since we're in the neighborhood

Venice has spoiled us. It has taken us into its thin crooked pathways and dumped us out into its cramped piazzas. It has then shoved us - stumbling - back into tiny paths and towards the next open space.

We've been the rat squeezing through the python and have always used a fluttering gut sense to navigate the tight corridors of this city. And it's been incredible. Our one true secret to Venice is staying, for the most part, away from everybody else.

It's impossible to escape tourism and tourists in Venice - and who are we kidding, we're tourists with a capital "T." And the Venice of postcards and guidebooks, the Venice that captures the imagination of popular touristic culture, might be found out front of St. Mark's. That's certainly the place where you can find yourself covered in pigeons, and easily pay €25 for a bellini - but that's not the Venice we've come to see.



Our sights, rather, are set on other places. Like Campo Santa Margherita and its central tree casting veins of shadow on the cobblestones. It's there that we follow poodles chasing poodles: a brown one chasing a black one chasing a grey one. You've never seen poodles so happy to be alive.

Olivia, too, was molto felice. Not only did she have the chance to chase a pigeon out of a café but the 4 month old cocker spaniel also had a pretty good vantage for the morning's brioche crumbs sprinkled on the floor. We had our cappucci next to Olivia's owner (who we'd already met outside) and then walked out to the Christmas market to drink mulled wine. Surrounded by all that water you can't help but keep drinking.

Unfortunately, eating in Venice is sometimes less ideal. The restaurants are not known as the finest in Italy, as they usually rely on a more tolerant touristic palate rather than the demands of local clientele. While this may or may not have influenced our decision not to eat dinner the night we arrived (we, instead, stayed in our room and enjoying the glories of a rare splurge on a rather nice hotel located on a rather grand canal) we do know of a place where the food is indeed fit for the locals that fill the bar.



It's the same place we go every time. We stand along the water, our plate of stuzzichetti set on the canal wall and our bright orange spritzes - with hunks of fragrant lemon hide - giving us yet another drink in this town threaded with liquid. We eat hunks of bread topped with miraculous things. Cloud-light ricotta with gobs of squash puree; tuna crisscrossed by thin wisps of leek. There are far too many combinations to choose from.

Another love of ours are 50 cent traghetto rides across the grand canal. For less than the cost of a caffe you get a gondola ride replete with drama and boat rocking. Not only does your gondola have to cross Venice's main throughway and its many threads of nautical traffic but you also have to enter and exit the gondola without falling out. The gondoliers make it look easy but I've never felt more uncoordinated than when trying to gracefully extricate myself from an undulating gondola.



We took care in the mirror shop, too, having a pretty good idea of what a shop full of mirrors can do to your luck if you're not careful. And these were special mirrors - convex and able to capture the entire room with their fish eye optics. We were surrounded by tens of images of ourselves, and of the mirrors, and of the couple who arrived there before us and wouldn't stop chatting with the owner. But we'd had an eye on these mirrors since several visits past and weren't to be easily dissuaded. We waited our turn, no mirrors were broken, and we made it out with one new mirror and only the bad luck with which we'd entered.

Weaving through Venice on our way back to the train station we walked into a one-man marionette performance that had quickly captured the attention of a piazza's worth of kids and adults. We also happened to find a very fine cup of hot chocolate. Not only was the hot chocolate capped with a decadent mass of whipped cream but we had a small pastry filled with zabaglione on the side. Cold weather warrants such things.



Some people want something else from Venice. They want pigeons instead of poodles. Gondola rides for thirty minutes instead of three. Guided tours instead of hypnotic wanderings. But for us, Venice will always be that strange combination of random elements along random paths. And if it wasn't, then we wouldn't love Venice the way we do.

'tis the season

I'd never seen a gondolier float past my bedroom window. But in Venice, if you check into your room and there's mysterious live music in the distance take a glance out the window. The source of the tune may be gliding past in his striped t-shirt, piloting a gondola full of tourists.

It could be a romantic moment.... what with the dreamy Italian love songs, the weepy accordion, the canal waters undulating past. Unless, of course, you're sharing a room with beloved relatives and between the 3 of you there's not a mattress in the room that doesn't sink sadly to the floor in response to any weight set upon it. And let's refrain from discussing the décor.



For decoration less an affront to the senses there was a unique marble staircase spiraling its way up the courtyard outside of our lodging. We hadn't known of its existence but apparently other tourists come looking for it. And you do need to hunt. It's in a place where once you feel like maybe you shouldn't be wandering around those parts, you know you've landed in just the right spot.

Returning to the matter of the hotel room, it was a lesson in the differences between Italian and American views on air conditioning. In our experience we've learned that many Italians prefer searing heat to the cool draft of air conditioning. We've been on summer trains, sweating, while Italians talked among themselves about their fear of freezing to death - and then piled on the sweaters to prove it.



Our trip to Venice was two weekends ago and when I asked the proprietress of our quarters to furnish us with the air conditioner's remote control so that we could cool the room, she informed me - as if I were an innocent and wayward child - that my poor dear girl, air conditioning season is over.

And that's where we encountered a substantial difference in opinion. I could get over the lack of shampoo in the room. And the saggy sad mattresses. And maybe even the ludicrous bedding combinations. (Have I started talking about the décor?) But I would not be convinced that air conditioning season was done and gone.



As an American I have been trained to think that it is always air conditioning season. Because although I may choose not to use it, I can't help but feel that air conditioning should most always be available. Especially in rooms along slow-moving canals that harbor, without a doubt, mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds.

The lady and I chatted and although she insisted that Italians are done with air conditioning for the year, I convinced her that we Americans were not. Happily, the air conditioner's remote control magically appeared in our room later that afternoon.



That morning we'd made sure to visit our favorite Venetian bar (as in espresso). It's a small place and you end up tripping over locals to enter. But it's wonderful because with the exception of us, nearly every person who enters is greeted by name. It's like Cheers except that instead of "Norm" they're belting out "Mario!" In a city where you are always surrounded by tourists, and you never feel like anything but, it's nice to sneak into a place where you're the only folks from out of town.

We also stopped by our favorite place for snacks. There you have to elbow your way up to the guy dishing-out plates of miniature antipasti from a crowded display window. And once you point at enough of the tiny delicacies to fill a plate, you get a few glasses of wine and make your way out to the canal to eat alongside its waters. The regulars seem to keep to the far end of the bar, drinking wine and talking shop.



After appetizers we took a walk to our favorite pizza place - passing a boat laden with colorful produce along the way. When we got there we ordered giant slices of pizza and parked ourselves on a bench. Our view was that of the closing fish market in one direction, and the world's most amorous teenage couple in the other. It was a toss-up over which induced a stronger bout of nausea. Fish scales and tails, or teenage make-out session on nearby bench? Believe me, it was a close call.

We also had a chance to take a great tour of the Palazzo Ducale. Called the Secret Itineraries Tour a guidebook might describe it as an enjoyable romp through prison cells and private passageways. And they'd be right - it's great. Although our visit was plagued by the background noise of Lega Nord supporters shouting into megaphones at a large rally outside. (Lega Nord is a political party that wants Northern Italy to secede from the South. Will my sarcasm show if I say they're "quite charming"?)



It's true that Venice is always full of wanderers, and pausers, and random lingerers. Sometimes you'll be stuck behind an unknown wanderer and be tempted to nudge them along to hurry them through Venice's skinny and crowded passageways. But at other times you'll become the wanderer and stop crowds behind you as you pause to explore some random crack and cranny. But that's the joy of Venice: cracks and crannies.

And gondoliers floating past.