Final Venice Musings

Final Venice Musings
Dining out in Venice:
What a hoot. The Venetians do not have the same “personal space” that we Americans do. Dining out is an exercise in how closely the tables can be packed together. People love to dine out on the patio or next to the water, at least when your feet are not in water. We saw some restaurants that were awash during high tide. I don’t think I would have enjoyed sitting there eating with my feet ankle deep in water but we actually saw some people doing that. Other restaurants must just time their openings to avoid the high tides.
Every little place that sells food seems to have at least one or two tables outside. Sometimes that’s all they have, very small places indeed. All the tables are always very close together. For larger people, it is an exercise in ingenuity to get to an inside table without knocking over a glass of wine or flopping your purse onto someone’s plate.
Every time we ate, we were almost rubbing elbows with the people at the table next to us. In Burano, at the next table were a couple of former Texans, like us, so we had some nice dining companions.
Last night, we had to wait for a couple to leave before we could be seated because we could not have reached our table with the couple still seated there. A couple of ladies then sat at the table next to us and offered to let us put our wine bottle and salad dressing bottles on their table because ours was so full of plates. I finally put my salad bowl on top of the antipasto plate by pushing all the meats to one side. One can definitely learn to keep your elbows to your sides in these restaurants.
Last night was a good meal, our last in Venice. At the end, we did have to ask the two ladies to get up and move so we could get out of our table. How much fun is that? Really it’s a lot of fun.

Venice Wildlife:
There are plenty of pigeons in Venice and plenty of seagulls although the gulls keep closer to the water and a few blocks in from the Grand Canal or the lagoon, you are seeing mostly pigeons. This morning my husband had to catch the 5:15 a.m. water bus to the land bus to the airport. I went with him to the bus stop. As we got close, we heard this raucous noise. It was about 50 seagulls screaming at each other and wheeling about the bridge and the bus stop. They acted as if someone had dumped a bucket of chum into the water and they were fighting over it.
After my husband caught the bus, I walked off the bus stop (water bus stops are docks). I had to stop and wait for the rats to move out of the way before I could continue on my way. I didn’t want to disturb them and get them angry. I’ve had an angry rat charge at me before in Singapore and it isn’t fun.
The other wildlife in Venice seems to be of the two legged variety. Not sure that there is a drinking age here and if there is, it doesn’t seem to be tightly enforced. Every night we were treated to some drunken kids wending their way home around 2 or 3 in the morning.

Venice Bridges:
When we were in Berlin at the beginning of my husband’s portion of the trip, we were told that Berlin actually had more bridges than Venice. I just don’t see how that could be true. IF the guide telling us this meant the greater area of Berlin, I suppose it might be possible. BUT I think that if they take the same square mileage of Venice and place it anywhere in Berlin that Venice will win out with the bridge count. And if they are going to use the greater area of Berlin to count bridges, then I think they must also use the greater area of Venice which would include all the other small islands which also have many bridges. Nope, just not seeing how Berlin could have more bridges.
On our gondola ride, several bridges were quite low and our gondolier tilted the boat far over to the right in order to clear under the bridge. He said that during rainy season, they cannot go under many of these bridges. One we could see had scrapings along the underside of the bridge from passing when the water was a bit too high. If the seas rise or Venice sinks anymore, they will have to rethink the design of the gondolas because they just aren’t going to fit under the small bridges at all.