and a grilled shrimp main course. Yes, I’ve departed from eating local foods with that one. I realize that there are no shrimp in Lake Garda. It’s to be expected that fish would not be on the menu today. They only serve fish sold by the Lake Garda cooperative and Sunday is a day off for the fishermen.

What’s truly local and utterly delicious is the tiramisu. When you’ve had in your life many indifferent servings of tiramisu, it always catches you by surprise when a good one is put before you. Tonight’s was just such a surprise. You can’t have expectations. Mist only in the afternoon? Forget it. Sometimes it’s there the entire day. And sometimes the tiramisu shines.

(The last photo, with the funny looking lens of my camera is here, because I often write at the table by the mirror. )