Venice for Pleasure — Two South of Granada

On our roof terrace the first evening, we met a couple from Wales who were on their 17th visit to Venice and loved everything about it. They also gave us a few good suggestions for things to do and places to eat, just to add to our library. This day was to be our tourist day, and we had already decided that we were going to take a ride in a Gondola. Sometimes, although people may mock these uber-touristy activities, they are there for a reason. Our hotel reception had advised on the best place for such a drift on the water, in the quieter stretches of the San Polo area.

At this stage I should point out, just in case it has not crossed your mind, that the ways of getting around Venice are by foot or boat. In Verona, on our honeymoon, we hired bikes and cycling through the city was an absolute highlight. Bikes are not an option in Venice; beside, we’d probably end up pedalling into the Grand Canal. So, we either catch the Vaporetto or walk.

I will admit that I didn’t know what a Vaporetto was. I knew it was a boat, but the canals of Venice are overrun with boats. The Vaporetto is the equivalent of the bus. That morning, we went to a ticket office to buy a two-day Vaporetto ticket and I asked the not unreasonable question how to catch the Vaporetto, and it was as if I had asked if I could strip off naked and dance the fandango in the middle of St Mark’s Square. Public transport in Venice is not immediately intuitive. Maps can be difficult to read. There are different lines that use the same jetties, so it is easy to get confused. I was told that you catch them in the usual way! Given that we don’t have canals in Granada, “the usual way” doesn’t mean much, and given that we had no idea what a Vaporetto looked like, we may as well have been told to flag down a horse and carriage.

Vaporetto Map. Please note the word ‘VAPORETTO” does not appear anywhere on this map.

The Gondola ride was lovely, lovely, lovely. 30 minutes of peace in the narrow side canals off the Grand Canal and it was worth every penny of the €80 for 30 minutes. Our gondolier was a hoot. He couldn’t speak a massive amount of English, but what he could speak was delivered with great theatrical flair and lots of growling noises. He reminded us of one of our neighbours who makes sounds not dissimilar to the jowl-flapping noises made by bulldogs. I didn’t learn a great deal but we did learn the name of Tit Bridge, apparently where the prostitutes used to stand touting for business.

One of the very best recommendations we received was from Sarah, someone we met through our great friends Nick and Richard. Sarah told us we must buy the book, ‘Venice for Pleasure’. by J G Links. Bernard Levin described the book as “not only the best guide-book to that city ever written, but the best guide book to any city ever written.”

If any of you watched Michael Portillo, dressed in the colours of the rainbow, troll around Europe by train with nothing but Bradshaw’s Guide, then you may get an idea of the type of book we are discussing.

J G Links wrote the book in 1966 and it has been revised many times, right up to 2019.

We had decided that we were going to do one of JG’s (we were quite pally with the author by this stage, so on first name terms) walks after the Gondola trip had calmed us down. Canareggio was the district we wanted to explore, as so many people had said that this was the ‘real’ Venice, and there were fewer crowds.

Rather than recount JG’s own words in their entirety, I will pick out one or two highlights that made the journey so memorable.

JG writes his guide book in the first person plural, so the start of this guided walk reads “If anyone asks us whether we have been inside the Doge’s Palace we can reply ‘not yet, but we have seen almost every building on the Grand Canal, as far up as the Rialto Bridge, from dry land.' Hmm, sadly, as we hadn’t actually done the previous three walks, this wasn’t actually the case for us. JG then goes off on one for two pages about Lord Byron, ‘his bastard’ and discarded mistresses, before he asked us to return to the Vaporetto and book tickets to the Ca’ d’Oro stop.

JG loved the Ruskins (John and Effie of that name) so they crop up quite a lot during this walk:

‘We disembark at the Ca’ d’Oro, still, probably, in spite of all attempts to ruin it by restoration, the most felicitous Gothic building in Venice. Ruskin thought it was ‘quaint’’… You get my drift.

‘We leave the Ca’ d’Oro and are quickly in the Strada Nova which is already familiar to us’.

No…this is our first time, so we have never seen the Strada Nova before, but that’s our fault.

‘Soon after crossing the bridge, we will see a delicious old chemist’s shop on our left and, if we pop in with a smile just to have a look, we shall be made to feel very welcome’. We did, indeed, pop in and the chemist’s shop is fabulous (the oldest remaining in Venice), as was the member of staff (fabulous as opposed to being the oldest remaining in Venice!). We explained that we had been brought to her door by the book and read to her the lovely passage of text.

On JG’s instructions, we continued our walk over a bridge set into which are two pairs of white footprints. ‘Evidently this bridge was used for fist fights, we say smugly to ourselves, and indeed it was.’

This was proving to be a great walk, taking us along quiet alleyways, over bridges crossing quiet waterways and seeing a part of Venice that is widely ignored by the bulk of sight-seeing tourists. The Fondamenta de la Misericordia is a great place to come if you are looking for out of the way places to eat, as there are many traditional trattoria and Osteria here in a lovely location. Caveat: less quiet on Saturday nights! You have been warned. One canal further north we discovered the house in which Tintoretto once lived. and we were on the hunt for Tintoretto paintings in situ; a challenge set by one of our friends.

There are 4 great Tintoretto works to see in the church of Madonna dell’ Orto but before entering we were told that we needed to heed Ruskin’s warning:

‘We need not hope to derive any pleasure from them [the paintings] without resolute study and then not unless we are accustomed to decipher the thoughts in a picture patiently.’

Effie, John Ruskin’s wife, was certainly not keen. ‘John took me to see two large Tintorettos, but going in hot to a place like a well to see a death’s head crowned with leaves gave me such a shiver that I ran out of the church and I do not intend to return again.’

Andrew and I did consider reenacting the Effie ‘fleeing from the church’ scene, but my knees got in the way.

We found a lovely bar for a drink, Osteria ai 40 Ladroni, along one of the calm stretches of canal, and we rather wished we stayed there for lunch as the food looked scrumptious. However, we had followed J G Links this far and felt we owed it to him to go with his own recommendation, so we wove our way over bridges and beside canals until we got back near the Granada Canal.

The restaurant suggested by JG is in a rather tawdry commercial street, full of visitors, and this did raise alarm bells. However, Trattoria Povoledo does have a fabulous terrace right on the Grand Canal, which is why people come. It was encouraging to see that most of the diners were Italian. The bill for a straightforward lunch was still pretty eye-watering.

We would return to Venice just to do another of J G Links’ walks, as the historic detail and the wonderfully archaic prose made for a memorable experience.

That evening, after a snooze, we ventured out to see more paintings in the Accademia, a gallery filled with pre-19th Century works by the likes of Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Bellini and many more. Effie Ruskin would have had the complete vapours had she ventured within.

One of the most popular restaurant suggestions we received was for the Enoteca Schiavi, and so this was our goal.

It was closed for the weekend.

And so began a frustrating evening during which we even considered finding the nearest KFC. A quick text was sent to one of our friends, Rob, who suggested we did a hop on the Vaporetto to Giudecca to find a little place he had once visited. With high hopes, we sailed the high seas for 10 minutes to the Giudecca district.

Rob’s suggested restaurant was closed.

It was dark and chilly by this time and we had to wait again for another Vaporetto to bear us back to St Mark’s Square and for us to regroup. In the end, we went to another restaurant that had been recommended by our B and B receptionist, La Birraria La Corte, a lively and clearly popular place. As we had romped our way across most of Venice in a day, my poor knees had had enough, and I was struggling to walk with any degree of comfort, but as Andrew well knows, I am never one to moan.

To be continued…