Venice

Now, my dear reader, the next half dozen or so posts are going to chronicle a Mediterranean cruise I took with my family from July 4 to 16, courtesy of More Magazine (my lovely and talented mother won a contest that they sponsored… well done, Mum!).


The ship, which carried over 3000 (!!) passengers and probably caused the world’s ocean levels to rise several inches when it was constructed in 2008, embarked from Venice, giving me the chance to see the city for the first time. But before exploring Venice, I got to see a very special celebrity, here seen posing as a Greek goddess with a ‘tude:

It’s OK if you don’t recognize this particular celebrity. She hasn’t yet made her debut, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to be the Next Big Thing. This is Elizabeth Roe, my 11-year-old sister whom I have not seen for six months and at least two inches. When she gets famous and changes her surname to something less reminiscent of fish eggs, remember you saw her here first.

After unpacking and having a quick nap in the hotel, Mum, Dad, Elizabeth, and I ventured out into Venice in search of dinner. After a bit of wandering, we stumbled upon one of Venice’s major landmarks: the beautiful St. Mark’s Basilica, displayed in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2: St. Mark’s Basilica

Unfortunately, the Basilica was under construction. Nevertheless, the square was teeming with life, full of young couples, musicians, and a few entrepreneurial spirits attempting to sell innocent passers-by anything under the sun. Fortunately, we managed to escape from the square without buying anything and continued on our quest for a tasty Venetian dinner. After wandering through more twisted streets than I could hope to remember and asking for directions approximately 213 times, we managed to find a lovely restaurant, tucked far away from the main waterways, cathedrals, street signs, and any other imaginable landmarks to help us find our way home. Dinner was delicious, and consumed far too quickly to be photographed.

The next morning, my family woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a tour to see the famous Murano glass being made. However, despite being armed with a map, a compass, and a GPS device*, we managed to get on a water taxi headed in the wrong direction. By the time we realized our error, we had missed the tour and were on the other side of Venice. Undaunted, we set forth on a self-guided walking tour of Venice.

*My father is an orienteer in the tradition of Columbus – very well equipped and often, but not always, able to determine correctly which continent he is on.

One of the first areas we stumbled upon was Venice’s historical Jewish ghetto, pictured above. According to a sign in a window, the ghetto is the oldest in Europe, founded in 1516. (Prior to 1516, Jews were not allowed to live anywhere in the city). It remained the only place Jews were allowed to reside legally until Napoleon conquered Venice in 1797. Unsurprisingly, the ghetto still has a very high concentration of synagogues and traditional Jewish shops, restaurants, and costume. I hadn’t been expecting to stumble upon such an oasis of Jewish culture in Venice, and it was interesting to see how those two cultures mixed.

On an interesting but unrelated architectural note, the black diagonal bolts you can see above some of the windows actually are attached to iron rods spanning the whole width of the building, bolting the walls parallel to each other. Buildings as old as these need a little bit of assistance in the battle against gravity.

After a lovely lunch at an Italian restaurant overlooking a canal and a bit more wandering, the Roes decided to go for a gondola ride, the local means of transport used by everyone except for locals. Here is a photo of Venice, as seen from a gondola:

I was so inspired by the gondola ride that I decided to write an entire musical devoted to gondoliers. It would be full of choral numbers, plot intrigue, and goofy puns, and would be creatively entitled “The Gondoliers”. Sadly, I discovered shortly thereafter that a couple of fellows by the name of Gilbert and Sullivan had already beaten me by a couple of centuries with that idea. Not to worry, though – I was inspired by my May trip to London to write a musical about a barber who kills his customers and makes them into pies. It’s a brilliant concept, and so sick that I’m quite certain no one could have scooped me on it.

Lovely as Venice was, we did eventually have to make our way to the ship, which was Huge. Seriously, I have never seen such a monstrosity. Nevertheless, it was a monstrosity I was prepared to love, because it had a tasty dinner and a cozy bed, as well as overnight transportation to Athens, Greece.