Venice and Our tiny Moment of Fame

When we arrived in Venice, William was like a kid in a candy store. He could not wait to get off the Vaporetto and explore this water town. He declared it his favorite stop before he even explored it, due to all the water canals. Strangely, he didn’t feel this way for Amsterdam, which is also a water canal city; I’m pretty sure he was a dolphin in his last life. Anyways, my first impression of Venice was not so pretty. While William basically frolicked through the streets, I couldn’t help but stare at the hundreds of tourists around me. They were everywhere (and yes I realize I’m one of them). But this was different. The populations of young people were seriously lacking and the number of old people were comparable to the pigeon population here. I cannot figure out of which I saw more. I guess I was just shocked to see so many tourists, after traveling to 6 cities and being one of very few tourists, it was strange to see nothing but tourists. Even worse, this town, of what I thought was romantic young couples was filled with tourist groups of massive sizes. The only time I saw young people was when we walked with a group of 50 along the main canal. As me and William ventured out of St. Mark’s Square into the real Venice, we were glad to see the college students by the mass get herded onto undersized boats and shipped off to a less rowdy place.

This is when I fell in love with Venice. I remember reading everywhere that you cannot really get lost in Venice, so go ahead and get lost. And as the sun set, the crowds disappeared, and the waters became restless (due to a storm somewhere), we set out to venture the streets of Venezia. We took random twists and turns and ended up tiptoeing through streets and basically eavesdropping, in a cute way though. The farther we got into the city, away from our hotel, away from St. Marks, the more we saw how Venetians lived their lives. We walked down a narrow street with windows open, but curtains closed and listened to the nice and peaceful sounds of forks and knives against ceramic plates and bowls. Our designated exploration time was everyone else’s dinnertime. Families gathered, ate, drank, laughed and shared stories of their day, though we couldn’t understand. We were so nervous they would hear, but we kept going down our path, wanting to hear more. Eventually we realized we were totally lost and decided to track our way back to the Great Canal.

St. Mark’s Square, The Basilica San Marco and Doge’s Palace, were just ok. I really just liked Doge’s Palace, but I won’t bore you with the details. I’ll just tell you my favorite part: The Chastity Belt. OMG I had never seen one of these!!! So weird! At first I thought it was some sort of torture device for men; a belt to smoosh their private into a million pieces. So when I asked William what it was, he told me, “Yes, it’s definitely a torture device.” But, as I continued to wonder how exactly it worked, he totally realized I didn’t know what it was. When he told me it was a chastity belt, I was totally shocked; those really exist? It was scary; and I doubt it is even bearable to wear.

Hundreds of people crowded St. Mark’s Square, which I later realized was to feed pigeons? I feared the spread of disease. I’m glad we got all that over with. My favorite part of Venice was the shopping and music. Oh and our moment of fame. Our hotel, Hotel Doni, was a cute little one right off the canal behind St. Mark’s Square. Very convenient location, and a quiet area because the canal was a small one. I liked having the canal there, because our window looked out to it. It was nice to look out at in the morning and pretty to hear the gondolas passing in the evening. Anyways, earlier, we took our gondola ride, which was very nice. It was in the morning because we’d have to sell a kidney to ride it in the evening and the traffic was less. Our Gondolier was a burly man, sort of intimidating, until he started singing! LOL. He was interesting that’s for sure. But either way he gave us some good tips and showed us a few places including Marco Polo’s home and the Casa Nova Home. But, while we were riding our gondola, people would stop, by the mass, and take pictures of us. We were sort of freaked out, but our gondolier seemed to like the attention. People took pictures from the sides of streets, bridges, restaurants, you name it. I was so confused until later when I noticed from my balcony that after 50 gondolas passed by, I only saw one couple. Majority of Gondoliers serve groups, tours, families, groups of friends, and even random people splitting costs, but hardly couples. When those people saw William and me they finally saw what people traditionally expect to see on a gondola, a (multi-racial!) couple.

Same thing happened in my window. As hundreds of gondolas passed our canal, I stood out to watch them because many of them hired singers and accordion players to entertain them on their cruises. As I stood over my balcony taking in my beautiful surroundings, people pointed, waved, tapped their friends and pointed up at me and took several pictures. It was so weird. I almost was afraid to leave the window, afraid to disappoint and have tomatoes thrown in. After about 5 pictures, I told William what was going on and he joined in. We stood under our green and white striped cloth covered balcony, leaning over, with the wind in our face, posing for people’s pictures. And they just kept coming until I heard a growl. My tummy, of course. Then we left for dinner. The best food I’ve had on the trip was a place with the original title: Chinese Ristorante. We ordered Chicken with Black Mushrooms, Cashew Chicken, Cantonese rice, and red wine only to be totally shocked and in love with this Venetian-Chinese restaurant. The chicken was in perfect bite-size pieces and totally clean, the rice was not greasy at all and the mushrooms were so unique, but delicious. So now you know, come to Chinese Ristorante for a pleasant surprise in Venice. The A.C. and modern interior weren’t too bad either.