Travel Chronicles – Europe (2015) – Venice

Venice is a must see for everyone.

On one hand, it does have the magnificent St. Mark’s basilica and the Doge’s palace located in the eloborate St. Mark’s square.

Another basilica we liked visiting was the Frari Basilica.

On the other hand, the city (in particular, the St. Mark’s square) seemed to be plagued by incessant street hawkers and occasional beggars. And, the hotels in Venice seem to be notoriously uninhabitable. The one we stayed in was the most expensive in our whole trip (Munich, Venice, Rome, Istanbul), but was the worst we stayed anywhere ever. It did not have consistent hot water, the shower curtain was dirty, the cots were flimsy with protruding legs and were a walking hazard, there was no functioning air conditioning and the chairs/couches in the lobby were dirty.

What makes Venice a must see are not its basilicas. For a tourist, the basilica in the Vatican City beats hands down the basilicas in Venice. Given the experience with the street hawkers and the hotel, if it were any other city, I would have swore to anyone to pass on Venice. So, what is it in Venice? It was how different the structure of the city was from any other city in the world. How could a city be built like that, and how could it remain like that to this day? There were no roads. The canals were the roads. The gondolas and boats were the cars. Houses had boats anchored rather than cars parked in front of them.

There were narrow walking alleys in between rows of old three of four storey buildings. Walking through the alleys is akin to walking through a maze of tunnels. No kidding! The alleys would dead-end and you wonder whether to go left or right. Often, an alley, narrower than the one you are on, pops on the side. All you see of these side alleys is a turn 100 meters down with no clue as to where it leads.

Thanks to the alleys not being so clearly named, maps and GPS are not of much use either. Any first timer would surely have at least one experience of being lost in the maze. We did have ours! The silver lining of this experience was that the philosophy of the structure of the city sinks in better into your psyche. This difference in the structure of the city is what makes Venice a must see.