Gondola city : Venezia

(Sept 17th 2007)

For Venice, we'd decided to go off the beaten track and had booked ourselves in a camp (Alba D' Oro)- that this was the cheapest option available, just made the decision easier. At 19 euros per person, an ensuite camp caravan wasn't a bad deal at all! Trust me, sleeping in a room with only one other person (as opposed to the 6-8 in a dorm room) was a welcome change and the sound sleep that we enjoyed was replendent proof.

The camp was about 20 mins away from the main city and the camp runs shuttle buses on the hour. As with most tourist cities, they offered a wide range of passes and cards based on your interest. We bought the Orange card, but that that turned out to be a huge waste of 22.90 Euros as we were hardly in the mood for museums and churches, having nearly exhausted our cultural cravings in Paris and Rome.

We started with San Marco Square (for those of you who'd had the 'fortune' of watching Bachna Ae Haseeno, this is the square where "Khuda Jaane" was shot- and now if you'll stop imagining Ranbir with his arms outstretched, we can move ahead) and then taking pity on our Orange card, went to the Doge museum.

Now the Doge was no ruler- rather a nominal head of Venice. Now, we are Indians and we know our president. So we understand what a nominal head means, yeah? So the Doge museum was some sort of a presidential palace and now it houses artefacts and the likes. In the era gone by, Venice enjoyed the reputation of being a busy trading and merchant port and the lion, its official mascot, represented Venetian dominance over land and sea. The lion also served to underline the differences between Venice and the Roman Church.

Although charming, the Doge museum didn't really hold our interest. What was infinitely more interesting was walking around Venice's ever-fascinating and sometimes-stinking walkways, crossing canals and hearing the gondoliers sing to (and fleece) romance-stricken tourists. Here's a video of the gondoliers.

The thumbs down factors were (a) the terribly over-priced and less than delicious food and (b) the crowds. Now, coming from an Indian that might sound slightly weird, but you do feel the magical ambience wearing down a bit when you see more tourists than locals. Also, more hands with maps and more fingers on the flash buttons mean more mouths to be fed and more wallets to be lightened. Really missed the great, cheap food of Rome!

Venice was also the first European destination to leave me lighter by several hundred Euros-I bought a few Murano glass pendants (hold it up to the light and you'll see colorful patterns dancing in front of you :) and.... a Venetian mask, which could easily be the most expensive piece of home decoration that I've bought or plan to buy in the near future. And here it is, my gorgeous Venetian mask, in rose and gold (esp for you Goofy Mumma!). It currently occupies the place of pride in my living room. Though I've realized that it does take some taste to appreciate something as exquisite. I was rather annoyed when a well meaning colleague asked me" tumhe isse raat ko darr nahi lagta" but then chuckled to myself realizing it would be quite funny if I-the scaredy cat, were to ever get up at night and see a gold face with hollow eyes staring back.

And since I've already declared my inability to stop at a single item of purchase, I also bought a charcoal painting- which the artist created from scratch, in a matter of minutes and exclusively for me! Here's the picture of the painting and also a small video of Marco skilfully converting a few strokes of charcoal into a Venetian landscape.

This Venetian extravagance also meant that I and G skipped the gondola ride- At 80 euros a ride, we figured we'd save it for a more romantic episode in our lives. All said and done, Venice did turn out to be quite a romantic place- nowhere else, did I miss M as much or as often. Little wonder then, that a lot of people tend to make this a honeymoon destination. (Crowds are the root cause of all evil-refer point (b) above).

The great wine that accompanied dinner, compensated for the mediocre food and we ended the day, singing peppy Hindi film songs while walking to our ferry- we got a few stares and someone even commented on our happy state of being. Though embarassed for a moment, we quickly raised our faces and decibel levels and carried on singing.
The wine and song induced happy daze cleared up rather quickly when we realized that we'd missed our shuttle bus. We ended up taking public transport all the way to the airport and from there to the camp, thereby spending about 1.5 hrs to complete a journey of 20 mins. Another minor tragedy awaited us back at the camp- in our morning hurry to catch the bus, we'd left the caravan window open. It had rained during the day and the casualty of the downpour was my unfortunately located bed. Since I was too tired to protest and it was meaningless to sulk (M wasn't around to pamper), I just pretended it was a second class railway berth and crashed.

Traveller's Tip#1- Please buy your day card with care- we ended up wasting our money!

Traveller's Tip#2- Bargain with the gondoliers. Everybody does it. For a reason.

Traveller's Tip#3- Shop at the stores located at some distance from the main tourist spots. Even a distance of 200 m can save you 2-10 euros, depending on what you buy.