Da Vinci, Shylock and a 24 hr pizza chain

Just as we climbed up the continent INTO Berlin, we took the LONG journey back down into the Mediterranean end. It was tricky getting down into Italy in one day. There were plenty of options to ride from midday onwards with a connecting night train that would land us in Venice the next day. Our desire, and our necessity, was to do it in one day and let's just say it required a LOT of running around. We were ON our connecting train, that was supposed to go through Linz, when we were told that there was extensive rail construction happening and there was a detour by bus. With our longest transfer time clocking in at about fifteen minutes, we didn't have time for that. Back into Prague. We had one of those 'exhilarating' moments where you are jumping onto your train as it is pulling away. It feels slightly less exhilarating when you are humping 50 lb packs on your back and missing that train means you are quite literally done for the day, having just flushed money down the toilet. 

But we caught that train. And that train was going to Munich. Again we trucked through fields that looked as if they had been groomed by a decorative comb, neat lines of swaying grass and grain. Again, past the town that looked like a settlement map made out of Lego pieces. Once again into a bahnhof that looked like a dissertation on glasswork in architecture. We love us some Deutsch Bahn by now. 

"There is a construction", they said. You're kidding. "You will get off at Innsbruck. Onto a bus. They will take you here. Back on the train." 

As an aside, it is nice that people talk to you in broken sentences when they can tell you don't speak their language. There is no need for prepositional phrases or pronouns. Gimme the goods. 

Rolling into Brennero, people in DB Bahn polo shirts rubbed the backs of all the North American tourists who felt stressed out and didn't know what to do. We all shuffled onto coach buses which were henceforth driven like the Kentucky Derby. That Italian highway was made subservient. It seemed in no time at all, we were pulling into the train station and doing the same shuffle back onto the coach cars. 

We drove 40 km and only lost ten minutes. 

We were back on, rolling towards Verona, from which point we were home free. There didn't seem to be a moment when the landscape started to look 'Italian'. But I suppose that shows that I was expecting that. Slowly, the forests began to thin out, any grass was replaced by lanes of grapevines and reading any sign aloud became worthy of more intense gesticulation. 

Two headlights appeared out of the darkness and we were on our way out of Verona and into Venezia Mestre. Mestre is, from all appearances, the cheaper, less attractive sibling to Venice. Buses run all day, everyday into Venice proper. From our hotel, the ride took ten minutes. It's definitely more affordable to stay in Mestre and when we were rearranging some of our train trips, we decided to stay one night in Mestre, when we would be tired, when we wouldn't care where we were. We would have been travelling all day and all we would need would be a bed. Why waste a pricey night in Venice on that? The night was cool and dark, we made the pilgrimage from the train station to our hotel, past cafes of Italians, still taking into the night with a cocktail. 

We'll just sleep through Mestre, we thought. Mestre is really just a brief interlude before the main production anyway. 

NOT SO!

A full day on an empty stomach. When you're cush on your tush, you can do it almost without thinking. But something about running, about being 'on the go', makes it easier said than done. While I needed a hot shower pronto, Moozh decided that he was going to take a walk to grab something to take the edge off. A bag of chips maybe? Instead, he brought back what we later deemed to be the best thin crust pizza in Italy. From a 24 hr pizza chain a couple of blocks down the road. I remember thinking, "This can only bode well." 

We inhaled the pizza by the shred -Italians don't slice their pizza- while we watched National Geographic in Italian. Something about mountain goats, I don't remember. I truly don't even remember chewing. The crust was like eating off of the most tender, deliciously chewy paper you can imagine. And I do mean that complimentarily. The sauce was the secret weapon. It was tart and acidic as tomatoes should be, with a beautiful sweetness, and mouth puckering combination.

Venice has an otherworldly beauty. It is said to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But it's not the classical beauty of it, the canals and the gondoliers and St. Mark's Square. It's the cracking stucco revealing ancient foundation beneath and the elderly women hanging their laundry to dry from their second story window and watching the foot traffic below. Old men sit and paint the landscape without a single f*** given. 

We were housed in a tiny hotel called Ca'Zose behind the Peggy Guggenheim museum, run by two sisters. Ivy covered the walls, a bridge with an ironwork bannister. The room are a playful fusion of frilly Venetian floral sconces and bed spreads laced with filigree matched with painted brick back drops and exposed beams. 

Even though we were there hours before the check-in time, one of the sweet sisters let us stash our packs so we could wander the lanes of custom blown glasswork and galleries unencumbered. We put our map in our pocket and just got lost for an hour, weaving through the canals, lined with boats tethered to painted poles and the coloured facades of buildings. 

