Pizza

Three months or so ago, I wrote an introductory blog post about my then upcoming trip to Italy. One of my last thoughts in that post was a hope that I would be able to find some food over there that is as good as I can get locally in Arlington, VA at Pupatella. So because I put that challenge for myself out there, my last words about my April 2015 Italy trip are reserved for pizza.

If I had a top ten foods of all time list (I don't, by the way), pizza would surely be high up on that list. I love this stuff. I could literally eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. And I would if I felt it would be good for me. I don't care what anyone would have to say about it. From the first time I fell in love with the chicken pizza at Pizzaland in England in the late 1970s to Papa Gino's in Connecticut to Cottage Inn in Ann Arbor to Varsity in Syracuse to Pupatella in Arlington, I have always found some pizza that I love. It's taken some work and a lot of taste testing, but I've managed to find some pretty much everywhere I have lived.

Determining a time and place where pizza originated depends totally on your point of view and what constitutes a pizza. People have been eating flat pieces of bread, either leavened or unleavened, for millennia and there is evidence of cultures adding flavorings or toppings to their disks of dough for hundreds and hundreds of years. But if you consider pizza something with that particular name made of leavened bread covered with some sort of tomato based sauce, then you have to look to Naples, just a couple of hours south of Rome by train. So given my love of pizza, the first thing I did in my first full day in Italy was walk and Metro from my hotel in Rome and head south to Naples.

Pizza marinara at L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele.

Why Naples? Well, two reasons really. First and probably of lesser importance, the first recorded use of the word "pizza" apparently occurred there sometime in the 16th century. It was applied to describe a type of galette, a circular flat pastry or bread of French origin, which was regularly consumed by Naples' working poor population as one of their only means of sustenance.

Secondly, and more importantly, this is where those same poor workers elevated what used to be a circular piece of bread into an art form by topping it with a sauce of tomatoes, a fruit introduced to Europe after Francisco Pizzaro's conquest of Peru in the late 1500s and believed for a while to be poisonous. The first popular pizza in Naples was one with tomatoes, olive oil, oregano and garlic taken by mariners based in Naples on their boats to eat while they were fishing. But things really took off with the invention of pizza Margherita by a Neopolitan pizza maker in 1889.

According to legend (and it may be just that), the pizza Margherita was invented to commemorate a visit to Naples made by King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy. A pizza maker created three different dishes for the Queen to choose from and she selected the one made from tomatoes, mozzarella and basil which she claimed reminded her of the Italian flag. Now there is some significant doubt as the whether this story is really true but there seems to be little debate that the pizza Margherita was created in Naples. And pizza really took off from there.

The crowd outside L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele when we first arrived.

Nowadays of course, there are a TON of pizza places in Naples to choose from. Since I was only planning on being around the city for the better part of a day, and considering the majority of that day was going to be spent in Herculaneum and climbing Mount Vesuvius, choosing a real Neopolitan pizza parlor really became a one shot deal. So I made sure I did all my homework and picked the one I thought would give me the maximum shot at the most authentic experience.

Based on reading a whole series of "best pizza in Naples" lists, I opted to put all my money on L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele, a place that can trace its pizza making heritage back to before the pizza Margherita was invented. In 1906, Michele Condurro opened his first pizzeria in the city after his family had been making pizzas since 1870. The restaurant was moved to its current location on Via Cesare Sersale in 1930 and the place has been run by the Condurro family from generation to generation ever since. Today they make two kinds of pizza: pizza marinara and pizza Margherita. Just those two. Nothing else. No pepperoni, no sausage, no anchovies, no vegetables. Pizza with tomato sauce, oregano and garlic. Pizza with tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil. That's it. Nothing else. Seemed like a can't miss place to me.

The interior of L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele. The pizza oven is the black thing in the middle of the photo.

As it turned out, it seemed like a can't miss place to a lot of other people too. The walk to the Pizzeria from Napoli Centrale train station takes about 25 minutes or so and it's pretty much a straight walk west. When we turned the final corner to finally see the place, what we found ourselves faced with a whole mob of people just milling about in the street, leaning on parked cars, smoking cigarettes and just generally looking like they were waiting for something to happen. In true Italian fashion, there was no organized line, no instructions or anything to let you know what was going on. So we waited and watched for a few minutes.

Every couple of minutes, the door to the Pizzeria opened and a guy slightly but uncannily resembling Freddie Mercury who looked like he really didn't want to be bothered with any of this read a couple of numbers off some colored tiny pieces of paper and led three or four or five folks inside. Presumably to get some food. They didn't come out any time soon. So we scooted inside and got a number from Freddie (not knowing what else to call him) and waited in the mob, trying to stay out of the street and away from the smokers. After about a 35 minute wait, it was our turn.

Pizza marinara in the foreground; a brand new pizza Margherita in the rear.

