Chicken or beef? Red or white wine? Love or hate Venice?
It’s easy to see why there are two distinct camps. Hordes of tourists, the worst and most expensive food in Italty for starters vs a stunningly beautiful backdrop.We were in one camp then switched.
They say Venice is sinking. Likely beneath the biggest crowds we’ve seen and the stampede of young Venetians leaving the islands. There are only 60,000 left, smaller than Barrhaven.
We had planned to bypass it entirely, but as our friend Laurinda said, its the idea of it.
We’ve seen great UNESCO canal cities, Utrect, Amsterdam, Suzhou, (How’d Ottawa get on that list)… But this one functions without roads at all.
911? Or in Italy, 112,… No problem, here comes the ambulance.
Short on potatoes? Help is on the way…
Most of the masses seem to crowd around the Rialto and San Marco.
So of course we went as far away from them as we could with our new friend, the Malaysian Sensation, Ashraf…son of a diplomat on his first solo travel. We let him navigate the labyrinth of Venice.
And aside from some bottlenecks of people, it was easy to find achingly stunning vistas on the water bus along the Grand Canal or even better, on foot.
But not everybody seemed to be enjoying Venezia
So we switched from white to red wine, from loathing the idea of a kitschy disneyesque setting to the idea of an art capital with many unexplored nooks and crannies. Why the switch you ask? Miss Lorella Spritz of Padua of course.
Padua aka Padova, 25 min south of Venice
When we travelled through China in 2009, Trish got weary of the local fare and ordered spaghetti bolognese every chance she could. Of course it was awful. After the overnight train from Vienna to Venice, the whole day in Venice, then a short train to Padua, we were exhausted and starved and found little beyond Chinese food near the train station.
Ironically, It was beyond terrible. I could smell the roach fumigation. Then the Tram driver slammed the door in our faces as he drove off. We were ready to write Padua off as a hole. Then we met our host, Lorella.
Those long nails, these shoes and her BMW convertible made Lorella typically Italian.
But that’s where it ends.
A teacher of 26 yrs (btw, in a country of universal health and pharmacare, and the continent’s highest utility costs, teachers gross half what Ontario teaches do), she’s solo backpacked to more places than you and I have heard of. Having just done the Trans-Siberian rail/incl Mongolia and China), Iran is her Xmas destination. She’s full on core.
Fiercely independent, atheist, exceedingly kind and generous ( she’s hosted probably 300 ppl). There aren’t many people, let alone Italians like her.
She couchsurf hosted us for 3 nights in her very comfortable and spacious suburban condo.
With her bud Clairefeuille, they introduced us to spritz, that pre-meal aperitif ritual, of which Campari is my favourite.
Thousands of Germans and Austrians and east Europeans come for the nearby spas and the pilgrimage site of St Anthony’s Basilica.
It’s a pretty eye popping mix of Byzantine/Romanesque/Goth influences, but also has a Muslim tone with the minarets and domes.
Where St Anthony is buried…
Other places of note, Scrovengli Chapel with the masterpiece frescos of Mary and Jesus’ lives, by The grand daddy of Renaissance art, Giotto.
The ancient University of Padova, where Galileo taught….here’s his lecture stand..
Also at The university wa the uber cool anatomy theatre, …on multiple levels, walnuts balustrade with standing room for 200 students…lit by candlelight, with music played to soothe the students during autopsies..
We loved Padua….relatively crowd free, manageable, and it had Lorella.
Italian is probably Trish’s favourite food, despite the trauma of the Chinese spaghetti bog of the past.
One of the many spectacular, but understated, quiet city museums..
We left Padua/ Venice too soon. The Guggenheim, and San Michel, an island cemetery in Venice where Stravinsky and Ezra Pound are buried, merited several more days we wished we had…Blame it on the spritz.
