Italy Complete Record: Day Two

March 28, 2006

Venezia
10:15am

The Venice airport is charming and small and laid back. Even the Italian military guys in baggage claim, wearing modified fatigues and carrying automatic rifles, mostly just lounge and laugh and try to flirt with female passengers (including Anna). We enter the small, marble and glass lobby to buy Alilaguna water bus tickets from a window beside an espresso stand where two attractive elderly men in designer eyewear bicker lovingly over a couple of cappuccinos.

We pull our suitcases outside to smoke a cigarette beside the taxi lane and watch the all of the following pass, in succession: Two nuns in full habit, four young men in Italia soccer jackets with complicated hair, a glamorous middle aged woman with Cat’s Eye sunglasses, high heels, two dogs, and a fur coat, a Marlon Brando lookalike in a long black dress coat and a black suit, and finally, a tall, black-haired, blue-eyed guy in what looked like surgical scrubs and a track jacket, who approaches with some measure of feline grace and asks for a light. Easily one of the hottest guys I’ve ever seen. After thanking us politely, he darts off into the parking lot, leaving Anna and I to sit stunned into silence on the bench.

“Wow,” I say.

“Wow,” says Anna. “Bad pants, but, Wow.”

“You figure they hire that guy as a greeter? Like, “hey, welcome to Italy where the hot men are.”

“Wow,” says Anna.

“Also the nuns and the fashionistas and the Sofia Loren look alike and the Mafioso looking dudes. Do you think the Italian tourism board pays these people to walk around the airport, play the stereotypes, and amuse the travelers?”

“Wow,” says Anna.

“So this is Italy,” I say. “May be premature, but I’m gonna say that I’m pro-Italy.”

Anna shakes her head. “That guy? So fucking hot.”

*****

11:45 am
It’s drizzly, quite foggy, and a little cold. We’re standing about a half a mile from the terminal on a covered dock, floating on the murky green water of the Lagoon, waiting for the waterbus with an eager English teenager[1] and his white-haired dad. I’m feeling a little high at present (it’s now almost 5 am, my time), a condition not aided by the ceaseless rocking of the dock and the occasional glimmer of blinding white sunlight through the fog. I close my eyes and hallucinate a sea serpent.

When the boat shows up, about fifty people converge out of nowhere to join us on our ride across the Lagoon. The guys on the boat are affable enough, drinking coffee from a novelty mug featuring a pair of breasts and what I imagine must be a cheesy joke in Italian. They steer with no great precision using a polished wooden captain’s wheel which looks like it was stolen of an 18^th century pirate sloop and attached with superglue to the metal dashboard.

I lean my head against the window as we pass through a colonnade of elaborate buoys and rock jetties, each topped with signs that look to have been painted about a century ago (at least). These markers are each topped by a single fat seagull—as if part of the gimmick—as we pass through the brightening mist. I halfway anticipate a pirate attack by the time we round past an island housing a villa and an enormous cemetery. Sunlight starts creeping through as we pass the Lido and through Murano, where we see the glass factory and lots of black fluffy dogs.

Crossing the grandest part of the grand canal in a near golden fog—the outline of the distant domes and towers rising out of the mist—I feel like I’m sailing into a Henry James novel or some strange, Italian Avalon that emerges from the haze sporadically to seduce the stray visitor into some decadent alternate reality. Wouldn’t be so bad, I think, as we round into the Grand Canal and I get my first look at the Byzantine archways of the Doge’s Palace, and beyond to the great, elaborate edifice of St Mark’s. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little teary at that first sight of Venice through the shimmering, damp mist.

We disembark at the far end of Piazza San Marco, just to the right of Harry’s Bar, and drag our now damp and heavy suitcases over a narrow waterside sidewalk abutted on both sides by market stalls selling Carnevale masks and Italia warm-up jackets. We pass a block of pay-to pee toilets and round the first edge of waterlogged sidewalk cafes to pass beneath the columns at the edge of the square. I give a nod up to Triton, standing on what appears to be a crocodile, and the friendly looking griffin with the fat paws as we merge into the crowd of tourists in front of the Cathedral.

