This is the second in a series of "off topic" posts inspired by my recent choir trip to Europe. However, I promise to tie this to at least one movie!
Venice has become the persnickety old maiden aunt of Italian tourism - one with a parlor full of valuable antiques that she's trying to save for the "good" company, all the while railing and swatting away at the ruffians who crowd in, dripping melted gelato and pizza grease, scattering litter and snapping selfies. She throws modest shawls over the spaghetti-strapped shoulders of young women entering her churches and demands that you don't dawdle too long on her picturesque bridges. And no one pays any attention to her warnings.
Venice regularly tops lists of cities that want tourists to stay away, and their pleas are not working. The city averages 60,000 day-tripping visitors a day. That's a whopping lot of people packed onto a relatively small set of tiny, bridge-linked islands. It's also sinking into the Adriatic Sea at a rate of 2 millimeters per year, one presumes under the massive weight of all those tourists.
Nevertheless, the Venetians battle valiantly to make tourists respect their city for the centuries-old showpiece of history, commerce, architecture and art that it is - and not treat it like the Italian pavilion at Epcot. They've passed ordinances banning picnicking and the sale of fast food in heavily visited areas. There is even a law forbidding you to stand too long on any bridge, so as not to bring the pedestrian traffic to a halt. I can assure you, not one of these ordinances is being enforced. I personally witnessed a couple scarfing a huge, shared bag of potato chips while sitting directly under the "No Picnicking" sign in St. Mark's Square, and I had a hell of a difficult time getting past the selfie-snappers blocking all but a narrow passageway in the middle of the Accademia Bridge.
It was a very hot, very tourist-packed July day when our group arrived in Venice. But my first experience of the fabled "La Serenissima" was very different.
In February 2000, I tagged along on a friend's ski club trip to Austria. I had no intention of skiing the Alps - I could barely manage the smallest green hills in Michigan and Wisconsin- but I totally wanted to be part of the optional day trips. One of those was to Venice. We left Innsbruck on a bus at 5:30 in the morning and got back around 11:30 that night. I never once regretted the lost sleep.
When we arrived just across the bay from Venice around nine that morning, the city was enveloped in fog. As we piled into a motorboat to taxi over to St. Mark's Square, the fog began to lift - and all those famous, beautiful, 15th century buildings of Venice slowly emerged from the mist. It was indescribably beautiful, like entering a dream world. The air was chilly and damp, and the day was gray, but it hardly mattered. I was in a daze all day: wandering the labyrinthine streets, taking a long gondola ride that passed under every famous, fabled bridge on the Grand Canal. There were virtually no other tourists in the city that day, and the streets seemed to belong just to us and the locals. Just as we were getting on the boat that would take us back to our bus that evening, the fog rolled back in behind us, covering Venice in mist once more. I have never had a more magical day as a traveler.
It was a blazing hot July day when I returned to Venice along with my choral group, and there were massive hordes of tourists everywhere. The views were still beautiful, if a bit harder to take in. After a trip to the Murano glass factory and a guided visit to St. Mark's Square, we were free to wander on our own. And I had a plan.
The infamous Peggy Guggenheim had long captured my imagination. The niece of Solomon Guggenheim, founder of the famous museum in NYC, Peggy was a lover of abstract art - and abstract artists - in every sense of the word. She had money and a discerning eye, and she amassed a brilliant personal collection of works by Picasso, Kandinsky, Duchamp, Dali, Pollock and many others in her villa on the Grand Canal. She was bold and unconventional. She had two husbands, two children, and many lovers, but was most devoted to her dogs. (The Venetians called her "L'Americana con i cani" - the American woman with the dogs) and she was buried among them in the courtyard of her villa. After she died, her home was opened to the public as a museum where her collection was showcased. And, for years, I had been dying to get a look at it.
So I went off my own in search of Peggy's treasures (no other abstract art lovers in the group!). It was an easy trip at first - although I had a map in hand, I could find my way to the Accademia Bridge by following signs posted at the end of every block. But once over the bridge, I was lost. I'm convinced that Ms. Guggenheim didn't really want anyone to visit her former home, because she made it so hard to find! I wandered the surrounding neighborhood for nearly a half-hour before figuring out that I needed to wander down a tiny, narrow "street" that was barely wide enough to let two people pass each other, then into a small piazza, and then into another tiny "street". The Collection lay behind wrought iron gates just off that ... let's call it an alley, which is what it really was.
