Venice Travel Tip

I suppose, having lived here for 5 years, I should offer some advice for visiting this very popular destination.

Tip of the Day: Gondolas

photo courtesy of abster.wordpress.com

The most popular Venetian attraction is the Gondola ride. Gondolas used to be used as transportation for the affluent Venetians, but now are strictly reserved for tourists. Many say it is a rip-off, but I disagree. True, they are extremely expensive, but an evening ride through the back canals of Venice in a silent gondola is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Venice from the water is not the same as Venice from the streets. The gondola can offer a different perspective, and give you a taste of how that city might have been in its glory days. Gondoliers are infamous in Venice, they make a lot of money and pay very little taxes. Many say that they are ruining their trade by being disrespectful of its heritage and rude to their clients. Do not fret though, there are still a couple wonderful gondoliers, who love what they do and are happy to offer you your true Venetian experience!

When choosing your gondola ride, be aware of prices and times. This is the best way to avoid getting ripped off. The official price is 80 euro for 40 minutes for up to 6 people before 7pm. Every additional 20 minutes is 40 euro. After 7pm it costs 100 euro for 40 minutes and 50 euro for every additional 20 minutes. BY LAW they cannot ask more. Establish time and price before setting foot in the gondola! Tips are not necessary unless your gondolier was exceptionally gracious and entertaining.

Now for the most important part: DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT take a gondola ride in St. Marks. Any stop where there are 15 gondoliers waiting around trying to sell you a ride is a big NO-NO. The touristy areas do not offer characteristic gondola rides, and more likely than not you will end up in a gondola parade-- lined up with a billion other tourists and a gondolier yapping on his cell phone and smoking a cigarette while yelling across the canal to his gondolier friends. This behaviour should not be tolerated and if your gondolier does any of the above, complain and report him.

To maximize your experience get as far away from the touristy areas as possible. You also want to avoid the choppy Grand Canal and Giudecca Canal. You want your ride to be through the quiet, back canals of Venice. I recommend S. Croce, Dorsoduro, and Castello. You will see a gondolier or two hanging around a small bridge somewhere--that is who you want to approach.

Most gondoliers do not sing, however there are a few who do, and they are to be treasured (and tipped!). Recently I have seen one in Castello who sings beautifully to his clients. Next time I see him I'll try to get his number in case anyone wants to book him!

Au Natural

The other day I came across this article on the Corriere della Sera website.

For those of you who do not know, Corriere della Sera is a major Italian newspaper. The article talks about the "disappearance of natural breasts" due to the large increase of breast augmentations in the USA. It claims that natural breasts could soon be a thing of the past now that this operation is the most common plastic surgery in the country, surpassing liposuction.

Although I am not staunchly against plastic surgery I find the number of women who get boob jobs to be very scary. Most seem unaware that implants are not meant to be permanent. The average implants have to be replaced every ten years, meaning that a 20-year-old could have to undergo 5 interventions in her lifetime. That is, of course, if they do in fact last the full ten years. I also recently read an article about banning breast augmentation for underage girls--as if that should even be an issue?!

Unlike many other cosmetic interventions, breast augmentations place a foreign object in your body, making them riskier then say, a nose job, because even if the procedure goes smoothly, there is always a risk that the implant is faulty or simply rejected by your body. Regardless, I can also respect that this procedure does allow many women to feel better about themselves, especially cancer survivors who now have a chance at reconstruction, permitting them to feel more like themselves. I worry though, about what it means when so many women are getting GG cups put onto their size 2 frames, and how natural breasts have become almost unrecognizable in pop culture. Why do we feel so compelled to prefer something so unnatural? Yikes indeed!

How I Came to Venice-- Part 1

I myself tend to be a fan of personal blogs--those where you feel that you are getting to know the person who is writing, so I thought I would share my How I Ended Up Here story.

In 2001, when I was a mere 20 years old, I signed up for a summer program with my University in Arezzo, Italy. I had studied Italian for a year and the idea of spending two months in Tuscany sounded pretty great. I had been to Italy before, one time on a family vacation, another time during a high school semester in Switzerland. This though, would be the first time as a semi-adult, I would have a bit of freedom.

I arrived in Tuscany, together with 25 others from my University, in mid May. We were staying in a villa outside of Arezzo that had been restored and was being used as a youth hostel. We had our weekends free to travel, and I started planning my first weekend trip, together with 5 other girls, to the place I had always wanted to go, Positano. After the first week of classes we got on the train to Naples and figured our way out onto the Circumvesuviana and then the bus from Sorrento. Needless to say we had a great time, and were thrilled to have chosen such a beautiful place. I almost suffered a heart attack when we arrived, beyond ecstatic to have finally found the place I wanted to spend the rest of my life. But we'll get back to that some other time.



