Venice is somewhere we’ve visited before, and where we did a really great full day tour of the historic centre, Venice Day 1 – 2022, as well as another day touring the islands of Murano and San Giorgio Maggiore Venice Day 2 – 2022. That visit just post-Covid gave us the chance to see the city without crowds.
This year, Venice has implemented a €5 per person daily entry fee to its historic centre, applicable on 29 peak tourism dates between April 25 and July 15, one of which was today. The measure is intended to protect the UNESCO World Heritage Site from the adverse effects of over-tourism, to mitigate pedestrian congestion, and to keep the relatively small population from being completely overwhelmed by tourists. Nonetheless, it is not a measure universally welcomed by Venetians, who don’t believe the money will be effectively used to correct the various issues plaguing this beautiful city of canals.
People staying overnight in the city’s hotels already pay a “city tax” of €7 per person per night which exempts them from the entry fee, but they must complete an online process to obtain the barcode that verifies their exemption. This process was one more reason that we love our travel agent so much: we didn’t have to go searching for how to do this – she proactively sent us the website link and instructions a month before we needed them. Kudos once again to Carol!
All that said, we opted today to skip the included walking tour and the city centre’s crowds and stay in Venice Mestre, the neighbourhood around our hotel, to explore that area – with the added bonus of being able to have drinks with Heather and Mario, friends from Ontario, here on Mario’s home turf.
There was no reason to be up early, so we didn’t set an alarm and just headed down to breakfast once we were ready.
Heather and Mario recommended that we visit Piazza Erminio Ferretto, the main square in this neighbourhood of Venice, so that became our plan for the morning.
When we reached the square around 10:00 a.m., it was still very quiet. Stores were still closed, but cafés were open and filled with Venetians in twos and threes having their Sunday morning espressos. There was virtually no foot traffic, which meant Ted could get some nice photos of the area.
As part of our visit to the square, we climbed the clock tower, in which a set of plaques in both Italian and English explain the history of this part of Venice. It’s one of our goals to learn at least some of the history of each place we visit, and without a tour guide these plaques really helped.
16th Century:
18th – 19th centuries:
19th – 20th Centuries:
Present Day Mestre:
Strolling, climbing, and learning are hard work, deserving of gelato even if it is only 11:00 a.m.
At 11:15 p, all the bells around the square began to ring, proclaiming the call to Sunday mass. The clanging echoed off the historic buildings all around us and was really quite magical.
As is the case in many European cities – Berlin certainly comes to mimd – history can tinge beauty with ugliness. This lovely old palazzo (below) was used in 1944 as a location for the Italy’s Nazi equivalents, Mussolini’s “black shirts”, to interrogate and torture resistance fighters.
At the other end of the spectrum, a plaque on San Laurentis’ Church commemorates the 1985 visit of Pope John Paul II to Venice and includes the visit’s final remarks from a very hopeful closing message delivered here on June 17th in Mestre (translated from the original Italian):
I invoke the Blessing of God upon all of you so that hope will never fail in your hearts, so that as a Church inserted in the city and its territory, in the heart of the most acute problems of modern man, you may announce the salvation that comes from Christ with credibility and courage capable of overcoming trials and suffering with the power of the Crucifix; so that you may joyfully protest to a humanity renewed by the testimony of Christian charity; so that you may think about the future of young people and decide with them a positive future that must be built with them.
For our late afternoon/evening rendevous we made the 25 minute stroll from our hotel to Forte Marghera, a 14th century fortification in a large park, which is also the location of several restaurants with outdoor patios. We’d planned to arrive with plenty of time to explore the park and historic site.
In addition to the ruins of the 1814 fort, the park is home to an organization dedicated to saving stray and abandoned cats.
There is also a huge slingshot sculpture by Lorenzo Quinn, entitled Stop Playing. The artist describes it like this: “The slingshot represents our natural resources, which we are stretching beyond their limits. If we consider Earth’s age, humanity as a whole is like a small child in the evolution of time. The world seems as if it’s in the hands of this capricious child who plays without care for the consequences any games might cause.”
We didn’t make dinner reservations, since on Sundays Heather and Mario always do a big family dinner and we, frankly, are pretty stuffed from our week here. Mario has a favourite restaurant near their home in Marghera, so after a drink at the Fort we were treated to some of the best pizza we’ve eaten in Italy – plus Prosecco, shared laughter, and the sheer joy of reconnecting.
It was truly the perfect way to end our week in Italy.
The saddest part of any tour is the end, especially if we’ve had the chance to meet and travel with people we really like.
I’m going to miss Leo and Evan, who’ve been such enthusiastic fun, and I’m glad these young men offered a parting hug to their new/old friend. I’m thrilled to have had the chance to meet Leo’s delightful parents – especially his lovely mom, who despite speaking no English communicated so effectively in smiles.
We’re really glad to have met quiet Dorothy and hilarious Barry, who we’ll hopefully see again since they’re only a ferry ride away in British Columbia.
So, in some ways, I guess the end of a tour is also a happy time, since we’ve made new memories and new friends.
Tomorrow we fly back to Vancouver.
Rose and Ted’s Excellent Adventure 