Was it worth the stressful trip? Yes! Absolutely! My only regret is that my confusion in getting there reduced the amount of time I could spend admiring the impressive collection of masterworks. I was also interested to see the bold, imaginative (and somewhat disturbing) work of Guggenheim's daughter, Pegeen, to which an entire room is devoted. Here's the infamous statue that sits outside the villa, facing the Canal: "Angel of the City" sculpted by Marino Marini. If you look close, you'll see that this little guy is, umm, really excited to be looking out on to the Grand Canal.
Because I had taken almost all our allotted free time to visit the Collection, I had missed lunch and was ravenous by the time I ran into a group of fellow choristers headed to a famous gelato spot. This wound up being my lunch:
This is the specialty of the house at Gelateria Nico on the Grand Canal: a small brick of chocolate hazelnut gelato dunked in a tall glass of whipped cream. This is about as brilliant as dessert gets, and I wolfed it down in mere minutes.
Our entire group concluded the day with a gondola ride and dinner. Our gondolier was young and handsome, friendly and mildly flirty with the group of middle-aged women he steered around the canals. He claimed not to be a singing gondolier, but with a little encouragement he favored us with a few bars of a pop ballad and proved to have a lovely, rich baritone voice. He was such a good sport and so nice that I had to wonder if all this talk of tourist-hating Venetians might be a bit overblown. I reflected on a day in which I'd encountered no attitude or impatience from anyone in a service role. In fact, when I'd stopped for a bottle of water at a pizza place earlier, the woman who served me was effusively friendly and offered me an enthusiastic "grazie!" (Maybe because I ordered "acqua, per favore," using Italian rather than my own language?) Perhaps that persnickety old Zia Serenissima is softening and getting used to the ruffians in the parlor after all.
Movie tie-in: Where do I even start?
My whole love affair with Venice started long before I ever set foot in the city - at the movies. How many times have you seen that famous landscape? Think of Summertime, A Room with a View, Don't Look Now, The Talented Mr. Ripley... The list goes on and on.
Not to mention the fascinating documentary Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict.
But I'm going to pick Lasse Hallstrom's Casanova, a thoroughly silly and highly enjoyable romp starring the late Heath Ledger in the title role, Sienna Miller as his love interest, and whole ensemble of wonderful actors (Jermey Irons, Oliver Platt, Lena Olin among them) having a merry time in a most romantic setting.
It's hard to make a movie in Venice that doesn't capture its beauty, but Casanova is one I recall giving the sunniest, most beautiful views of a city that is all about beauty. And it's far and away the most fun film on this list. Rent it and enjoy yourself.
Nevertheless, the Venetians battle valiantly to make tourists respect their city for the centuries-old showpiece of history, commerce, architecture and art that it is - and not treat it like the Italian pavilion at Epcot. They've passed ordinances banning picnicking and the sale of fast food in heavily visited areas. There is even a law forbidding you to stand too long on any bridge, so as not to bring the pedestrian traffic to a halt. I can assure you, not one of these ordinances is being enforced. I personally witnessed a couple scarfing a huge, shared bag of potato chips while sitting directly under the "No Picnicking" sign in St. Mark's Square, and I had a hell of a difficult time getting past the selfie-snappers blocking all but a narrow passageway in the middle of the Accademia Bridge.
It was a very hot, very tourist-packed July day when our group arrived in Venice. But my first experience of the fabled "La Serenissima" was very different.
In February 2000, I tagged along on a friend's ski club trip to Austria. I had no intention of skiing the Alps - I could barely manage the smallest green hills in Michigan and Wisconsin- but I totally wanted to be part of the optional day trips. One of those was to Venice. We left Innsbruck on a bus at 5:30 in the morning and got back around 11:30 that night. I never once regretted the lost sleep.
When we arrived just across the bay from Venice around nine that morning, the city was enveloped in fog. As we piled into a motorboat to taxi over to St. Mark's Square, the fog began to lift - and all those famous, beautiful, 15th century buildings of Venice slowly emerged from the mist. It was indescribably beautiful, like entering a dream world. The air was chilly and damp, and the day was gray, but it hardly mattered. I was in a daze all day: wandering the labyrinthine streets, taking a long gondola ride that passed under every famous, fabled bridge on the Grand Canal. There were virtually no other tourists in the city that day, and the streets seemed to belong just to us and the locals. Just as we were getting on the boat that would take us back to our bus that evening, the fog rolled back in behind us, covering Venice in mist once more. I have never had a more magical day as a traveler.