We walked through the door and found a small crowded two room restaurant with a few folks making pizza in the rear of the store next to a large pizza oven. We were escorted quickly with little time to take anything in to the second room of the restaurant to the right and placed in two of the empty seats at a four person table. As soon as they could get to us, our waiter walked up to us and said (in English) "two Margheritas?" I'm assuming from this question that most people order the Margherita pizza, eat it as fast as they can and then go on their merry way. We said no. We wanted one of each type of pizza and also ordered a bottle of water and a beer. Despite the enormous Peroni mirrors on at least three of the walls of the place, Peroni was not a beer option. Go figure!

Cooking time for a thin pizza in an over whose temperature can easily top 600 degrees is not that long so we got our food pretty quickly. First the marinara then the Margherita a couple of minutes later. Each pizza was about 12 inches in diameter which filled and more the plates that they were served on. Neither was sliced but we received knives and forks to take care of this. Whether we did this correctly or not, I have no idea. We just did to the pizza what would have been done for us in the United States.

I sampled the marinara first and found the crust light and soft but with a little too much char. The tomato sauce was sweet with a slight acidic tang and the flavor of the whole thing was very oregano forward which was great. The garlic, which consisted of two thin slices of a single clove in one quarter of the pie was not really noticeable at all as a contributing flavor. The reviews we had read of da Michele maintained the pizza would have a soupy center. We didn't find that to be true necessarily, but maybe because the pizza we get at Pupatella is soupier (and oh so good). Overall, we found this pizza to be successful and delicious. I would come back again for this. If the mariners in the 19th century got to eat pizza like this every day, I'd sign up for a fishing boat.

Next up was the Margherita, which arrived before we finished the marinara so we were able to taste both together. The crust on the Margherita was better cooked (i.e. not burnt) and was obviously the same dough. As was the sauce. The cheese on the pizza was concentrated at the center of the pie along with the single piece of basil placed almost dead center. We found this pizza also worthy of a return trip, although we were disappointed that the cheese was not super creamy (probably not buffalo mozzarella) and would have appreciated a few more basil leaves. The basil adds a wonderful floral taste which would have been welcomed. For the record, we found this basil deficiency was not reserved for L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele; we had the same issue with another pizza we had in Herculaneum earlier the same day.

The whole thing was over in about 40 minutes and it cost us 14 Euros. With the dollar to Euro exchange rate being super low this past April this meal ended up costing us a little less than $16. Two 12" pizzas, a bottle of water and a beer for $16. Are you kidding me??? I'm not sure how I could ask for more. This place could have jacked the prices up a while ago but has decided not to. Kudos to them on that. These pizzas are truly excellent. Of the four pizza meals we had in nine days in Italy, these things were the best and I would return in a heartbeat.  Go here for some pizza if you are ever in Naples.

Now…as for my musings in my initial Italy post, I have to say Pupatella's Margherita pizza is better and this is not a homer pick. The difference is in the super creamy cheese and the abundance of basil. If you live in the Washington, D.C. area, make your way over to 5104 Wilson Boulevard in Arlington and get yourself a pizza one day. Get the Margherita. Just trust me. Be prepared to wait in winter but it's worth it.

Going in for the first bite of da Michele's marinara.

In The Ghetto

Following a couple of hours train journey from Florence, a 30 minute or so trip down the Grand Canal on the Vaporetto No. 2 and about another half hour walk over three bridges and the paved streets in between, we finally hung a left and found our Venetian hotel. After we dragged our luggage through the front door and checked in, we were handed a map of Venice and given a quick orientation to the city by our hotel clerk opening up the map and drawing lines, scribbling words and circling the sights that he thought we might want to take in while we were in the city.

I'm sure this is not an uncommon exercise; I'd be willing to bet the staff at our hotel and pretty much every other hotel in the city does the same thing for each new guest. Indeed, I'm sure this happens in most all vacation spots in Europe. There must be tons of maps with the Rialto Bridge, Piazza San Marco and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection handed to tourists every single day in Venice. And I'm sure it helps a ton of people immeasurably.

I think the guys at our front desk did a pretty good job hitting the high points, but they missed one spot in the Cannaregio sestieri in the northwest corner of the city that there was no way I was going to miss: the Venetian ghetto. Yep, you read that right. A can't miss spot for me in an historic city in Italy was the ghetto. Read on. It will make more sense. I promise.

If you had asked me a year ago what the word "ghetto" meant to me, I would likely have described an impoverished, crime-ridden area of some United States city in the 1960s or 1970s where the poverty cycle kept generation after generation of families all but imprisoned by an economic system which they could not escape or conquer. I'd have seen images of people of African or Latin descent in housing projects which are dangerous to the point of deadly for most all of the people who are forced to live there. Most importantly, the association of that word would have been strictly American.

Today, it is not. Today, it's all about Venice. In fact, if it wasn't for Venice, we probably wouldn't have ghettos at all. Don't get me wrong, we'd still have dirt poor areas of cities and countries where the people with money herd all the people who are different from them. We just might not call it a ghetto. I learned that from Venice, while also being reminded again of how hateful and cruel the people running things can be towards those who are not them. I think it's important we continue to talk about this issue and so the ghetto gets a post all to itself.

