3 February 2008

As far as I’m concerned, Carnevale is just much ado about nothing. An enormous crowd, mostly made up of abhorrent American tourists, marches from square to square, buying various Venetian doodads, wearing ugly wigs, bizarre though occasionally elegant costumes, and those felt stovepipe hats you won at the Westchester County Fair way back when. And the costumed appear to take themselves far too seriously.

Our train from the Santa Maria Novella station left at 6:28 a.m. I had a hard time sleeping, so, at that point, I’d been awake since 3 a.m. A friend of mine, Silvi, and I were supposed to be joined by three other people, but they ended up missing the train by about 30 seconds. We switched trains at Bologna Centrale, and at 10 a.m. we got off at Venezia San Lucia.

If anything, the costumes were certainly novelties. We followed a mother wearing a neon pink clown wig down the platform and into the station. A girl wearing a giraffe outfit with the neck growing out of the top of her head put me in mind of a line Harry Potter utters in the fourth book about walking around with a periscope sticking out of his head after contemplating employing human transfiguration in the second task.

Standing yawning in line to buy tickets for the ride home, Silvi and I were forced to stand in front of yet more obnoxious Americans. (Yes, they aren’t in short supply here in Italia, not even in February.) This time it was a loud group of twenty-something females. A short, curly-haired one ducked out of line and squealed something about wanting to take a photo of “Dino”, whatever that meant. I rolled my eyes, embarrassed to be associated with them even if only by nationality.

It was raining like the devil. Stepping onto the square outside San Lucia station for the second time in my life, I was disappointed to see the view marred by furious torrents of water. And me without any rain gear. As Ryan Howard from The Office says when Dwight abandons him in a beet field, “Of course”.

As per Silvi’s orders, we followed the signs pointing in the direction of the Piazza San Marco. We were swept up in a veritable tide of bodies, seething and undulating in and out of the numerous side streets. Many puns about cattle and various other livestock ensued.

It took us about an hour—not including two stops, one at a coffee bar for “due caffè latte”, the other at a small sandwich place for two vegetable and cheese paninis—to get through all the crowds to San Marco, my favorite place in Venezia. After ogling the Basilica—which, I believe, rivals the Duomo for the title of most beautiful building in Italy—and the view of Lido, we hopped onto a waterbus.

Since the winding streets and the large number of bridges in Venezia cannot support cars or any other land vehicles, there exists an infrastructure of boats, water taxis, waterbuses, and gondolas, the last of which are only frequented by tourists. Boats labeled “Polizia” and “Ufficio Postale” roam the high seas as well.

For €6,50, a person and his or her suitcase can ride a waterbus for sixty minutes. So we rode the boat to the Ca D’Oro stop and back. For the first leg of the trip we stood on one side of the boat; during the second, we switched to the opposite side for a new perspective.

In my opinion, riding the waterbus is really the best and only way to see Venezia. The wind whips gently across your face, the view from the boat is phenomenal, and friendly Japanese tourists smile and wave at you from their seats in smaller, more expensive water taxis.

Once we were back on land, we went in search of more food. We stopped at a gelateria; I ordered a waffle cone filled to the brim with stracciatella and mint gelato. Since Venezia, save the Piazza San Marco, is significantly lacking in benches, we decided to lean against the wall of a side street whilst hacking away at our ice cream with tiny plastic spoons. Apparently this sort of behavior is considered just as shady in Italy as it is in the U.S.; we attracted a lot of blatant stares from passerby despite the fact that we weren’t passing a joint back and forth between us.

After eating dessert, we searched for a place to eat dinner. After rejecting several possibilities, we settled on a restaurant called Pane Vino e San Danielle. Almost all of the clientele were Italian, which I took as a good sign. Our waiter, whose name was Omar, was both wonderfully cheerful and annoyingly laid-back. Since Silvi speaks Italian fluently, she and Omar joked around when he came to take our order while I sat idly by, staring off into space, hoping I’d get to eat before I died. Eventually I got a pizza Italia—which was ostensibly a pizza margherita topped with fresh tomato, arugula, and mozzarella di bufula. If it sounds delicious, that’s because it was.

At the end of the meal, Omar took yet another century to bring the check. Used to the Speedy Gonzales pace of American waiters and waitresses desperate for mass tips, the sit-back-and-enjoy-yourself attitude of the restaurant threw me for a loop. (Although personally I think Omar slowed down twice as much because he didn’t want Silvi to leave.) Until I came here, I never realized how accustomed I am to the way I live in New York. And how unusual that lifestyle actually is.

Upon leaving the restaurant and realizing that we’d spent a total of two hours there, we decided to return to the train station under the mistaken impression that we had just over an hour until we were to depart. Venezia under the influence of Carnevale (much like its attendees under the influence of alcohol) gets rowdier and more difficult to push through at night. And there I was, mistakenly believing the throng couldn’t get any worse than that of the morning.

After various disagreements, swallowing our pride and asking for directions several times, we found our way back to the San Lucia train station. Upon which we discovered we’d completely misconstrued our time of departure, and that we now had roughly an hour and a half to kill.

Luckily, the Venice train station is not without quirky personalities. After Silvi bit the bullet and paid .70 euro to go to the bathroom, we found two seats in a waiting area and were entertained by two boys showing off for their friends with a concealed whistle and some silly antics. Silvi said she wished they were her friends so they could make her laugh all day. I wasn’t quite as fond of them as she was because, regrettably, I’m über sensitive to sharp, high-pitched noises.

The ride home was relatively uneventful. Silvi befriended two Turkish boys while I, having been awake since three a.m., desperately tried to fall asleep. Unfortunately I don’t have the best track record when it comes to sleeping in moving vehicles.