Venice, Italy- the HBIC (Hella Beautiful Italian City) of the Adriatic

I’m trying something new with this post. I’ve been thinking about Myspace a lot lately and remember how hard it went to have your fave songs playing on your page?? Well- I wanted to try and recreate that with a little mix for each travel post. My goal is to create a fully sensory stimulating experience (any thoughts on how to do smell?) for each post; to try and capture the emotions I felt being in each location. So please, hit play on the audio player below, and let the voices of Amy and Chaka seduce and entice you while reading my brainrot stream of consciousness.

Venice is eternal. She is opulence. She is arrogance. She is THEE grande dame. She has big dick energy, and will let you know. She is a Leo, hands down. Maybe with a Capricorn moon and Pisces rising, you feel me? I only say Pisces rising because it’s a water sign (get it-rising water? Cause it’s being flooded more and more every year and slowly being consumed by the lagoon to be lost forever? Which will be an incomprehensible loss of culture and history and architecture? So funny lolz!) In a way Venice reminds me of the Titanic- a monument to excessive wealth clad in greed and ostentatious grandeur- and facing imminent demise. It’s beauty is inexorably tied to its decay. It’s a duality that scratches a part of my brain in a really satisfying way that I can’t describe. It’s like a gold rush era mining boom ghost town, or New Orleans, or a long forgotten monumental temple in the jungle.

I cannot stress to you the absolute visual sensory OVERLOAD of this place. The architecture is jam packed with so much ornamentation that I felt like I could spend weeks absorbing the views on any given street. Whether it’s the domed golden marble explosion that is Saint Mark’s Basilica, the precariously tilted look-at-it-the-wrong-way-and-it-will-fall campanile of Murano, or the multi-tiered, thicc ass, busy ass Ponte Rialto- Venice is an absolute 👏visual 👀 orgasm 💦🐓🍆🎷 . I took, I kid you not, 900 photos of Venice over the course of 2 days. We walked over 13 miles one day. 13 MILES! That’s more than I’ve walked my entire life. While the main islands of Venice are quite small themselves (the historic core is only about 6 square kilometers) it’s incredible density and tangled knot of alleys, bridges, canals and plazas make it seem much more sprawling. I am someone who prides myself on my navigational abilities and bitch let me tell you, she got me good a few times. Some of Venice’s alleys are claustrophobic, narrow, winding canyons between medieval midrises while others (especially those called rioterras- so called because they were once canals that were paved over by the French) are broader avenues, oftentimes graced with small plazas, parks and statues (many of these are called campos– or Italian for fields). Almost every campo contains a small stone cistern- Venice once depended on this dense network of underground water storage structures to keep it’s taps flowing. Now with modern water systems they sit, unused, as relics of a different time.

Speaking of water- Venice has a lot of it. Like, a LOT a lot. As someone from the desert, water makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like being in the middle of the ocean. I don’t like the thought of being in deep water. I really don’t like the idea of living in a house suspended over water. What I will say is that for a city built entirely over water, Venice’s foundation is extremely strong. In the middle ages when Venice was initially being constructed, huge pine trees were felled in the Alps and driven deep into the mud of the lagoon as piles. So many of these were driven in, packed in so densely, that an actual foundation was able to be built on top of it. Over time, the unique characteristics of the Venetian lagoon (namely low oxygen levels in the water) prevented the logs from rotting. On the contrary- it led to them petrifying. You heard me- Venice is built on a mothafucking fossilized forest. Isn’t that just BONKERS.ORG??? Like that is some Narnia, Lord of the Rings type Elvish bullshit that I really can’t wrap my head around. Idk, my mind still doesn’t understand how magnets work (I’m still convinced they’re alien magic) so maybe I’m actually just an idiot but this fact truly blows my mind. And let’s be real- it always will.

