Venice, Italy

Friday two weeks ago, I called in sick for work. Lucky I happened to have a flight booked to Venice, otherwise I might have had to stay at home.

I procrastinated in the flat for about an hour, making breakfast, packing toiletries, showering, and changing etc, before making the final assault to leave around 8:45, leaving me 2.5 hours for the 50 minute tube ride, and just enough time to make my flight. Dressed and suitcase in hand to walk out the door, it was then that I realised that I'd misplaced my keys. So began an exceptionally stressful 30 minutes of turning my suitcase and flat upside down, before resigning myself to the possibility that I'd left them on the door overnight (a common event, I regret to admit) and they were picked up by some criminal, nefarious and unknown. I grabbed the spare set from the caretaker, ran to the tube station, and sweated it all the way to the airport. Would I make it in time? Would someone break into the flat while I was away? Once at Heathrow's Terminal 1, safely checked-in, I purchased a cup of tea at Caffe Nero (think The Coffee Club with better coffee, but otherwise just another dreadful franchise), and tried to relax. It was there that I remembered where I had left my keys, attached to my USB flash memory key (also on the keyring), plugged into the back of my computer. I was right in thinking the USB key was small enough to lose!!

"Ah, Venice!" Indiana Jones exclaims in his eponymous Last Crusade, and I couldn't put it better myself. So enchanting, so romantic. Venice looks exactly like it does on the postcard, and doesn't fail to impress. The canals, alley ways and piazzas are vaguely familiar, and not just because they look mostly the same. This is the Venice of postcards, paintings, and photographs. And yet it still manages to live up to the hype. Surely only the most hopeless grump could not fail to fall in love with the romance of buliding a city on the sea. Yes, I know that technically it's marshland, in a lagoon, and probably chosen for military and/or strategic significance, but these things are inconsequential - it's Venice.

My little weekend jaunts to the continent aren't intended to see and do everything. With no set itinerary beyond a few landmarks, I set out from my hotel and wander. That works well everywhere else, and even worked well for the most part in Venice, until I found myself totally, hopelessly, completely lost. Normally, my keen sense of direction serves me well, even in a new environment. But Venice is like my magnetic north pole. The problem started when I decided to back-track to buy a jacket I'd tried on earlier. As simple as that sounds, it wasn't long before the alleyways, dead-ends, non-descript plazas, and a myriad of bridges merged into an endless maze. For more than an hour I walked around and around and around, trying to find the street that was somewhere on my map. (I didn't mark the exact location, and stupidly forgot the street name, the nearest church, and adjacent canal). Several times I found myself in a plaza that sufficiently resembled something on my map to warrant making a "fresh start". But ten minutes after my departure I would find myself in exactly the spot where I started, having walked in a circle of considerable diameter. I may as well have been in the Sahara, looking for familiar dunes. Never having been lost like this, it was not long before my frustration turned to panic. In a brief flicker of anxiety-induced paranoia I wondered if the city was conspiring against me, reconfiguring itself to deceive me, like in Alex Proyas' Dark City or the Doctor Who serial 'Castrovalva'. Long drama cut short, I eventually found the shop, bought the jacket, and high-tailed it back to my hotel.

As already noted, Venice figures prominently in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a film which I adore, but manages to irritate me when the characters refer to the city as "Venice, Italy", on no less than three occasions, instead of plain "Venice". I've often wondered why this to be, and like my theory that the screenwriter was concerned that a few dumb Americans might think the Holy Grail has been secretly stashed somewhere in Venice Beach, California, unbeknownst to Indy, his father, the Nazis, and the Knights Templar. Sadly, some Australians might also fall into this category. Two backpacking Aussies sat next to me on the bus from Marco Polo airport. I was floored with disbelief when the girl had to explain to her boyfriend that Venice is built on water, with gondolas and bridges linking the many islands. You should have seen the look on his face. His genuine surprise genuinely disturbed me. How can he not know this, I wondered, especially when he's planning to visit?


I wonder how the Aussies got on the next day. I was rudely woken from a table-wine coma by the ominous bellow of the flood horn. Venice floods, with some regularity, and especially in winter. Not through excess precipitation, mind you, but because of high winds out at sea that buffet the water into the lagoon. When high tide arrives, it's really freakin' high. The Venetians must laugh at our idea of "rising damp", every time a canal floods their living room. There is talk of a multi-billion dollar flood barrier, and even the fallback compromise of just building higher, but in December 2005 these things are just talk, leaving me stranded in my hotel. The rooms are safely high and dry on the upper floors, but the ground floor dining room flooded (slowly) while I finished breakfast. And the main problem with the rising water level is that the sewrage water level rises accordingly. In the space of twenty minutes, from the time I finished breakfast to when I returned to the lobby to leave, the ground floor toilet had flooded. The smell of raw sewrage was spectacularly overwhelming. I likened it to a ruptured septic tank.

Obviously I was keen to leave, and also to start sightseeing, but by now the water level had completely cut off the hotel. The souvenir stalls sell over-priced plastic bag boots for the tourists (who else would pay €8.50), and you'd think the hotels would jump at the opportunity to do the same. Maybe at other hotels, but not mine. (Which was hardly a fleabag, and actually quite luxurious. I paid €85/night for a room with a listed rate of €195). I asked the imbecile at the front desk what I could do, and he said we'd have to wait. (A gay couple were waiting in the lounge, similarly stranded). "For how long?" I enquired. "Maybe 2 or 3 hours," hotel imbecile answered. I struggled to remain calm, after all flooding is a frequent event in a city where tourism is one of the major industries. After considerably diplomatic persuasion on my part, I managed to convince hotel-imbecile to cross the alleyway and borrow some Wellingtons so I could walk to a souvenir stand and by three pairs of plastic bag boots.

The one thing I learned in Venice that I wish to impart to anyone travelling there: don't waste your money on the plastic bag boots. The Wellingtons might cost twice as much, but at least they will work. The plastic bag boots look durable, with a hard sole, but they are crap. One boot sprung a leak a half-hour after setting out. Another tourist volunteered his spare, for which I was grateful, but I had to endure strange looks from fashion-conscious Italians who viewed me with suspicion for wearing different coloured boots: one green, one purple. I steeled myself by viewing with suspicion a country that idolises a human as God-on-earth.

The epilogue to the plastic boot story takes place in St Mark's Square. The plaza is flooded. Fog enshrouds the Campanile. Tourists wade through thigh-deep water, or scurry along the many catwalks like ants on a mission. The horizon a water-line, shared by tourists, gondolas, and passing cruise liners. And then there's Nick, over-awed by the architectural beauty of this spot, and by now too tired and too lazy to walk the long way round on the catwalks. And why should I? After all, I'm wearing the special plastic bag boots. I step off the catwalk and start trudging through the water. Ten metres out, literally in the middle of the plaza, I feel the rushing sensation of freezing cold water surging through my shoes, feet, socks, skin, and bones, when both boots split at exactly the same time. Ah, Venice!

My Venice photo set is here.