Jim Allio Goes to Venice

That's Venice, Italy, not Venice, California. Been there many times, but not to its Italian namesake and have wanted to go forever. On November 14, I finally realized my dream and made it to the floating city.

It only took twenty-three hours to get there. That's two jets, a bus and a train before we made it to Venice. My friend, the writer Robert Harris ("She Who Is Alive"), described getting off the train and walking down the tracks to the wall of windows that overlooks the Grand Canal as "one of life's magical moments" and he did not exaggerate. We got there around 8:30 PM and my breath was taken away as soon as I got to the wall of windows. Here's what it looked like the next morning.

We spent four glorious days in Venice. All the guidebooks and everyone I spoke with who's been there encouraged me to just wander the back streets and alleys and get lost and so we did.

You probably already know that Venice has no cars of any kind and is linked by a series of lagoons and the Grand Canal. Public transportation is primarily in the form of water buses, called vaporetto, which are awesome. There are a few places where you can catch traghettos, which are gondolas you stand up in while they traverse the width of the Canal at a few spots for something like fifty cents. And then of course there are the gondolas. I'm not talking gondola rides as in Las Vegas or even Lake Merritt in Oakland. Oh, no.



And, yes, the gondola ride was everything I dreamed it would be, even if it was cold and grey outside. Riding a gondola has been something I have yearned to do my whole life, and it did not disappoint.

We stayed at the Hotel Abbazia, a former convent two alleys down from the train station that was wonderful. It was quiet at night despite all the activity at the other end of the alley. The staff, especially Alvise and the breakfast room waitress, were friendly and very helpful. The vaporetto stopped one minute from the hotel, and capuccino and restaurants were all over the place. And if course the shopping rocked.

Other highlights: St Marks Square and Basilica and the Campanile were spectacular and the Bridge of Sighs was amazing. We ate prosciutto and gelato every damn day, and had a memorable lunch of gorgonzola gnocchi in a trattoria on a side street near St Mark's Square that was the best we've ever tasted. The prosciutto pizza the first night was screamin'. We had to wait until Rome to top it. But that's another story for another day...like today...