Long long before white settlers in what is now North America were driving native populations from the lands they had hunted or farmed for generations and a couple of centuries before wealthy mostly southern white plantation owners started buying humans from slave traders to tend their fields in exchange for inhumane treatment and the possibility of no freedom ever, people in power all over the rest of the world were engaged in discrimination and persecution of ethnic, religious and racial groups that were different from them. It has been going on since the beginning of time and it's still going on today all over the world. Yes, even here in the land of the free and home of the brave.

During the early days of the Roman Empire, just after the B.C./A.D. turnover, one of the most persecuted peoples in what is now Italy were those folks identifying themselves as Christians. This new religion, whose followers strangely worshipped only one god, rejected things like sacrifice as a means of pleasing the gods and insisted on burying, rather than cremating, their dead scared the Romans. So they made sure to pass laws forbidding the practice of Christianity. Sometimes they did more than just pass laws; they killed the people for their faith. The first five to six hundred years of the Empire were tough centuries to be a Christian in Europe.

But then something fortunate happened: the emperor Constantine decided to convert to Christianity and directed the rest of the Empire to do likewise. While I'm sure things didn't change overnight, the Christians were now running the show so to speak. And now that they were no longer being officially picked on for their religious practices, and apparently forgetting how much they disliked being discriminated against, they started looking about for a group of people to persecute; to take their former place if you will. They picked the Jews.

The story of discrimination against Jewish people in Europe varies from country to country from century to century but there's one thing for certain: it happened a lot and it happened everywhere. And don't think it isn't happening today since World War II. It is. The story of Venice's persecution of Jews is told today each day week and year by the Museo Ebraico (or Jewish Museum) which is located right in the heart of the Venetian ghetto, the spot the guy at our hotel front desk didn't circle when we checked in. In our first full day in the city, we started out early to discover this history for ourselves.

The walk from our hotel to the ghetto was a good 30 to 40 minutes, depending on the pace of our walk and how often we got lost. I came to Venice armed with large scale printouts of maps from Google Maps with every street identified. Add to those maps my free front desk map and I figured I was set. Yeah, not so much. I don't think I even got maybe one or two islands away from our hotel before I was a little lost. But the sun was shining and I didn't get turned around too badly so I was able to make my way generally north and west until I found a street in person that appeared on my maps. From there it was pretty easy. We'd allowed some float in our schedule and rolled in to the center of the ghetto about when we planned to.

The final bridge we crossed before arriving at the ghetto nuovo.

Venice was founded sometime in the 400s when people fleeing the invading Huns and Germanic tribes began hiding out in the many islands in the Venetian Lagoon. A couple of hundred years later, the wealthy merchants in the city formed a system of government made up of elected councils and a doge, or nobleman leader, which would form the basis of ruling the city for 1,100 years, from 697 to 1797. Under the leadership of the doges, the city became wealthy and powerful. Yet until the year 1385, there were no Jews living within the city of Venice.

That is not to say that there were no Jews in Venice before 1385. There were. They just couldn't live there. The Christians in charge of Venice needed certain services that their faith somehow prevented them from performing so for these jobs, specifically money lending and selling of second hand goods, they turned to the Jews. These were two of the only three occupations Jews were allowed to hold. The other was as a doctor. I'm assuming they allowed Jewish doctors not because the bible forbids Christians to be doctors, but because they needed skilled people to keep them alive, and they didn't mind who did it as long as it worked. This is an unresearched off the cuff opinion but it seems right to me.

Then in 1385, three Jewish money lenders received authorization to live in Venice. A year later, there was a Jewish cemetery established within the city limits. It seemed like things were getting a little better, even if Jews were still forced to wear first an "O" on their clothing (up until 1496) then a beret (yellow until 1500; red thereafter) at all times to identify themselves while in the city. I can't really imagine what it would be like to be forced to wear an identification mark under penalty of fine in the city where I call home; maybe I'm kidding myself in writing that things were actually getting better. But there is no doubt there were more rights afforded to Jewish people between 1385 and 1515, even if those rights seem like basic things people everywhere should be entitled to.

Then on March 29, 1516, everything changed. The merchants who ruled Venice had been debating whether or not to permit Jews to remain as residents of the city. They decided not to expel the Jews, but instead resolved to confine them to an undesirable area of the city. They picked an island formerly used as a copper foundry which was abandoned in 1434 when the fire hazard was deemed too great and all operations were moved away from the city. The Italian word for foundry was geto sometimes spelled ghetto. The pronunciation of the word was "jet-o" but many of the Germanic Jews pronounced the word like we say ghetto today, because their natural tendency was to pronounce the word with a hard G sound. Just like that a legacy was born.

