Allora! Hiking and biking in Italy - part 1, Venice
Thursday, June 22, 2023 at 02:58PM Allora: often used at the beginning of a sentence in order to begin a speech, because it helps us to get more time to think better about what to say! https://learnamo.com/en/allora-all-meanings-and-uses-in-italian/
View from our room in Hotel Marte
It’s tough to take original pictures in a place as iconic as Italy. We’ve watched James Bond and Indiana Jones speed through the Venetian canals. The old cathedrals of rural Italy decorate spaghetti sauce jars. And the iconic villages of the Cinque Terre are the setting for the latest Disney animated feature.
To see Italy today is to see the Italy of your imagination - but coated with tourists.
San Marco Piazza in the early morning
My friend Heidi and I are back from a two-week sojourn that took us from Venice to Mantua to Cinque Terre, exploring by bike and by hiking boot this ancient land. The area became my vacation destination of choice after two boat-bike guides in the Netherlands said the boat-bike trip out of Venice was their favorite. This post and the two following it will be my way of helping me to remember a few details from the trip and share some of my favorite pictures.
A view from the top of the German market
June, I knew, was not the ideal time to go. Venice is rated as one of the top tourist destinations in the world and the pandemic created a backlog of travel desires this year. But it was the time both Heidi and I could go and when the boat-bike company had tour openings. So I was prepared for the crush of tourists, high prices, and crowded planes and trains. I was not surprised - but all went well.
Seagulls rule everywhere
Our plane landed on time about noon at the Marco Polo airport and we took a waterbus from the airport to a stop on the main island of Venice (the one shaped like a fish and intersected by the Grand Canal). From the stop it was a 10 minute walk along a canal and over a bridge to our hotel.
Italian food was not hard to find.
We spent that afternoon getting checked into the Hotel Marte, located about a 30 minute walk to the Piazza San Marco, center of the town. The hotel was more expensive than I usually like to pay, but I wanted a room that overlooked a canal. Hey, just how many times in one’s life does stay in Venice? With a print map supplied by a friendly desk clerk, Rick Steve’s book on the town, and GoogleMaps on phones with local SIM cards, off we went…
All commerce is by boat or pushcart - no cars, no bikes
The next three days we basically spent following Steves's recommended walking tours. Early mornings (before 8am) were our favorite times to explore - cooler temps and few tourists. We poked our noses in churches and cathedrals, shops, and visited the Peggy Guggenheim Modern Art Museum. We did not get inside Saint Mark's Basilica or the Doge's Palace - the lines were incredibly long. But we did take the obligatory gondola ride, sitting in the “love seat” while being poled through small canals that, if dry, would be called alleys. Sort of hokey, but fun too.
Gondolas are ubiquitous
The giant cruise ships that carry thousands of passengers have been banned from docking on the main island of Venice. How the place would have ever handled a few thousand more tourists, I can’t imagine. The place during late morning and afternoon was still packed. Lots of gelato being sold and huge numbers of souvenir shops, all seeming to carry the same fridge magnets. There were some very cool mask shops, however.
Rialto Bridge and waterbus
The old city is comprised of alleys and GoogleMaps seemed to know and use them all extensively. Between the alleys, canal crossings, and deadends, I don’t know how anyone ever found their way around before smart phones. Some larger streets had directions to major landmarks painted on building walls at intersections, but I learned graffiti artists love to change the direction of the arrows. Pigeons and seagulls were everywhere, with seagulls often peering in windows and doorways and perching atop statues, and pigeons hopping beneath cafe tables waiting for crumbs. Probably not real sanitary, but kind of charming.
Gondola ride
I don’t know if our time in Venice was any better or worse than the average traveler’s, but it was pleasant. Food was priced about the same as in the US and there always seemed to be tables at the small cafes where we dined. (We eat early.) On Saturday, we packed our bags and made our way to the landing area on the nearby Giudecca Island for the small cruise ship that would be our home for the next week.
A maze of canals
Many more photos here:
Reader Comments