Following the canal, you inevitably end up at the Rialto Bridge, which is the biggest bridge in Venice. Arching high above the canal, the bridge itself houses numerous shops but spills out on either side with restaurants, cafes and trinket shops. On the West side, however, wandering through archways, you find yourself in a giant market. Full of fresh produce, spices and fish it's a wonderland for foodies. Made Moozh wish we were staying somewhere with a kitchen where we could take advantage of the plenty. 

There is a hilarious trend we're forming. Anytime we are in a market of any kind, when we wander into the fish section, some guy gets a lock on Moozh's tatt and immediately makes his way over. We've had some ask Moozh to take his entire shirt off, some poke and prod, slowly rotating his arm, but more often than not we've had people drag him over to their buddies so they can all see it. The stand in the Rialto Fish market actually had a large Marlin head on display. They kept on gesturing towards it as if they and Moozh were in on the joke together. And it never stops being funny to see it happen everywhere we go. 

Again, check out Fly the Cage if you're in the market for ink. 

Hemingway is a well known entity among locals on the island. Hemingway apparently loved Venice and the Rialto market houses a few various posters of Hemingway during his visits.

For lunch, as we do, we stopped by a charcuterie and picked us up some proscuitto and some parma ham with two cans of Italian beer to wash it all down. The charcuterie was magnificent with whole legs hanging from the ceiling to be slice paper thin. Wedges of cheese gleamed beneath the chilled glass. Bottarga, cured and powdered fish roe, in kryo vac packages.

Next in our wanderings: gelato. I had been holding out since we hit Europe. I wouldn't eat gelato until we hit Italy. It's a bias I have because of the bias my Italian chef has. When he began to teach us about gelato, ice cream, sorbet, he always maintained you can't get quality gelato outside Italy. And the only thing halfway decent on this side of the Atlantic would be made by an Italian. I was willing to see his logic through. I will admit the gelato we had was pretty fantastic. 

So we moved on to the Venetian Ghetto. Of course, there is my general obsession with Jewish people and Jewish history. The Merchant of Venice is one of my favourite Shakespearean plays. Portia is such a strong character, a woman willing to put herself out there to accomplish what she wants, even when it's something like respect. But the character of Shylock provides such an interesting glimpse into the life of a Jew in that time. Doing the only occupation available to him, which stigmatizes him and forces him into further isolation, Jews were relegated into a dead ended canal that was locked after midnight. The Venetian Ghetto is where the word 'ghetto' originated. It comes from the word for a foundry in Venetian. It's a small area of town, the Jewish quarter of the city a small horseshoe of buildings. 

Now it houses a Jewish cultural centre, a thriving synagogue, and daily tours. Many kosher restaurants line the border of it. Majer bakery had every from flawless hamentaschen and rugelach to crystal dusted palmiers and cannoli, each ridge dusted with powdered sugar. The tension summed up in a moment: both Jewish and Italian at once.

Da Vinci in Italy is kind of Alexander Bell. Everyone claims him, on some grounds of where he was or wasn't when he accomplished this or that. Venice was no different. But when you listening to the African-cum-Blues music, you tend to want to side with whoever is in front of you at the moment. 

Venice has these great drinking fountains, dribbling with filtered, drinkable water. Many European cities do. I tried my first in Paris, from which I was positive that I was going to get a parasite. But the water is fresh, filtered, clean, soft and usually pleasantly cold. When it's as hot out as Europe has been, numerous refreshment stops are required 

From the early morning when we first landed, really until we swung back by our hotel to change, we had experienced fabulous weather our day in Venice. Sunny with a little bit of cloud cover and a slight wind. A change of clothes later, it was beginning to cloud over. 

We headed out towards St. Mark's Basilica and Square, which is supposed to be beautiful as the sun goes down. It, as most sites we've seen in Europe, was slapped with a healthy dose of scaffolding and strategically printed tarps made to look like the finished product draped over the facade. Construction does tend to deflate the moment a tad. But everything from Grand Place in Brussels to the Eiffel Tower in Paris has some kind of construction going on during the BUSIEST MONTHS of the year. Save it for October, gentlemen. 

It began to spit once we hit St. Mark's so after our requisite photos, we packed the camera away until we found a tiny restaurant, canal-side for dinner. Italy has a specialty called al Seppia, which means 'in squid ink'. You can get risotto al seppia. But Moozh was dying to get a taste of some linguini al seppia. He got his taste and I got to have the most spectacular gnocchi of my life, drenched in melted gorgonzola and dotted with roasted walnuts. The wind was beginning to whip and we had to acknowledge our day in Venice was coming to a close. 

The next morning we were leaving for Rome, the gleeful continuation of our Italian journey and a portion that we had dedicated to pizza. The pizza in Mestre had become a thing of myth in little more than twelve hours. It was on. 

Things I learned in Venice: 

Squid ink = suitable sauce

Pizza chains are not always a bad thing.

Sometimes it's okay to just get lost. 

Quote from Venice: 

Moozh: Look at this fish babe! Why don't I have a kitchen?!