Michelle Brennan, our good friend from London and Royal Thames Yacht Club, decided to pop over to visit with us to experience Carnival in Venice. We were thrilled to get together, as we have not seen each other for two years. When you live in England or Europe, you can literally “pop over.” Her flight from London to Venice was less than two hours.
Michelle arrived Saturday evening with only enough time for dinner to catch up. Our first full day Sunday wold turn out to be a march through the rain, intrepid souls inspired by Michelle’s British fortitude. In a steady rain, we walked from our respective digs in Canareggio to San Marco, where for the first time in our experience, security was out on full force.
Something must have been going on, as we had seen bigger crowds the days before with minimal security. On a rainy Sunday, however, the local and national police manned every street into San Marco and forced the entire crowd to a single checkpoint for random inspections and wandings.
I really do not like this approach, as every terrorist in Iraq and Afghanistan knows how to exact maximum death and destruction by setting off suicide bombs at checkpoints where everyone must congregate in one place. And high profile public places are the juiciest targets of all. Nonetheless, we shuffled through the main checkpoint. The police waved me through without even a second glance. I suppose 66-year-old pensioners on the dole are not high on the profile list.
Ironically, the rain reduced the crowds milling about the square in San Marco by at least a third. Many visitors huddled for shelter in the coffee shops, where we found refuge for a proper Sunday Bloody Mary, a veritable bargain at 14 euros, compared to the usurious 18.50 charged at Harry’s Bar a few steps down along the waterfront. Best of all, this restaurant brought bring all the ingredients on a large tray for us to prepare to personal taste.
Fortified by our traditional Sunday beverage, we hiked out again through the rain all the way to the Arsenale and the Venice Maritime Museum. The main part of the museum is closed for renovation, but the warehouse full of old boats and ships was open for free. We don’t need much encouragement to go look at old boats, but the chance to get out of the rain–for free at that–was not to be passed up.
Inside is a collection of boats dating back to the 17th century, most of them having some connection, however tenuous, to Venetian history. The large, unheated warehouse with several leaky spots in the roof is divided into four major rooms without much thematic or historic coherence. But to us, boats is boats, and we’re happy to gaze at any number of them, ranging from regal and majestic to small and utilitarian.
Having dried out or at least dripped off at the Arsenale, we then trooped back out into the rain for a pizza stop along the Grand Canal, with the Accademia as our chosen destination. If look at a map of Venice, the walk from San Marco to the Accademia is an ambitious hike, but especially so in the rain, despite how really tiny Venice is.
But the Accademia was worth the effort. So many Titians, Tintorettos, Carpaccios, Veroneses and all the other great medieval and Renaissance Venetian masters together in one place create sensory overload.
And admission was free, after waiting in line in the rain for a half an hour. We waited in line, because the Accademia only allows 360 people in the mammoth building at one time. And it was free because it was the first Sunday of the month. Such a deal.
Intrepid as we had been all day, we prudently decided to take the dry way back home and boarded the vaporetto for the Rialto stop. Enough of a forced march is quite enough. Dinner in a nice restaurant on a canal was in our future.