It was a blazing hot July day when I returned to Venice along with my choral group, and there were massive hordes of tourists everywhere. The views were still beautiful, if a bit harder to take in. After a trip to the Murano glass factory and a guided visit to St. Mark's Square, we were free to wander on our own. And I had a plan.
The infamous Peggy Guggenheim had long captured my imagination. The niece of Solomon Guggenheim, founder of the famous museum in NYC, Peggy was a lover of abstract art - and abstract artists - in every sense of the word. She had money and a discerning eye, and she amassed a brilliant personal collection of works by Picasso, Kandinsky, Duchamp, Dali, Pollock and many others in her villa on the Grand Canal. She was bold and unconventional. She had two husbands, two children, and many lovers, but was most devoted to her dogs. (The Venetians called her "L'Americana con i cani" - the American woman with the dogs) and she was buried among them in the courtyard of her villa. After she died, her home was opened to the public as a museum where her collection was showcased. And, for years, I had been dying to get a look at it.
So I went off my own in search of Peggy's treasures (no other abstract art lovers in the group!). It was an easy trip at first - although I had a map in hand, I could find my way to the Accademia Bridge by following signs posted at the end of every block. But once over the bridge, I was lost. I'm convinced that Ms. Guggenheim didn't really want anyone to visit her former home, because she made it so hard to find! I wandered the surrounding neighborhood for nearly a half-hour before figuring out that I needed to wander down a tiny, narrow "street" that was barely wide enough to let two people pass each other, then into a small piazza, and then into another tiny "street". The Collection lay behind wrought iron gates just off that ... let's call it an alley, which is what it really was.
Was it worth the stressful trip? Yes! Absolutely! My only regret is that my confusion in getting there reduced the amount of time I could spend admiring the impressive collection of masterworks. I was also interested to see the bold, imaginative (and somewhat disturbing) work of Guggenheim's daughter, Pegeen, to which an entire room is devoted. Here's the infamous statue that sits outside the villa, facing the Canal: "Angel of the City" sculpted by Marino Marini. If you look close, you'll see that this little guy is, umm, really excited to be looking out on to the Grand Canal.
Because I had taken almost all our allotted free time to visit the Collection, I had missed lunch and was ravenous by the time I ran into a group of fellow choristers headed to a famous gelato spot. This wound up being my lunch:
This is the specialty of the house at Gelateria Nico on the Grand Canal: a small brick of chocolate hazelnut gelato dunked in a tall glass of whipped cream. This is about as brilliant as dessert gets, and I wolfed it down in mere minutes.
Our entire group concluded the day with a gondola ride and dinner. Our gondolier was young and handsome, friendly and mildly flirty with the group of middle-aged women he steered around the canals. He claimed not to be a singing gondolier, but with a little encouragement he favored us with a few bars of a pop ballad and proved to have a lovely, rich baritone voice. He was such a good sport and so nice that I had to wonder if all this talk of tourist-hating Venetians might be a bit overblown. I reflected on a day in which I'd encountered no attitude or impatience from anyone in a service role. In fact, when I'd stopped for a bottle of water at a pizza place earlier, the woman who served me was effusively friendly and offered me an enthusiastic "grazie!" (Maybe because I ordered "acqua, per favore," using Italian rather than my own language?) Perhaps that persnickety old Zia Serenissima is softening and getting used to the ruffians in the parlor after all.
Movie tie-in: Where do I even start?
My whole love affair with Venice started long before I ever set foot in the city - at the movies. How many times have you seen that famous landscape? Think of Summertime, A Room with a View, Don't Look Now, The Talented Mr. Ripley... The list goes on and on.
Not to mention the fascinating documentary Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict.
But I'm going to pick Lasse Hallstrom's Casanova, a thoroughly silly and highly enjoyable romp starring the late Heath Ledger in the title role, Sienna Miller as his love interest, and whole ensemble of wonderful actors (Jermey Irons, Oliver Platt, Lena Olin among them) having a merry time in a most romantic setting.
It's hard to make a movie in Venice that doesn't capture its beauty, but Casanova is one I recall giving the sunniest, most beautiful views of a city that is all about beauty. And it's far and away the most fun film on this list. Rent it and enjoy yourself.