The specific resolution passed by the governors of Venice translates roughly as follows: "The Jews must all live together in the Corte de Case that are in the ghetto at San Girolamo; and so they do not move around at night…let two doors be built which are to be opened each morning at the Marangona and to be closed each night at 12 p.m. by four Christian guards…paid by the Jews at a fee deemed fair by our College." The Marangona refers to the bells of San Marco whose ringing marked the start of the working day. Just so that resolution is clear, not only did it confine all Jews in the city to a single island (later known as the ghetto nuovo because it was the site of one of the newer foundries in Venice) but it required that doors be installed which would be locked each night by guards paid for by the people imprisoned there.  That is tough. Not only are you persecuted, but you are paying for the privilege of it.

Eventually the Jewish population in Venice got too big to stay on the one island allocated to them in 1516 and so they expanded to another former foundry location to the south (the ghetto vecchio) but the rules of confinement remained pretty much the same. In fact, while the tide of the kind of imprisonment imposed on them ebbed and flowed a little over the years, they never really enjoyed any substantial sort of freedom until 1797 when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the city. If you are counting on a guy like Napoleon to increase your freedom, you know you have very little of it to begin with.

A seven story Venetian skyscraper in the ghetto vecchio. You won't find these any other place in Venice.

When we first arrived in the ghetto on a sunny Saturday morning this past April, the place looked so peaceful and picturesque. What we saw were well maintained, centuries old buildings sheltering an irregular shaped square that must have been the center of Jewish life for generations. What we didn't realize of course, but know now, is that the final bridge we walked over to get to the ghetto was one of the bridges closed at night to all traffic and guarded to keep the residents of the ghetto in the spot assigned to them. Pretty chilling.

What we didn't see from the spot where we entered the ghetto nuovo was any sign of a synagogue. To get a glimpse into religious life in the ghetto from 1516 on, we turned to the Museo Ebraico, which was a few paces away from where we entered the square. The Museo tells the story of Judaism in Venice in two ways: through a museum containing artifacts which interpret the history of life in the ghetto and through a one hour or so tour of some of the five ancient synagogues in the ghetto nuovo and the ghetto vecchio. On the way to and through these synagogues, you get a sense of what life must have been like and how the people there created community, learning and wealth in the city they were reluctantly permitted to occupy. The tour is why we came.

Our tour took us to three of the five synagogues total in the city: two in the ghetto nuovo and one in the ghetto vecchio. There are a total of three synagogues in the original ghetto and each was built by a different ethnic group. The German Synagogue was founded in 1529 and is the oldest of the three. The French, or Canton, Synagogue was started just two years later. The Italian Synagogue was the last of the three, being built in 1575. We managed to visit both the German and French Synagogues on our tour and each is an exquisite jewel box in its own way. The gold in the German and the gold and red in the French shine despite the lack of light coming through the shuttered windows in the exterior walls. We were not permitted to take photographs in any of the three spaces we visited so you'll have to live with my paltry description or go find what they look like online.

The darkness in these places is deliberate. Shuttering and hiding the synagogues was smart when the entirety of the city you lived in hated you for no good reason other than you practiced religion differently. While we didn't know it when we entered the main square of the ghetto nuovo, we could actually see all three synagogues. We just didn't know what to look for or where to look. 

Because space was so tight on the island assigned to the Jews, there was not enough land  to place the synagogues on the ground because the land was needed for housing and their faith forbids living above a synagogue. Therefore they did the only logical thing they could: they built the synagogues as the top floor of their residential buildings. In the photograph at the top of this post, the German Synagogue occupies the fourth floor of the beige colored building just to the right of the red building on the far left. The French Synagogue is tucked into the recess just to the left of the red building with the green canopy in the center of the picture. And the Italian Synagogue is behind the five arched windows in the beige building to the right of the same green canopied building. The French Synagogue is also shown below.

The French Synagogue is the brown building with horizontal wood boards at the top of this photo.

After touring the two older synagogues, we made our way south to the ghetto vecchio, where the Levantine, Spanish and Portuguese Jews settled from their home countries and brought with them more money than most folks in the ghetto nuovo would ever possess  As a result, the two synagogues in this portion of the ghetto, the Levantine Synagogue (founded in 1541) and the Spanish Synagogue (founded in 1584) are larger and more luxuriously appointed. These people had money and felt it was important to spend it on their houses of worship.

The two synagogues in the ghetto vecchio are the only ones used for worship today. The Jewish community is so small that there is no need for multiple temples to operate so they just use the two largest. The Spanish synagogue is open in the summer and the Levantine in the winter. The tour run by the Museo takes you to whichever one is not in use at the season when you visit. We visited in the early spring and got to see the Levantine. The difference between this space and the two in the ghetto nuovo is striking. The German and French Synagogues look like they stretched every ducat; the spaces are rich but restrained. There is no such restraint in the Levantine; there's obviously been some money spent here. It doesn't even sit above any of the former residences.

