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“Ahhhh, Venice!” is one of my favorite lines from the slightly under-appreciated film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Last weekend, I finally got to say the words myself as I arrived in the famed City of Water (a.k.a. City of Masks, City of Canals, Floating City, or, as one of our guides put it, “the next candidate for Atlantis”). Here’s the thing about Venice: before going, I’d heard both that it’s amazing and that it’s incredibly overhyped. My advice: go with zero expectations. It’s a completely different flavor of Italy than what I’m used to, but I enjoyed it overall and would be interested in going back sometime to see what I didn’t get to check out last weekend (and we barely scratched the surface of it). As with our Amalfi weekend, we arrived early last Saturday morning and got to spend just under two full days exploring. I found some promising tours through the Airbnb Experiences feature (something I plan to use a lot while I’m in Istanbul for the next four weeks), including a Venetian street food tour and a ghosts n’ ghouls tour. For the latter, we made our way from Campo san Bartolomio (“campo” is approximately the same thing as a piazza, just in the Venetian dialect) all the way across the archipelago towards where we were staying near the Campo santa Margherita. Funnily enough, our guide ended the walkable tasting menu at a gelateria that we had patroned earlier that same day (I might have a gelato problem— is there rehab for that?). Venetians have their own kind of tapas (apologies to all Venetians for the comparison but it’s the easiest way to get the point across) called cicchetti. Much like in Spain, cicchettis are served individually, vary in flavor profiles, and are a bite-sized excuse to hang out with your friends. We tried a handful of those from several local holes-in-the-wall, as well as delicate puff pastry called a sfogliatine, for which we went back for seconds. The ghosts n’ ghouls tour was, fittingly, a nocturnal affair. We were guided by a young English émigré who had found his niche in life making people’s hair stand on end with gruesome legends of the 1600-year-old city, including a few with chapters too recent for comfort. Half of our group peaced out after our quick trip down the Alley of Death, but we stuck around for the redeeming love story between a fisherman and a mermaid that lightened the mood significantly. I checked our steps when we got back to the hotel: over 24,000 registered by my iPhone. Needless to say, I slept like a rock (and in real air conditioning!). We started our Sunday with a pre-arranged gondola boat ride through some of the canals with some friends who happened to be in town at the same time as us. They almost didn’t make it because they got stuck waiting in line at the COVID test center for their return-trip bill of health, but we stalled and they hauled ass across town, making it in the nick of time. We spent the rest of the afternoon moseying around, wandering into a charmingly chaotic bookstore that looked like it belonged in Diagon Alley and staffed by cats (okay, not literally, but several cats were clearly fixtures of the business). We also rediscovered a restaurant that had been recommended to us on the ghost tour the night before where I had some of the best ravioli I've ever had. Our Monday was fairly uninteresting, since we spent the morning on the return train to Rome and the evening working. Tuesday, however, we finally got to do the underground tour of the Colosseum (highly recommend, but you definitely need to book in advance because of high demand and COVID-level availability). We got to see a replica of the elevator mechanisms used by Romans to bring animals onto the arena from below with the element of surprise (very Hunger Games, in my opinion). I learned that the Colosseum had actually been flooded and used for aquatic war game simulations that doubled as entertainment for the masses. The Romans were very impressive engineers and entertainers. The next day, we explored Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum, which was cool but I had done those before. We spent Thursday morning wandering around, starting from the Pantheon, walking by Trevi again, and eventually finding ourselves on a street in Monti I had intended to re-explore on Friday by myself. We got a nice dinner at a restaurant near us in Trastevere called Taverna Trilussa, which had an incredible truffle carbonara and mystery ravioli. On Friday, I ended my time in Rome the same way I began it: I got lost around in Rome. I got a quick hair trim and then eventually made my way back across the Tiber to pack and work for the evening.
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