Well past the point of standard exhaustion, wet from the rain, yet uncomfortably warm, Anna and I convene on the overturned pallets the Venetians use for walkways when the square floods at high tide for a cigarette break and a map consult. It starts raining harder even before I manage to light the cigarette with the now damp, globetrotting matches from Orange County Social Club. Hordes of tourists rush in the direction from which we have come to the Vaporetti stop, the rest huddle in awkward clutches under awnings and clear plastic ponchos of the Disneyworld model. I glance up at the aged, green Etruscan horses stampeding high over the Cathedral archways, and can’t summon up any energy to hurry. The pace and grandeur of the place is anathema to efficiency, and I can’t stop wondering at the vastness of the square, the long rows of colonnades, blackened with soot and age, the wide public space (one of the most magnificent in the world—urban planners teach seminars on it). It would be hard to live in Venice at any time in the last millennium or so and not have a deeply felt sense of civic pride based on the remarkable achievements of the planners, architects, and engineers who managed to create a kind of heaven on earth effect out of a swamp. Venice was the least likely to that became the richest city of medieval Europe. As center of trade and commerce, Venice played out of both hands, innovating, stealing, borrowing, or skimming off of the top from and for the East and the West, often at the same time. How else to explain how Europe’s most elaborately Byzantine city provided the financial backing, the transport, and the suggestion to the Crusaders that sacked Constantinople?

(Probably not coincidence . . . just saying)

At the end of the day, though, Venice’s ability to survive the last thousand years or so really boils down to is luck, bolstered by an appealing, if counterintuitive notion, that nature is no match for the wily, baroque sensibilities of the Venetian population.[2] The jewel of the Adriatic with waterways guarded by griffins and pagan gods, with a Carnevale that set the bar for debauchery on at least two other continents, with a list of noteworthy painters and artists (Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, et al) whose unique translation of Renaissance ideals showed less concern for piety and neo-Platonism and more for pleasure, feminine perfection, and other such worldly aims. (Among other things, Venice gave birth to Casanova). And there’s something quite intoxicating about the city’s historic flouting of its own obvious mortality. The gold encrusted facades of palazzos on the grand canal, slowing rotting and sinking into the lagoon. It’s some sort of testament to the ephemeral quality of human endeavor—no matter how grand. And it doesn’t take long to recognize that Venice is extraordinarily beautiful, and it’s beauty is not in spite of the grit and decay, but because of it. [3]

It is my idea to brave the rainy streets with a crude map and find our hotel on foot. It's not the best one. The shower has picked up considerable strength since we landed and we slog through with miniature travel umbrellas past crowds cowering under the awnings of jewelry shops and tourist traps. Schlepping a oversized suitcase through the alleys and over the white marble bridges of Venice is hard enough when it’s not raining. Factor in our condition (hungry, tired, wet), the crowds, and the smirking, dawdling gondoliers who took some pleasure in watching us take a suitcase over the same stairway three times before we finally figured out the right direction, it feels downright purgatorial. Venice is like a maze. There are plenty of dead ends, but you end up walking all the way around a block before you realize the sidewalk stops at the canal and unless you want to swim (not advised), you’re pretty much back at square one. About thirty minutes into the quest for our hotel, Anna and I land in an empty, perfectly charming courtyard just east of the Rialto Bridge, where we consider giving up entirely and surrendering to the fact that we are lost. Finding our hotel is futile. Why even try?

And, as usually happens in these scenarios, about five minutes later we arrive at our hotel.

Antico Doge is the former residence of the mayor of Venice, facing a little campo in Canareggio, fitted with its own small belltower and a great many tobacco stores. (This square is, incidentally, the only place with park benches in the entire city of Venice.) You enter the hotel through heavy wooden doors on the ground floor (which look somewhat less imposing for being wedged between a store selling off-price designer jeans and an extremely loveable video arcade featuring vintage Galaga machines, football betting, and cheap rates for internet browsing) and drag your sopping wet suitcase down their plush pink runner to a tiny check-in area where an attractive woman looks at you with obvious pity and tries to distract you from thinking about how long it’s going to take you to get in your room (top of the stairs) and into bed by offering a complimentary trip to the Murano glass factory in the back of a tiny motorboat owned by the manager of the hotel, which, right now, sounds like the last thing you want to do. And finally, you check in and a 50 year old man who is probably 5’2 and weighs (probably) forty pounds less than you do (at least), but otherwise bears a striking resemblance to David Straithairn starts hauling your luggage upstairs before you can stop him, and by the time you reach the stop of the stairs (narrow, marble, fitted with an itty bitty funicular), he’s purple from the strain and you’re red from embarrassment, and you have no idea what to expect when he uses an enormous brass key with an even larger silk tassel on the end to open your room (called “The Danolo”).