On the way to the last two synagogues, we passed a number of what can only be referred to as high rise buildings. While not especially tall, the number of floors packed in to each building is astounding. What might be a four or five story building elsewhere in Venice turns into a seven story building in the ghetto. This construction speaks to the lack of space available to fit an enormous number of people and to the willingness of the Jewish community to take care of its people and make sure everyone was housed, even if it meant a little sacrifice.

Finally and extremely unfortunately, no discussion of Jewish history in Europe is complete without a mention of the Holocaust. The increase in freedom for the Jewish people in Venice as a result of Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest was short lived compared to their centuries of confinement. In the 1940s, Hitler and the Nazis were determined not to segregate the Jews but to exterminate them. Germany's occupation of Venice began in 1943 and deportations to Auschwitz followed in three waves. The last two deportations were the residents of the Jewish elderly home and the hospital which is just sickening. The names of all those deported and sent to death are in a memorial on the north wall of the main square of the ghetto nuovo. It all seems so pointless.

It may strike you as odd that I continue to visit sites which are less than uplifting on vacation. Two years ago, I spent a day at Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany and came across a story similar but ultimately way worse in its inhumanity than I found in the Venetian ghetto. I visit these sites not because they are fun but because I think it's important that we support and maintain the memory of what happened so that maybe, just maybe something quite like this never happens again. I am sure this is not the last unpleasant place I will visit on a vacation in my life. I think it is worth being a little uncomfortable to preserve these kind of memories.

47

Today is my 47th birthday. Just like last year, and really every year I've been on this planet, I'm excited and grateful to still be here. Today is also the end of year two and the beginning of year three of my five year quest to see more of our world. As I did a year ago, I'm declaring the last year of my travels to be a success, although maybe not quite in the same way as year one. This one didn't break as many barriers but it was just as special if not more so in many ways.

Two years ago, I set a public challenge for myself. Generally that was to see more of this rock we call home than just North America and western Europe. More specifically, I set targets to make it to two new continents, visit either Alaska or Hawaii, knock Barcelona off my list and set foot in a place that probably would have totally freaked me out in the past. I got one new continent (Africa), Barcelona and a somewhere that might have freaked me out (Marrakech) in just my first year; this past year, I got nothing.

Well, OK, not nothing. Just nothing to get me more numbers. Last year on this day I speculated that my travels in my 47th year would fill in some gaps in my past and I concentrated on doing that rather than checking items off a list. I visited no new states and only one new country (Italy). If you want to get technical about things, I could claim the Vatican City as a second, although I ended up not blogging about it.

But I rediscovered the country of my birth and where my parents came from in a trip to England and did something I missed in school nearly a quarter of a century ago by finally doing the grand tour in Italy. I also made good on a promise I made myself five years ago by visiting the Everglades and finally made it to the head of the Statue of Liberty, one of my favorite monuments in the world. That all sounds pretty good and it was. I loved all of it.

The Greyhound Inn: a great place to learn some new vocabulary and have a couple of beers.

A lot of what I've done and seen has been written in this blog so I can remember it years from now but it's not all I've done on my travels. There was so much more that made living worthwhile, from the squid ink pasta in some tiny restaurant in Venice to seeing a Shakespeare play I could actually understand and find hilarious (The Comedy of Errors) as a groundling in London's recreated Globe Theatre. I've listened to Gregorian chant in the crypt of Florence's San Miniato al Monte; I've also listened to my cousin's husband's father teach my girlfriend Yorkshire slang while I sat nearby sipping on a pint of Sam Smith's Bitter. I've walked by wild alligators feet from my feet; stood to listen to the Pope for a couple of hours in St. Peter's Square; and walked across the zebra crossing with tons of other Beatles inspired lunatics near Abbey Road studios, none of whom were really doing it right. Not bad for 12 months.

So now it's on to year three. In the past two years, I've been to Europe five times; I don't think I'll be going back again this year to fill the pages of this blog. If I'm making predictions (and let's face it I have a lot of control over the outcome here), I'd say my 48th year and maybe a month after that will be spent exploring more of the United States. I'd love to pick up four or five more states in the next 13 months. Considering I've already got 41 in the books, that's going to be quite an accomplishment if I manage to do it.

I also plan to travel abroad on my quest once in the coming year. That trip will take me further east (by a bit) and further south (by a lot) than I have ever been before. But more on that in August. For now, happy 47th birthday to me. I'll be back on the road again soon enough.

St. Peter's Square, April 8, 2015. The Pope is out there somewhere.

Vaporetto No. 2

Of all the places in Italy I visited this past April, I was most looking forward to getting to Venice. There is honestly no other place on Earth like this city for one simple reason: how you move around the city. There are no cars in Venice. There are no motorcycles in Venice. There aren't even any bicycles in Venice. Walking is OK; so is traveling on the water in some sort of craft. Literally the only way to get from point A to point B in Venice is by boat or on foot and you will likely go over or under four or more bridges to get to any one spot. It's been this way since it was founded in the fifth century and it isn't changing any time soon.

