In search of the real Venice
Henry Sands avoids the tourist traps in one of the world’s most iconic cities
When an acquaintance suggested I took my girlfriend to Venice for our anniversary weekend, I was hesitant. He had just returned from taking his girlfriend on what sounded effectively like a stag weekend in Prague. I had always thought of Venice as a rather clichéd, tired and unimaginative destination. Earlier in the year, I spoke to an old family friend who, having married a Venetian women half his age, now lives in the city working as an art dealer. He described living there as ‘Horrendous. Absolutely awful. It’s like living in Disneyland and as a local you are treated as though you are Mickey Mouse everyday. The city is dirty, everyone tries to fleece you and all the best architecture is hidden in scaffolding.’ He was missing his Chelsea pied à terre.
Despite his description and my reservations, I booked anyway. It was off season and frankly I did not have the imagination to think up anywhere else. The place had mixed memories for me. I last went there on a fifth-form school trip. A nice man on a bridge offered to show me some tricks involving cubes and scarves. When I caught up with my group, I found all my money had gone. My teacher contacted my mother, full of concern for what had happened to me. But after he put the phone down, he said: ‘Henry, why don’t you just write c**t across your forehead?’
I spent an unsuccessful two hours on ‘trip-adviser’, the global hotel database, trying to find a reasonably central, affordable hotel which had rooms, even though it was more than a month in advance. Like most people my age, I am used to booking hours before departure. I start to sweat at long-term commitment but Venice is too popular a destination for spontaneity. Even the normally reliable www.MrandMrsSmith.com were unable to find us a room, which was a bit worrying as I had just booked the flights. I didn’t think my girlfriend would wear an anniversary weekend in the industrial hubbub on the outskirts of Venice. If Venice was like Disneyland, it would be rather like taking a small child to the gates but then spending the weekend playing ball in the car park. In the end I found a new hotel named I Q Suites which looked chic enough, although about 200 per cent more expensive than I had originally planned for. More importantly, though, they could guarantee us one of their four studio rooms for the weekend.
We arrived, and took the slow but efficient waterbus from the airport. The Suites were in a grand palazzo tucked away on a quiet canal five minutes from Piazza San Marco. We crossed the private bridge and stepped into the hotel’s large Venetian courtyard. Thank heavens, my girlfriend was smiling. Many reviews of Venetian hotels describe the experience of stepping back in time. With my room, I found quite the opposite. The lights — and there were very few of them — turned on by stroking the dark painted walls, the furniture was peculiarly angular and the bathroom looked like a piece of modern art. Apart from the odd gondolier’s head floating past the window, I expect it was the least Venetian-styled room in the city, and we loved that.
The trouble with Venice is that everywhere you look there are couples who seem to be sharing the same experience as you. It is production-line romance.
Perhaps inspired by our hotel room, we decided we were going to have an un-Venetian weekend in the hope that it would give us a real Venetian experience. We would not go the tourist-filled Ducal palace, St Mark’s Basilica or the La Fenice theatre. Rather than pushing our way through the crowded streets around the Rialto Bridge, we would explore the north, where the tourists do not go. To our surprise we had streets and restaurants all to ourselves, basilicas which we could view alone and, best of all, no street vendors trying to sell us fake handbags or cartoon sketches of David Beckham.
We had dinner at a small anonymous wine bar just off Rio Tera San Leonardo and then went to watch a performance of Musica in Maschera at the Teatro Fondamenta Nuove, a small theatre with fold-up chairs for seating. The interior resembled a converted boathouse and the audience was a mix of earnest but cheerful Italians along with some music students. While the surroundings may not have been La Scala, it was a surprisingly intimate and enjoyable performance, after which we meandered our way back to the hotel through the eerily empty backstreets.
While my sophisticated art dealer friend remains cynical about Venice — it is, after all, a city that spends much of the year with the overflow of sewage floating around its walkways — it was to me an enchanting place. If you are willing to get away from the central areas, it is still possible to have a private Venetian experience, though we certainly shared a sense of relief each time we returned to our spaceship of a hotel room.