Feeling a bit land-sick

After three days in Venice I'm starting to feel a bit land-sick; when I get back to our camp on the Lido di Jesolo I feel like I'm still at sea, swaying a bit to remembered waves and generally feeling a bit woozy. The cold I have is playing havoc with my ear canal and that probably isn't helping, though strangely I feel fine when actually on the vaporetti or Venice proper. Odd.

Making best use of our 72-hour travel passes we've ridden the boat-busses (that's what the vaporretti are) all across the lagoon, visiting not only the six sestiere of Venice, but also the Lido di Venezia, Burano and Murano, other inhabited islands in the lagoon. In Venice itself I think we both liked the Carnareggio district best; not quite so spectacular as other areas, though still beautiful, we at least stood a chance there of escaping the worst of the crowds and finding a reasonably priced drink. Early October has been a beautiful time to visit, with brilliantly huge skies and warm sunshine and if there was sometimes a stiff breeze on the sea front, then we could always find a still, calm spot alongside one of the inner canals. We've done touristy things - looking around the spectacular Doge's Palace and St Mark's Cathedral, crossing the Rialto and riding a Traghetto - the 50 cent, 2 minute grand canal crossing in a gondola piloted by trainees - the budget gondola experience! But mostly we just saw Venice - on foot and on the boats, a sight to see and a marvel to gawp at.

This evening we were treated to the spectacle of two massive cruise ships being tugged down the Guidecca. As the sun set over the lagoon, lighting up the jagged peaks of the Dolomites, our vaporretto kept an easy pace with one of them all the way back to Jesolo. The silhouetted shapes lining the cruiser's rails probably had an amazing view of Venice, but I hope they had a chance to look up close too.

That Sinking Feeling

If I'm honest, I expected to be severely disappointed by Venice. I suspected it would be an overpriced, overcrowded tourist trap, existing only to feed the curiosity of its millions of visitors. In some respects, that is a reasonable summary. But it doesn't do Venice - the true city of Venice - justice. What surprised me most wasn't how touristy Venice is, but how touristy it isn't.

Oh yes, if you confine your wanderings to the area around Piazza San Marco, Ponte Rialto and all the other sights, you will be continually reminded of the main source of Venice's income. But Theo and I found ourselves quite quickly away from The Grand Canal and inside an area where ordinary corner shops sell ordinary groceries, where a group of children were playing football on a sports court and the people sitting drinking spritzis outside the slightly scruffy cafes were locals enjoying a gentle sundowner after work.

But no matter how ordinary are the everyday lives of its citizens, Venice is still, inescapably, like a film-set. The place where we chose to drink limonata and caffee macchiato may have looked at first glance like many a high street in many a European city, but the fact that it began, ended and was bounded by canals immediately set it apart. Venice is exotic and ridiculously picturesque, even in the districts where graffiti, dog-walkers and fast-food are more commonly found than churches in the High Renaissance style.

The whole city has a feeing of elegant decay as centuries-old buildings lean towards the sea, which is always, always ready to receive them once their resistance to nature has crumbled away. And one day, the sea will have its way again. We watched epic earthworks taking shape around the lagoon as man tries to outwit the rising water with multi-million pound feats of engineering. But one day the islands of Venice will surely be overwhelmed as climate change takes its toll. I just hope it isn't in my lifetime.

North American Chums

Lil and B are not Americans. They were, back when they first met at Woodstock in 1969, B using the awesome chat up line of "have you got any uppers?" However, a few years later they were Canadians, and now they're in Italy for a month and may even meet up with some distant relatives they didn't know they had down in Sicily. But yes, distinctly Canadian and keen to make the distinction, as had Thor, Monica and Matt back in Bremen. But regardless of their distinct North American identity, B and Lil are a lovely, chatty couple and we were very pleased our tiny table in the tiny Venetian Pleasure Cafe ("good things come in little packages") was pressed up next to their tiny table.

We had been equally pleased when we bumped into the International Student Brigade again on the shores of Lake Bled, having first met them up the top of the Ljubljana Castle the day before. Two of the Americans in their midst, Noah and Keith, promptly gave us their email addresses and told us to drop them a line if we fancied a trip to Trieste. Which we did, so a few days later we met up with both of them in Trieste's stunning Piazza Dell'Unita and were treated to a guided tour of the city plus a blagged pizza in the University Cafeteria.

Both Northern boys from up near the Canadian border (Keith from Montana, Noah from Vermont) they were full of enthusiasm for their new situation and stunned to find out how popular Americans are in Italy. (This may have had something to do with the fact that Trieste only remained Italian after World War Two thanks to the presence of Allied forces, otherwise the city - previously Venetian, then Hapsburg - might have been absorbed into Yugoslavia along with the rest of Istria.) We had a great evening hanging out with them and, depending on their travel plans, may very well end up seeing them again.