Stresa to Venice

16-18 October 2009

Have been blogging on the train, so have finally (nearly) caught up! Some new photos below in earlier posts.

Back to Milano railway station again to change for Venice – next time we’ll know to check train routes when planning the itinerary. Venice was all I expected and more – another grand old lady but wearing her tattiest finery outside and saving the gorgeous silks and laces for indoors.

Quite apart from the glories of St Mark’s Basilica and the Doges’ Palace, there seems to be renovations happening behind closed doors all over Venice – all we could see though were tantalizing glimpses of chandeliers, loft-type conversions in white and heavy beams, bright artwork, as we zipped past on the canal, packed like sardines into a vaporetto, or water bus.

Diners in St Mark's Square

Baleful St Mark's Square pigeon...

Bride in St Mark's Square

The water buses were fantastic – we bought a three-day ticket and just jumped on and off all day, with never more than a 10 minute wait. Unlike the City Cats, they never seem to restrict the number of people who get on, so they were always packed with hordes of both tourists and locals.

My favourite public transport though was the cross river gondola to the Rialto markets on Saturday morning – for 50 centimes, you could pile on to a gondola with about 15 other people, baby strollers and their shopping from the markets (the last half dozen or so on had to stand) and be paddled across the Grand Canal. The markets were fascinating – not as large as the Bastille market in Paris, but just as noisy and crowded, and with even more variety of seafood if that’s possible… live eels, crabs and scampi, enormous octopus, glittering piles of sardines. Took some time out for a coffee nearby, figuring that it was worth paying double to sit at a table and people-watch, rather than stand at the bar inside and save 1,75.

Walked and walked through this fascinating city. The canals function as streets, but between the canals there is an intricate web of tiny lanes not much more than a metre or two wide. Like everything in Venice, the paint is peeling and the timber rotting – at home, we’d avoid lanes like these because they’d seem a bit threatening. Here, you’ll walk ten metres into a lane and there’ll be a supermarket … another ten and there’s a contemporary wine bar with granite and stainless steel… and at the end of the lane there’ll be half a dozen polished copper nameplates for the apartments on the floors above.


We’ve had the best meals of our trip here at little bistros recommended by Marco, our host, as well as by an Australian couple we met in Stresa. Huge range of seafood – black tagliatelle and scampi which I think I’ve had three times now! – and some imaginative meat dishes that Col is enjoying.

Had to do the traditional tourist-in-Venice thing and go in a gondola before we left - worth every euro! There were gondola traffic jams in every canal, crowds of Japanese squashed six to a gondola being serenaded by gondoliers with accordions, other tourists waving and taking photos of us from bridges as we passed underneath, close calls with vaporettos and water taxis ... more like a ride at the Ekka than romantic, but a real highlight.