This was an out-of-season European weekend to celebrate my girlfriend's 21st birthday. She had always wanted to visit Italy.
Venice is a city entirely unlike most. Where you would expect to find roads and cars, there are canals and boats. A single bridge, The Ponte della Libertà (or Liberty Bridge) connects Venice to the mainland. Once you're on the island, cars are able to park in one of 15 tightly packed parking structures on and around the cruise ship terminal. The road does not extend more than a few hundred metres into the island itself. We arrived from the airport on the no.5 bus, paying €8 each.
If you’re willing to retreat from the tourist traps, you can feel like a local for a day.
In the weeks leading up to the trip, I excitedly told friends and family that soon, I’d be stood gazing up at the Campanile in St. Marks Square. One phrase repeated itself; ‘It’s expensive in Venice’, and it is, in places. At the fantastically ornate Caffee Florian in St. Mark’s, a cappuccino is €11. At one souvenir stall, I was told a pack of playing cards would be €6 and promptly put them back. Away from St. Mark’s and the Rialto bridge though, small piazzas are home to wonderful little ristoranti frequented by Venetians in pairs, chatting casually over coffee and cigarettes. If you’re willing to retreat from the tourist traps and lose yourself in the spider's web of canals, you can feel like a local for a day. Here, the prices fall dramatically. In the beautiful and aptly named piazza of Campo Santa Margherita, we shared a pizza (€8) and a carafe of red wine (€11) that served for two very large glasses in a pizzeria called Pier Dickens. We sat lazily, eating authentic Italian pizza and drinking superb Italian wine, happy to be wearing our sunglasses.
For the remainder of the daylight hours, we wandered aimlessly along canals, stopping to watch passing gondoliers. We saw countless churches, each as beautiful as the next. There is disagreement over the exact number of churches that sit on the island. The estimates range from around 130 to as many as 200. For a city that covers 3 square miles, just 7% of Newcastle’s footprint, that equates to a church on every street corner.
Venice in March is not a quiet city - during the day, it’s difficult to find anywhere where you can feel alone. Though, with this in mind, it is an overwhelmingly clean place. No litter floats in the water or collects at the foot of buildings. The pigeons have little to peck at on the flagstones.
That evening, we ate sumptuous carbonara and drank excellent wine in a tiny ristorante whose name escapes me (bill €48). An Italian family of 10 ate at the table next to ours and ensured our meal was as authentic as possible.
The following morning, on an impulse, we decided to get the 10am train to Verona (€20 each return). The hour and a half journey ran almost exclusively through vineyards on either side.
Busy shoppers and students, casually detached from the beauty of their hometown.
Approaching from the Porta Nuova train station, Verona presents you with a large piazza featuring a small park and a grand amphitheatre, crumbing at the edges in an pleasing, artistic, Italian sort of way. A parade of bars overlook the scene. Busy shoppers with paper bags and students in sharp, dark suits fill the space, casually detached from the beauty of their hometown. We sat at a street table and ordered a glass of wine (€5) and a cocktail (€11) along with a pizza (€7) and watched the world pass us by.
Verona, much like Venice, is a intoxicating succession of medieval streets and piazzas that flow seamlessly from one to the next. Here though, on a larger scale, the architecture had a powerful effect on me; it felt something like time travel. This wasn’t my first experience of Verona but when I was last here, my feet didn’t touch the ground when I sat with my parents at the street tables. Discovering the city felt like a new experience dominated by a fond sense of déjà vu.
We paid our small bill and made our way down Via Giuseppe Mazzini, an expensive shopping street with Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent boutiques. Reaching Via Cappello, we turned right and walked 50 metres or so and then through an arch on the left to find ourselves stood beneath ‘Juliet’s balcony’ which is in fact a modern addition to the existing building, put there for purposes of tourism. Nonetheless, a picturesque and romantic place to spend five of your precious minutes in Verona.
Not far from the balcony is Piazza Erbe, a large market square at the geographical centre of Verona’s old town. A passage beneath the Torre dei Lamberti bell tower leads to Piazza dei Signori. On all four sides, tall, handsome buildings are painted in sun-faded warm colours, yellows and pinks. The piazza is home to a central statue of the poet Dante who lends his name to Café Dante opposite. Looking up, I noticed another statue, perched high on a building and then another. Looking 360° around myself, I saw seven figures of men along the rooflines looking down, part protecting, part mocking.
We caught the return train to Venice that night and ate well in another unreservedly Italian place filled with wonderfully unreserved Italian people.
Under the influence of a not inconsiderable quantity of very moreish red wine, we meandered happily back to the room and on the way, I slipped three postcards into the only post box I had seen all weekend.
… (It is important to note that the prices listed above were out of season. I was told by one bartender that wine and food especially can double in price during the summer months.)
