This week has been cold so to cheer us up Al created his version of the beautiful duck ragù with pappardelle, which we first enjoyed in Venice, and I decided it was time I wrote about our July trip there. As Venice is one of the world’s most visited destinations, there’s a good chance you’ve already been or were planning to go and/or already know quite a lot about it from various programmes and articles. If you wanted more information there are some excellent guides including the late Jan Morris’s book on Venice which is considered a classic or the Wikipedia entry is here and the official tourist site entry is here.  I want to share our unique trip in this crazy year, give you an idea what it was like and what we experienced.

Last winter Venice suffered heavier than usual floods and lost a lot of its much relied on tourist income. The waters had barely receded and the buildings were just dried out when covid struck. We went in July when international flights, cancelled during lockdown, had not yet resumed and interregional travel bans had not long been lifted. People were emerging from lockdown but were rightly cautious. After our great experience in Liguria we decided to go to other places that could be reached by train and experience as much as we could, whilst using our, admittedly tight, budget to provide some much needed custom in areas trying to recover while being able to enjoy them at bargain prices without crowds. It seemed a silver lining to the otherwise unrelenting black cloud of Covid that has extended over much of the year and pervaded our daily lives.   

Venice Santa Lucia station is on one of the islands that form Venice. You exit into a piazza on the Grand Canal itself and from there you can take one of the Vaporetti water buses which run on specific routes with advertised stops. Venice was built around the canals so the best way to enjoy it is from the water and the Vaporetti allow you to combine public transport with a boat trip along some of the most famous waterways and sites in the world.

We arrived at the station on a Monday around midday and stepped into a pretty empty city. Our Air B&B check in was not until 2 so we planned to have lunch somewhere close by. The Air B&B was on the far side of an island close to a Vaporetti stop. Our host had provided us with written instructions from the stop in Italian and we had foolishly put them through google translate which gave us a set of instructions that talked about foundations and fields and did not reflect where we were. Similarly, we found the provided google pin impossible to locate with the patchy signal available in the densely packed streets.

After a short but enjoyable trip down many alleys and lanes, where we lost our signal repeatedly or found ourselves on completely different streets from where google maps thought we were, we were able determine that the Italian word for foundation “fondatore” is also the name used in Venice for a row of buildings or section of buildings and that the word for field “campo” can mean any open area including squares with not an inch of grass. We had only to decipher the word for alley and we were all set with improved instructions that were, in the end, easy to follow. My advice is to forget google maps and get an old fashioned paper map and a sense of direction.

During our meandering we found a delightful restaurant called “Osteria Ca del Vento”, the owner was chatty and seemed glad of the custom. We had a delicious lunch where we enjoyed the local speciality duck ragù, all washed down with a lovely glass of wine. Once we had located our Airbnb and marvelled at its proximity to the canal, given its low price, we left our bags and went to see the sites.

We walked to Ponte Academia, and took the ferry to Piazza San Marco. Although we had already seen that there were much fewer people than usual, we had not been into any of the main areas except for the station, so nothing had really prepared us for Piazza San Marco. Everyone had seen the emptiness wrought on busy areas by this corona virus, like scenes from apocalyptical films, but to breathe it in, in one of the busiest places in Venice, was like nothing else.

Aside from crowds and crowds of tourists trying to take the usual iconic photos and selfies Piazza San Marco is also usually full of queues for the many museums and galleries: the Basilica, the Ducal palace, The Campanile di San Marco and several smaller galleries concentrated in the square. The Ducal palace and many other museums and galleries were only opening at the weekend so although we weren’t able to go inside them on this trip, the freedom we had to roam the canals and alleys without being pressed or crushed in the sheer volume of others more than made up for it.

We went to the Campanile di San Marco where there were no queues at all. We were able to walk straight in and take the lift to the top from where we were able to photograph views of the city spread out below us.

There is a point on the Grand Canal where you can photograph the Bridge of Sighs which runs between the Doge’s palace and the prison over a canal. Usually this is very crowded, three or four people deep rows full of desperate picture and selfie takers but on this occasion, it was almost deserted and we could take all the photos we wanted.

From Piazza San Marco we headed across town to meet our landlords. As mentioned previously, the owners of our apartment had been transferred to Venice from Bologna. We are on friendly terms and had arranged to meet them for an aperitivo on the Monday evening. Andrea had sent us a google pin of where to meet and some directions. We had developed a technique of heading in roughly the direction we wanted to go, but being prepared to have to back track when there was no bridge where we needed it, or for dead ends or other obstacles, whilst also taking sideways routes in order to move forward eventually, keeping the end direction in mind. Thus, by a rough zigzag and some additional time you can pretty much always get where you want to go and the journey is so beautiful along picturesque canals, over ornate bridges and down tiny alleys that you don’t mind at all.

