Winter travels, vol. 2

I could bore you senseless with drawling about the wanderings I did for three days, with how I made a point of crossing each of the three bridges over the Grand Canal at least once, with how much identical junk there is for sale in all of the shops and yet how much the price varies from one area of town to another, with how you are almost better off, financially, paying the price of a trip to the hospital from malnutrition than paying for three days’ worth of meals in Venetian restaurants, etc.  But instead, I shall pick a few, isolated anecdotes that you might find amusing or astounding, depending on your mental bent.

February 25th - I caught a waterbus at the Piazza San Marco to the island of Murano, just for the heck of it.  For the reference of future visitors to Venice who might be trying to save as much time as possible, the trip from Piazza San Marco to Murano takes about 45 minutes by waterbus.  It would be much quicker to walk to the Nuova Fondamenta on the north side of Venice and catch the same waterbus there.  But, going the long route does give you some beautiful views of the eastern point of Venice, which is mostly untouristed. 

Once I got to Murano, I headed straight to the main glass “factory,” which consisted of a single room of four tired-looking glass workers and one tired- and bored-looking “tour guide.” I had my camera out and my big zoom lens locked onto it, in the hopes of getting some sort of cool closeup, which drew some very strange looks from everyone, the tour guide especially.  In hopes that I wouldn’t somehow annoy him by being such a blatant tourist, I gave him my “yeah, I know it’s ridiculous, but hey, when a tourist, act like a tourist” look, which I reserve for just such occasions.  As usual, it worked a treat, as did my pithy comments.  ::chuckle::  Whatever it was that did the charm, it worked, and he started talking with me.  From him, I found that the beautiful scraps of glass that were swept off the ground and into a large container are sent to industrial glass factories elsewhere and that there is no hospital on the island of Murano so everyone on the island is, perforce, born in Venice.  I also learned that I had slipped in just under the wire for the day’s tours - they were closing up after they had gotten rid of the group that I had wandered in with.

While he and I were talking, another info guy came up and joined in the conversation as well.  I had wandered into the overpriced showroom (the relative prices in the showroom versus in Venice proper being one of the comments I had made to the tour guide which had made him laugh), but the second info guy asked me if I would like to see some really nice stuff.  Of course I would!  So he led me through a door in the workroom that was marked ‘private,’ which I had assumed led to a break room of some sort.  No such thing.  Rather, it led to a series of rooms normally only seen by very wealthy individuals who come to Murano to pick up a six-digit-price piece of sculpture or chandelier for their sumptuous mansions who-knows-where.  Each room - I saw six, but apparently there were quite a few more - was devoted to the work of a single artist, and while the range of styles was quite wide, the range of quality was not.  I think the piece that I saw that I coveted the most was a four-foot-tall statue of Pegasus taking off, wings spread and two feet off the ground, made of clear and frosted glass.  It was breathtaking - as were most things.  I would have dearly loved to ask several of the artists how it was that they achieved certain effects.

We left the sparkling showrooms and went back into the tourist area, where I said goodbye to the two guides.  The one who had shown me the showrooms merely shook my hand, but the tour guide first shook my hand, then pulled me forcibly towards him.  There was a brief second where I wondered if he was going to kiss me full-on - I have heard many tales about the forwardness of Italian men - but he merely gave me the “two-cheek salute,” as Iím starting to think of it: the pair of kisses, one per cheek.  Whew!

February 26th - I was wandering around a less-touristy area of Venice called the Tre Archi, and had paused to take a picture of an interesting bridge.  (What an unusual picture subject in Venice, Julia!) I heard a male voice speaking a very cultured - almost affected - version of British English behind me.  As I tend to do, even when I have no desire to be counted amongst tourists, I turned around to see what the speaker looked like.  The guy I saw (average height, late twenties, blonde hair, long coat draped around his shoulders in a way that upheld the affectedness of his speech) seemed vaguely familiar, as had his voice, but I simply put it down to déja vu and an increasing desire to see someone I knew and turned away.  He and his friend walked on down along the canal.  After a few more minutes fiddling with my camera, something clicked in my mind.  I set off after the Englishman and his friend, fully knowing that I was about to make a huge fool of myself and not really caring, since I would never see either of them again afterwards.

Either they habitually walk very quickly or I had stood around for longer than I thought, because it took me several minutes at my fastest walking speed to catch up with them.  I didnít want to break into a full run; my pride could only take making a fool of myself once in five minutes, so I had to save that for when I caught up to them.  Which I finally did, completely out of breath and, I dare guess, extremely red in the face.

- ::gasping::"Excuse me, sir, but I was just wondering what area of England you are from.”
-"Why, from London.”
-::disappointedly:: “Oh.  Iím sorry to have bothered you.  You just reminded me very much of a guy I met in Shropshire.”
-"Of course!  You’re that girl from Oregon, aren’t you?  You do get around a bit, don’t you?”

Thus followed a brief but pleasant conversation about the respective climates of Venice, England and Borneo and the great need for more orangutans in England. 

When I was in Newport over Christmas, I had stopped into the sole used book store in the town one afternoon, and had had a very pleasant chat with the fellow behind the counter.  He had been somewhat abashed that they didn’t have anything that I was looking for - Bill Bryson books, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or an English translation of Cyrano de Bergerac - and had laughingly worked very hard to try to convince me that a book on the economics of England would be a suitable substitute.  We chatted about where we were from - me, from Oregon, he, from London but living in Italy (he was merely running the store for the afternoon as a favor to his parents, whom he was visiting for Christmas) - and I promptly forgot all about him.  He didn’t even merit a note in my little purple notebook.

I wandered back towards the Grand Canal, humming ‘It’s a Small World.’

February 27th - At the airport, getting onto the same flight as I was to Prague, was one of the most humorous-looking women that I have seen in a long time.  She must have been a representative of the “more is better” school of animal-pelt clothing.  Her pants were velvet giraffe-print, her shirt was of glitter-bedecked snow-leopard-print and her mid-calf-length fur coat looked vaguely like the hide of a black panther and had a ruff along all the hems of four-inch-diameter fur.  To top this all off she was wearing a Dolly Parton wig under which she hadn’t quite managed to tuck all of her own dark brown hair, and her lipstick was fluorescent pink.  She was about 65, I would guess, and about 5’3” in two-inch heels.  Her two traveling companions - her daughters, perhaps - looked like they will follow in her tasteful footsteps.

Her appearance prompts a comment about Venetian women in general.  I have heard so much about the style-consciousness of the Italians that I expected to feel very much like an old scuffed sneaker tossed in amongst a closet full of shiny new stilettos.  What I instead felt like was a normal young woman tossed in amongst human-sized, walking brown pillows.  The majority of the Venetian women I saw were wearing that particular style of fur coat-slash-muumuu that isn’t flattering to anyone, even those of supermodel proportions.  It didn’t help that Venetian women are generally on the petite side.  I felt gratifyingly tall during those few days in Venice, and I’m only 5’6”. I simply can’t understand it, even if it is the fashion!  ::shrug::  Then again, I’ve often noticed that “fashionable” doesn’t necessarily mean “flattering.”