While there are no definitive records of Venice's origin as a city, it is generally accepted that people started settling there in a meaningful way during the early 400s as a means of escaping repeated waves of Germanic and Hun invaders on the Italian mainland. Hiding in the islands in the lagoon off the coast of what is now northern Italy provided protection for permanent residents in the area and eventually they started forming a council to govern the city which would end up in 697 appointing a doge or leader. The city of Venice would be governed by a council of the wealthy with an elected doge at their head until 1797 when Napoleon Bonaparte and his army conquered Venice.

Venice is made up of 117 individual islands grouped together into six areas or sestiere. Between each of the islands there is water which makes up the "streets" of the city and 409 bridges connect island to island so folks can get around on foot. On every island and over every bridge, there is an amazing city to discover which you can't find anywhere else. Not even at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, in case you were inclined to argue that point.

If the water in Venice is the street, Venice's main street is the Grand Canal. It's the widest, longest, most traveled and best appointed waterway in the city. Most all of the notable and fabulous bridges cross the Grand Canal; there are more gondoliers rowing passengers about the city on the Grand Canal; and all the most spectacular residences and commercial buildings face on to the Grand Canal. It is without question one of the premiere destinations in the city and as a first time visitor, I had taking a ride along the length of the Canal super high on my list. So high, in fact, that I ended up taking two.

Traveling down the Grand Canal is an education in most all things Venetian and is a great way to orient yourself to the city. Fortunately for the frugal tourist, Venice has public transportation which will take you down the entire length of the Canal for an extremely affordable price of seven Euros. When I think public transportation, I typically think of trains or buses; of course in Venice the public transportation are boats, or as they are called in Venice, Vaporettos.

Vaporetto Nos. 1 and 2 both travel from one end to the other of the Grand Canal. No. 1 is the slow boat, making multiple stops and taking about 45 minutes to an hour, depending on where you get on and off; No. 2 moves a little bit quicker, making the whole trip in about 30 minutes. My two trips along the Canal were both on Vaporetto No. 2. My first voyage was on a packed boat standing up in a dense crowd the whole way after getting off the train from Florence. The only thing I remember from that first trip was the wonder of finally being in Venice but mostly facing the wrong way so not being able to see much.

The second trip was way more enjoyable and we did it right. In most Vaporettos, there is an indoor seating area toward the back of the boat and an outdoor standing room only spot in the center where you better hang on if you are not used to traveling on boats even though the ride is relatively smooth. But the best spot to see the Grand Canal is at the front of the boat, in one of the seats right at the bow where you can see everything unobstructed. On my second trip, we managed to snag the two front seats on the port side of the boat. This is the way to see Venice.

This blog post is the story of a trip down the Grand Canal from Venice's train station (Ferrovia) to Piazza San Marco. I'm covering this part of Vaporetto No. 2's route for two reasons. First, it's the route we took to get to our hotel when we first got to Venice. And second, because on our second ride, I managed to slip into the front row when some other American tourists got off the boat to get to the train station. The second ride was way better.

Venice is in many ways a city of bridges and when you first embark on your No. 2 experience, you are likely staring straight at the Ponte degli Scalzi (translated as Bridge of the Barefoot Monks), one of only four bridges to span the Grand Canal. As bridges over the Grand Canal go, this is probably the least interesting. It was erected in 1934 to replace an iron bridge in the same spot. If it's interesting in any significant way, it's because it is one of only four things that does what it does. But it's great to see a bridge when you first get to Venice. You'll see two of the other three later on your ride.

If you look out of the back of the boat, you might catch a glimpse of the Ponte della Constituzione, the newest of the Grand Canal bridges. This bridge was designed by noted architect and structural engineer Santiago Calatrava, an architect who at one time was one of my absolute favorites. That bridge is generally reviled by residents of Venice, although I'm not sure I understand why from visiting it when I was in the city. I believe they dislike it so much because it's so different in a very visible spot.

I think Calatrava designed the thing intelligently, introducing a new bridge vocabulary into Venice with a curvilinear plan arrangement, glass railings and frosted glass walkways while respecting the proportions and materials used in other bridges in the city. I especially like the use of marble nosings on the stairs of the bridge to match many many other older bridges  Having said all that, I think there are problems with it. Some of the glass walkway panels were covered over (presumably broken) and the bridge swayed a little, which is never a good thing for a bridge to do in a noticeable way.

Pass under the Ponte degli Scalzi and you are now in Venice proper. This is what I wanted to see: centuries old buildings sitting right on the water, some with docks right at the spot where the water meets the buildings. There is nowhere else that you can get this sort of experience and it's what I came all the way to northern Italy to see. I wouldn't have missed this for the world.