I worry that I accidentally booked the suite.

Anna puts it well.

“Shit, this is nice.”

High polished hardwood floors, gold silk brocade walls, crystal chandeliers.

“Italian MTV,” says Anna.

“Bidet!” I say. “Mini-bar!”

Anna opens the drapes to unlatch the seven foot tall windows. “Interesting alley views!” (Not the suite)

There’s a stairwell leading upstairs to a loft with a queen size bed. Downstairs there’s a twin size bed fitted as a sofa. Both (we will learn) are hard as rocks.

Slightly reenergized by our successful hotel room conquest, we leave the hotel to buy a phone card from the tobacco store across the campo. The guy running the place is chaming, though I findthat all the Italian I’d tried to learn disappears as soon as I tryto speak it. I buy a cigarette lighter and Anna and I walk deeper into Canareggio to sit on the edge of an empty fountain and smoke a cigarette.

On about the third drag, I slide on my sunglasses (the clouds are finally clearing), and woozily turn to Anna: “I think I’m either going to pass out or die.”

Though Anna insists she isn't tired, she agrees to put off further exploration until after a nap. We stroll back to the hotel, I slog up the steps to the loft, and without even bothering to take off my clothes, fall asleep in about five minutes.

*****

The nap you take after crossing the Atlantic is only ever supposed to last for an hour or two. Invariably, though, you lie down at two, fall into a deep sleep, and when you open your eyes again, it’s dark outside.

Such is the case our first afternoon in Venice. I don't roll over until about 7:30 and shuffle down the stairs to see Anna stirring on the bed below.

“We should eat something,” I say, opening my suitcase.

She groans in protest.

“Seriously.” I pull a clean shirt from the pile and a pair of heavy rhinestone earrings to trick me into believing I look clean, attractive, and well-rested. By the time I’m dressed and out of the bathroom, Anna has watched enough of Italian MTV to compare it favorably to American MTV.

“They play way better videos here,” she says.

In other words, they actually play videos here.

I flip through the channels while she dresses. We drop the key with the concierge and take off into the darkened streets.

*****

Our first meal in Italy is profoundly mediocre. We end up at a Trattoria with a nautical theme and lots of wood paneling full of paunchy, elderly Brits and an overfriendly techie with really fucked up teeth from Fayetteville, North Carolina, who insists quizzing us about the status of all of his favorite bars in the greater Triangle area. I guess he’s nice enough, but he looks a little like a hamster and I sort of wish he would leave me to enjoy my mediocre crab pasta and cheap white house wine in peace. We empty the carafe of wine with ease, trying to dull the awkwardness of the restaurant, and leave with a fond farewell from Captain Fayetteville.[4]

Over at the Rialto Bridge, we stumble upon a little bar at the base, with tables all the up to the Canal. It will become our home away from home for the duration of our stay in Venice. We order a couple of cappuccinos from a surly, bald waiter, whom I nicknamed Signore Nefarious, in honor of my favorite surly French waiter, Monsieur Nefarious[5]. Venice is very quiet, even early at night, so much so that you can hear the water lapping against the carved stone banks. We watch gondolas pass under the bridge, the water reflected under the arch like green sequins.

Anna yawns.

We pay the bill, check our email at the arcade beside the hotel, and go to bed.

---

[1] I hesitate to use the word “dorky,” but that’s probably closer to the truth.

[2] This logic is not as appealing as it once was. By all reports, the permanent population of Venice is shrinking every year, while the tourism trade grows exponentially. The most recent count put Venice’s population at about 65,000, less than half of what it was in the 1960’s.

[3] On a personal note, I found myself thinking about New Orleans pretty much from the moment I step off the boat. This is no passing thought. At some point in the future, as ocean levels rise, Venice will cease to be. If they had hurricanes in the Adriatic, it probably would have happened a long time ago. I doubt Venice would condescend to compare itself with an upstart colonial city at the mouth of the Mississippi, just as I doubt New Orleans could ever aspire to such great heights, especially not now. But I’m haunted by the latter the whole time I’m in the former.

[4] It occurs to me sometime later that he was probably in the military.

[5] He works at Brasserie Lipp on Blvd St. Germain in Paris. Eat there just so he can serve your food, make snide comments about your face or family members, and allude to his plans for world domination. I (and I say this without irony) absolutely adore him.