Thursday, August 26, 2010

Venice

So as I was saying in my last post, we landed in Venice next. There's no denying the beauty of Venice, its quaint bridges and cafes; beautiful structures and the gondolas. We had seen so many movies shot in Venice, but when we saw the real thing we realised we had under-estimated the size of this city! It wasn't just one Grand Canal and a couple of small ones; its a much bigger city than we had imagined it to be with many, many water-lanes and bridges. Its a miracle that the Venetians find their way from anywhere to anywhere without getting lost.But we were slightly disappointed with Venice. There were just so many tourists there (and we were there on a weekday too!) that it felt more like a flea-market than the romantic place we imagined it would be. Really, there was bumper-to-bumper human traffic on every bridge and every corner of the city and we couldn't soak in the beauty of the place as we would've liked to. The blazing sun and the infant in our arms* didn't make things easy either.
* Obviously the ancient Venetians didn't provide for prams and wheel-chairs when they planned a city of bridges!Next, we embarked on a cruise ship and started a cruise along the Adriatic Sea. But that deserves a separate (and long!) post.

5 comments:

Parth said...

Unfortunately, the more popular the place, the more the crowd. I think expecting peace in such places is hard, unless it is really off-season

Jas B said...

Beautiful architecture though, in spite of the crowds I would say. :)

Radha said...

@ Parth - true, but just didn't expect it to be *that* crowded. it was like VT station on a monday morning, really!!

@Jas - yes, the architecture and the sheer beauty of the strctures - the palaces, the towers the bridges, the churches - was enough to make us like it.

shakester said...

we found lots of peace in Venice. San Marco was definitely like a bazaar, but if you have the time (which maybe you guys didn't), you take a few unknown turns, a few more random bridges....and lo! you're suddenly on a lane where there's just you and a stray dog, the random sounds of life filtering out from the homes you are in the middle of, almost feeling like you're intruding...
getting 'lost' in venice will always be my frist piece of advice to anyone going there :)

Radha said...

@ Shakester - I know you & D are big fans of Venice & I can see why. But we were in a different frame of mind. I don't think it was time. We had 2 full days in Venice & we actually chose not to spend the full days in the city and headed back early to our ship. We did go into the smaller bylanes (in our hunt for baby food which people told us would be available in pharmacies only; and pharmacies were shockingly few in the main city) & we did get "lost" in the very literal sense of the word. But as I said the difference in experience was most probably because we were travelling with K and when with a baby, service quality trumps beauty. The service quality was abysmally low, and the whole service attitude was "we're too busy for you" - all over Venice - starting from the airport to the small cafes to the pharmacies. Add to that the heat and the crowds (even in the small lanes) and the long queues at every water-taxi station. And the bridges, the frikking bridges! They killed our backs!! The place has beauty & enigma, no doubt but we won't go back there until K is at least 8-10 yrs old!