Arezzo
photo credit http://www.cimt.it/images/piazgrande1.jpg

The following weekend we headed to the Cinque Terre, then a group trip to Venice, a weekend in Nice, and the final weekend in Rimini. Between trips, I really enjoyed Arezzo. I would go running in the countryside and walk along the main promenade in the city center. Tuscany is great, but it seems the entire world knows it, which is why so many foreigners choose to live there.

At the end of my trip I was so in love with Italy and so excited to be able to speak a foreign language, I changed my mind about spending a semester the following year in Australia, and instead started planning a way to come back to Italy. After a final trip down to Positano, up to Lake Como, and over to Zermatt, Switzerland, I headed back to DC to finish my summer.

After a bit of fighting with my University I convinced them to let me do a semester in Padua. I would have preferred somewhere in central or southern Italy, but there are few immersion programs in those areas. I was adamant not to study in Florence. I knew I wanted to be in an immersed environment, and anyone who steps foot in Florence knows that American students have saturated that city. Unfortunately many study abroad programs send students to Florence, and so I had to convince my Uni that Padua was a better choice.

The following January I arrived in Padua, enrolled at the city's university, the second oldest in the country. Padua is a university town, and much of the city's life is based on the large student population. I found the classes to be mediocre and boring (so much of Italian uni is having a professor lecture you in a room where there are more students then chairs, and having this done in a foreign language can be brutal when you have a non-existent attention span like myself. Furthermore, I am sure I did not know how to choose classes and am sure that someone who knows what they are doing would have been better off than myself). Nevertheless, I enjoyed riding my bike all over the city and participating in the student events. I came to the conclusion that people from the Veneto were not very nice (I still believe this) and it was not as easy to integrate as I had hoped it would be. Most students in Padua returned to their hometowns for the weekend, which made it difficult to socialize, and like many Italian students all over Italy, foreign "Erasmus" students are seen as silly and annoying, and most do not want to bother making friends with someone who is leaving after 4 months, and who might not even be fluent in Italian.

This is not to say that I didn't love my semester abroad. I did. I made many friends, mostly with other foreigners, my Italian improved, and I travelled throughout Europe. Towards the end of my stay I fell in love with a medical student in Padua and decided to spend the summer teaching English there so that we could stay together...

Out of the cold...

I know that just as soon as I post this message the rain, clouds, and winter gloom will return for a last appearance, but FINALLY sun and warmth have arrived in Venezia! Foreigners seem to think that Italy has mild winters. Not true, I say! Although it is not nearly as cold as say, Helsinki, Venice is COLD in the winter, and Italian homes are not nearly as cozy as their American or northern European counterparts. I freeze in my house all winter, and still pay a ridiculous heating bill. It rains and rains and rains, not heavily, but like a constant wetness that hides the sun for weeks at a time. Italians, being their sun-loving selves, go into hibernation. Venice pretty much dies off from November until April, with a brief but annoying overcrowded Carnevale break.

Furthermore, winter seems to last forever here. Most years, I am still wearing jackets into May and June, and I hesitate to break out my sundresses before July. In DC I can wear shorts in April.

Anyways. Enough complaining.

Today I read an article in LEGGO (a local Venice newspaper) that said that this summer is going to be ridiculously hot, with record high temperatures through September. BRING IT ON!!

Bad Blogger

Yikes. I feel like a kid who didn't do her homework. I have been a terrible blogger, abandoning my blog for many months. I felt very guilty and inadequate! Who can't keep up a blog?!? I watched as my favorite bloggers continued to post interesting and entertaining messages and I couldn't be bothered to sign in! Then, as time passed, it got worse, because I how could I start after So Much Time had passed?

Well I'm back. And I am going to try again. I am still in Venice, although I did go home to DC for three weeks at Christmas. Over the winter, my fifth in Venice, I thought a lot about my future here--both in Italy and in Venice, and have come to the conclusion that I no longer want to stay in Venice. I had been thinking about it for a long time and hope to change within the next six months.

Otherwise, all is well. I continue to work, although a bit less thanks to the economic crisis, and hope to take some time off this spring. I have also continued to read my favorite blogs religiously. Having all Italian friends here in Venice, I love having fellow ex pats to relate to--even if it is just by reading their blogs!



The Grand Canal at Night