Being a completely water based city presents some pretty major city planning challenges (like really every aspect tbh) But transportation? Not one of em! Venice has probably the coolest public transit network on the globe: ✨water buses✨. It brings all of the glamour of a Greyhound to the high seas (but that’s just me being a snarky bitch they’re actually really cool). Called vaporettos, Venice’s water buses dock at a network of floating bus stops complete with turnstiles, card readers, transit network maps, and even vending machines! *swoons* The system is super easy to use, fun to ride, and so. fuckin’. scenic. Like where else in the world can you take bus that’s really a boat underneath an ornate medieval bridge?? (Hint- the answer is nowhere). Not even at the world-renowned Venetian Resort and Casino in Las Vegas Nevada can one take a vaporetto. You’re just trapped with a fake gondolier who probably moved to Vegas to be a model/actor and who now sings ‘That’s Amore’ for 8 hours straight before going home and making OnlyFans videos where they stomp on Safeway cupcakes with their bare feet that they haven’t washed in 2 weeks just to afford the disgustingly inflated Vegas rent for a 700 square foot studio with fake wood flooring, popcorn ceilings and a white refrigerator on *gasps in shock* Tropicana Avenue. Yes. Tropicana Avenue. (Disclaimer- I have no idea if Tropicana Avenue is bad, I kind of just assume everything in Vegas is trash. Maybe it’s the bias in me as a born and raised Northern Nevadan. But like….how funny is that because Reno is also trash? OMG speaking of how trashy Reno is, this podcast I listen to talks about funny Google reviews, and in one episode they covered a notorious Reno strip club called Fantasy Girls and loooord let me tell you those reviews are something else. Feel free to read and enjoy here.)

Besides it’s amazing feats of architecture and engineering, Venice is known for its craftwork. Generations upon generations of Venetians have perfected various artforms to a degree that baffles my mind. For example: we toured a glass blowing studio on the island of Murano where a man literally made an extremely detailed glass horse figurine which perfectly balanced on its back legs in front of us in under 5 minutes. I don’t understand how he did it- I think (like magnets) it was some kind of alien magic. But in reality, it’s generations upon generations of inherited knowledge. And yeaaaaars of practice. And the ability to make a living as an artisan (the tourism industry brings so much money to the city that there’s a whole lucrative artisan economy based on it). And alien magic, of course. In addition to glassblowing there is Venetian lacemaking, which is so insanely detailed and tedious that it can take multiple women working several hundreds of hours to complete a 3 foot by 3 foot piece of lace. It hurts my spleen thinking about it. Oh! And there’s also the cobblers, and leatherworkers, and bakers, and mask makers, and jewellers, and so. much. more. It’s truly a city of talented ass people. And I don’t mean like Los Angeles (a city of “talented” people who also have famous parents and a face full of botox in junior high). Oh did I piss you off LA? Well how about this: the Lakers suck.

There is definitely a downside to the insane number of tourists. Much of the old city is now more of a museum than a city, with a permanent population of only about 30,000 residents. The majority of locals can’t afford to live in the core now- instead priced out to live on the mainland while commuting in. Recently the city banned cruise ships from docking at their old port in the old city, instead docking several miles away in Fusina (the ships not only severely disrupted traffic for all other boats, but created large waves that eroded building foundations, displaced lagoon sediment needed to prevent further erosion, and the pollution? terrible). Oh and don’t forget that in 2019 a cruise ship crashed into a dock in the city, injuring several people. When we visited in March (definitely NOT the busy season) many parts of the city were still so crowded that it was tricky to navigate. I understand why Venice implemented a tourist tax. It’s really a tricky situation, because obviously I understand why everyone wants to visit (hello did you read the first 5 paragraphs??) but how do you maintain the things about a special place that make it special while also allowing people to admire the special things about that place and that help bring in money to help the special place maintain its special things? *shrugs*

In summary:

Venice is really cool
Like, really really cool
The architecture and street layout is a Medieval maximalist chaotic mess and I love every second of it
Venice is full of really talented people
Vaporettos slap so hard
Venice is full of campos and cisterns and other cool shit
A lot of people like Venice. Too many, probably. Myself included (I am the problem 😢)
VENICE IS A MAGICAL ELVEN VILLAGE BUILT ON FOSSILS

I hope you are transported to this fantastical place via the photos and music below (yes I’m putting a second audio player below so you don’t have to scroll back up to the top- my love language is indeed acts of service). Ciao!