Other than the types of boats on the water and the prominent tower crane almost dead center of the picture, I imagine the view shown above is just as Venice would have looked centuries ago when the Doges were in power supported by the Great Council and the safety of the city was ensured by the Council of Ten. While I'm sure life in Venice 800 or so years ago was a day to day search for survival for most people, especially when things like the Bubonic Plague or Black Death came to town (which it did brutally in Venice a few times), it all sounds so idyllic and romantic.  You can even see the spire of the Campanile of Basilica San Marco just to the right of the tower crane.

Turn the corner of the Canal and you will get your first look at the Ponte di Rialto. It is the oldest bridge that spans the Grand Canal, completed in 1591. It was designed by Antonio da Ponte (appropriately enough) and is named after the Rialto market that is just at the south end of the bridge. The Ponte di Rialto is extremely wide; there is actually a series of shops along the center of the bridge with a pedestrian walkway on either side.

This is not the original bridge on this site. It's actually the third such structure built by the Venetians. The first was a pontoon bridge built in the late 12th century. The Rialto market developed after the bridge was installed to such an extent that foot traffic proved too great for the temporary bridge to sustain so it was replaced with a wooden bridge in 1255. After that bridge collapsed under the weight of the crowd standing on it in 1444, a stone bridge was proposed and rejected. Only after the bridge collapsed a second time in 1524 was the current design executed.

The Ponte di Rialto is a must see in Venice. It's crowded and some folks are there just to see or walk over the bridge itself. If you go just to see the bridge it's worth it. This is the oldest famous bridge in the city. Don't miss it. The market on the south side has some amazing looking pasta and other foods.

After you pass under the Ponte di Rialto, you are into heavy gondola territory. These are the long flat-bottomed boats that you see being rowed about pretty much every canal in Venice. They are there now strictly to cater to the tourist industry. There is no point taking a gondola for a ride if you are looking for the fastest way to get anywhere in the city.

Taking a gondola ride ain't cheap but if you come to Venice for the first time and don't take a ride in one, then you either can't afford it or are sort of missing part of the point of being in Venice. 30 minutes is going to cost you a cool 80 Euros, and that's without musical accompaniment which is typically available at an additional cost of something I didn't even consider when I was in town. Don't bother arguing about the price; it's all fixed. If you can pile a bunch of people into the boat then good for you; the price won't change. Although I assume that is a bit less romantic.

We took our one obligatory gondola ride starting just to the east of the Ponte di Rialto. We went up the Grand Canal and down some side canals to get back to where we started. The ride is honestly not going to get you to see much more of Venice than you can see on your own but just to say you've taken a gondola ride in Venice was important to me. And I think we got a good gondolier. He gave us some good tidbits about the history of the city, we got to understand a little more about life there from talking with him and we even got some serenading for free as he broke into song on the way back to the dock. Two enthusiastic thumbs way up. I won't do it again, but I wouldn't have wanted to miss it for anything.

After passing under the Ponte di Rialto, you also start to see some classic Venetian Gothic architecture. This style of architecture is characterized by the traditional Gothic pointed arch and quatrefoil openings above. It is a style which merges European Gothic architecture with Byzantine and Moorish influences which represents how cosmopolitan and powerful the city of Venice was in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Venice during the late middle ages was truly a power to be reckoned with. It was a city of water in an age when exploration and trade by sea made cities, nations and city-states extremely powerful. And its connections with Constantinople and trade routes to the east only enhanced its wealth. The height of Venetian Gothic architecture can be seen in the Palazzo Ducale or Doge's Palace right on Piazza San Marco. You'll get there if you ride Vaporetto No. 2 to the S. Marco stop. You are not going to see this kind of architecture anywhere but Venice. At least not done this well.

Next up: the Ponte dell'Accademia, the third bridge of the ride and the last you will pass under on the Grand Canal. This bridge holds a special place in my heart because I built a model of it during my senior year in college as part of a group site model for a design project. My chipboard probably 1/16"=1'-0" scale version of the bridge looked approximately but not really like the real thing but I loved it. I loved it more than my own design project that I placed on the imaginary vacant site next to the bridge. If there's another bridge I've longed to see in person for over 25 years, I'm not sure what it is.

The current Ponte dell'Accademia is relatively new, built in 1985, just five years before my cardboard version was built in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is named after the Galerie dell'Accademia, one of Venice's most famous museums. It is the third such bridge erected at this location. The current version replaced an almost identical but not as sturdy version placed there in 1933; that bridge replaced the original 1854 steel structure.

The Ponte dell'Accademia is built out of wood, which is comforting in an age when we rarely turn to wood to span bodies of water as large as the Grand Canal. Wooden bridges, like wooden roller coasters, are throwbacks to the way we used to do things. They are softer and more natural than stone, steel or concrete. It's good to use wood every once in a while. I love this bridge, even more now I had walked across it several times. I wish they didn't have to hang a banner right in the center of it.

