Calendar Highlight Tour When You Go Links Home |
VENICE, ITALY -
Venice is beautiful in an ancient, decaying way. The city is amazing partly because it's so
improbable - everywhere you look, you think how remarkable it is that it hasn't yet fallen
into the sea.
The best way to get around Venice (aside from walking, which is really quite do-able with a decent map to keep you from constantly dead-ending at canals) is the vaporetti, the water buses that cruise up and down the Grand Canal and around the islands.
The Grand Canal is fascinating because everything in Venice - bottled water, mail, Christmas trees - has to come and go by water. Even the police and ambulance operations are run from boats. If you can find a cafe with a waterfront view, thinking of the cost of your caffe latte as rent on your view of the action will make it seem almost affordable.
Here's your obscure fact of the day: The reason so many people grow geraniums in their window
boxes in Venice isn't for the picturesque quality, but because geraniums repel the mosquitos that
breed in the canals in the summertime.
Like "graffiti", the word "ghetto" is Italian in origin - it comes from the ghetti, or metal
foundries, that used to operate in Venice's Castello neighborhood. Some of the street signs in Venice's
former Jewish ghetto, which still has a strong Jewish identity, are in both Hebrew and Italian (photo
at left, although it's a little hard to see).
BACK