On our way we stumbled on the famous Libreria Acqua Alta bookshop and had a look around. They are no stranger to floods and have an already established staircase of damaged books in a rear courtyard which you can climb to get a view of the canal behind. Inside the shop was a gondola full of books. We enjoyed nosing around the shelves and looking at all the books before we decided we better get on our way again.

Andrea and family live in a residential area and he told us that during the lockdown they had the whole city to themselves, with the children being able to play out all the time because there was no traffic of any kind. He took us to an area where the locals go to relax and to a canal side bar that had moored a barge to provide overflow seating. Covid restrictions meant that they were strict about numbers seated at tables, so as we could not find a table to accommodate all of us, we sat on the barge. Getting on and off was an adventure as the wake from other boats and movements of other people on board made the barge move. On the barge we drank spritz and ate cicchetti bites which you can buy in the bar for a low price) and talked in a mixture of English and Italian. Al wondered out loud how many people fell into the canal every year and Andrea said that only tourists fall into the canal and usually British ones!

As the sun set our stomachs needed more than cicchetti so Andrea and Nina gave us a restaurant recommendation, “Osteria alla Frasca” which sadly was not open that first night, but we found somewhere else nearby with a good local food selection. After filling up we drifted homewards, noting that the town after nine pm was quiet indeed and darker than we expected. We made our way back to our Air B&B eventually and without falling into any canals.

On Tuesday we tried to find a coffee place that Andrea had recommended for breakfast on our way to visit the fish market. We couldn’t find it at first and so we had coffee at another bar before we strolled around the market area. It’s a working market, not just a tourist attraction, so was quite lively, although not as busy as usual. I bought a new mask of Venetian lace from one of the stalls nearby, not one of the elaborate Venetian masks for which Venice is famed, but a much more functional anti-covid mask that wiley market holders had added to their repertoire. Shortly after we found the recommended coffee bar and enjoyed a lovely drink there before heading for lunch.

We met our Italian teacher, Elena in Southampton, but she’s from a town close to Venice and was on holiday from University, so we arranged to take her to lunch as a thank you for all her help. Her father had recommended a very traditional restaurant down a side street. Waiters were white aproned and formal. We ordered some typical dishes of the region and a bottle of local wine. There is a lot of seafood on the Venetian menu and this restaurant had a fish counter from where you could choose your fish to be cooked to order. I ordered the local scampi. Al had a squid ink dish and Elena had some local fried fish.

After lunch we decided to walk it off and trundled around the streets, Elena took us to some of her favourite places including where the Biennale is held. After a lot of walking we decided to go for aperitivo before dinner so we headed back to the area we had been the previous night, after which we left Elena with some friends and headed to the restaurant that had been recommended by Andrea and Nina and this time it was open. Al noticed that the menu said to ask about daily specials so he did. The waiter brought a selection of well-aged uncooked beef joints and steaks and we were able to pick the piece we wanted to have cooked. We also accepted the accompaniments suggested and were really glad we did because we had an excellent meal and one that we would not have thought to put together.

Next morning, we had decided to take the vaporetti out to Murano and Burano so we jumped on at the station where we had deposited our luggage. You can’t miss the Murano glass in Venetian shops as jewellery or vases and other objet d’art. It really is beautiful and rightly world famous. You can watch glass being made on Murano and buy some direct from the factories. We had a little stroll around and then took the next vaporetti to Burano. Burano is a working fishing village with brightly coloured houses. Householders often have heavily patterned curtains across their doors to allow them to have the door open in the heat, but not allow tourists to peer in. We had breakfast in a café before investigating the shops and the island itself.

On the way back from Burano we decided to get off at Piazza San Marco and go to the Basilica. The Basilica was closed for repairs, but you could still access the museum and roof, we waited in a queue of 3 people for approximately 2 minutes. The usual Covid entry requirements applied. From the museum you can see into the Basilica so we didn’t miss out on too much. One of the fascinating things about the Basilica is that it looks as though it’s been painted in gold, but on closer inspection you can see the whole interior is a series of linked mosaics of Murano glass.

After San Marco we took the ferry to Giudecca the island on the other side of the grand canal. We had been told it was usually a bit quieter than the rest of Venice and this proved to be true with few shops or restaurants open. We eventually found a waterfront place which sold sandwiches and arancini as well as some interesting craft beers so we decided to eat there. It was a lovely spot to watch the canal and afterwards we bought ice-creams with the plan to eat them as we were walking along. We were expecting a twenty minute wait for the next ferry, but almost as soon as we had the ice cream in hand, we saw the ferry pulling in. We needed to get to the station to catch our train home so we rushed onboard, masks on and ice cream melting. In the end we stood well away from everyone else, leant over the side of the boat, masks lifted to eat the ice cream as fast as possible while enjoying our final views in a once in a lifetime opportunity to see Venice as she is seldom seen, without her coating of people, before retrieving our luggage and heading home to Bologna.