After the Ponte dell'Accademia, you are in the home stretch distance wise but there is so much incredible stuff to see from this point forward. The first thing you see when you pass under the bridge is the dome of Santa Maria della Salute. This is the church that I most associate with Venice because it's in all the famous 18th and 19th century paintings of Venice, including those by Canaletto and Joseph Mallord William Turner.

There are a lot of churches in Venice. Like a ton. Everywhere you turn you seem to see another. We visited six or eight in our three days there and even heard a Vivaldi recital in one. If you told me there were more than 100 I wouldn't be surprised. But for me, the two best are the Salute and the one you are going to see traveling down the Grand Canal when you start to enter the lagoon. Just hold tight on that one right now.

Santa Maria della Salute was commissioned as a response or solution (depending on how you view it) to the latest invasion of the Bubonic Plague into Venice in 1630. The church is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and based on on how deep your faith goes I suppose, you will likely believe that it saved the city from the Black Death or did absolutely nothing or anywhere in between. Nonetheless, the city is blessed with a church that is an unremovable fixture in the city. It was completed in 1681, a year without any sort of plague in Venice. Take that as you will.

Just beyond the point where you first see the Salute, there is a palazzo on the right of the Canal which is decorated with scenes made up primarily of gold mosaic tiles.  The effect is brilliant and honestly sort of astonishing that it's still intact. I have no idea how long this display has been in place but it is reminiscent of the gold mosaic tiles in the Basilica San Marco at the east end of Piazza San Marco, which is at the end of this ride.

If there was a place I thought was a check the box exercise in Venice that truly amazed me, it was the Basilica San Marco. I mean it's just a church with some mosaics inside. But the brilliance of the artwork made up of all those tiny tiles is impressive. And you know as old as it is the only way they could make gold color back then was to use actual gold. Go see it. It's free and it's totally worth it. With the money you have saved on admission, maybe you can afford a drink or two at Caffe Florian nearby.

Finally the end of the Canal is in sight and as your line of sight clears the last building on the right, you see the basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, a church and monastery on its own island in the Venetian lagoon. The church was built between the years of 1566 and 1589 according to the designs of Andrea Palladio, one of the most influential architects in history.

This was my first Palladio building, and I can't honestly think of a better place to start. The church has a glimmering white marble facade which is relatively uncomplicated by change in planes. The first thing you notice about the church is its austerity and simplicity but somehow there's an elegance of proportion. The campanile (well worth the few Euros admission for the view of Venice alone) is to the rear and left of the church and is almost an exact duplicate of the Campanile of Basilica San Marco.

But the thing that amazes me most about this church is the way it is sited. First of all, it presents a frontal orientation to travelers coming out of the Grand Canal, which is absolutely the best way to site the building; it's a nod to the Grand Canal as the main street of the city. But more remarkable is the building's relationship with the water, which is really what Venice is all about. Palladio designed the facade of the building to sit on the plaza in front of the church which ends up being a couple of feet above the water level. This effect makes it appear like the floor of the building is literally sitting on the water level, especially from far away. The truth of the matter is that there are a few steps up to the church door right before the face of the building, protecting the interior from flooding (which will happen). Stay on the Vaporetto No. 2 after the San Marco stop and it will take you to San Giorgio and take the elevator up the Campanile; just leave when the bells ring.

The final stop on both my Vaporetto rides down the Grand Canal was S. Marco or Piazza San Marco, a place Napoleon Bonaparte once referred to as the "drawing room of Europe." Your approach by boat to the S. Marco stop displays the campanile of the Basilica San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale in all their finery.

Piazza San Marco is without question one of the most important, if not THE most important spaces in Venice. It is a vast square with the most important church in the city and the old seat of government at the east end of the square. Lining the sides of the square are cafes with musicians and in the center of the place are a mass of pigeons and people, some of who have pigeons perched on them. No idea what these folks are thinking; I mean, pigeons are swimming with disease, right?

Piazza San Marco was one of my can't miss destinations in the city and honestly, I expected it to be half flooded due to high tide and packed solid with people and pigeons in a scene emblematic of how overcrowded the city had become. It was neither. Maybe I got there at the right time but there was no suggestion of Venice sinking, although somehow empirically I know this to be true. Similarly, while there was no doubt a significant human and avian crowd in the place, there was really tons of open paved space. My time in Piazza San Marco was mostly reserved for sitting at Caffe Florian (the oldest cafe in operation in the world) listening to the musicians while sipping some Venetian beer and eating macaroons and other snacks. Be prepared to pay a pretty good price but it's worth it once. I'm now part of a list of visitors that stretches back to 1720. 

The S. Marco stop is not the end of the line for Vaporetto No. 2, but it was for me both times I traveled the Grand Canal and it is for the purposes of this post. Whether you understand the history or not, what you take in with your eyes on a trip down the Canal will be worth it, even if you just have to turn right back around and go back the way you came. Take the ride. And one day keep going to San Giorgio Maggiore. Venice wouldn't have been the same for me without doing both.

The city of Venice seen from the campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore.