Tuesday 24th January 1984
The sky was a miserable shade of grey when we came to. Out on the streets the rain was teeming down, making my choice of footwear extremely foolhardy. My black cotton Chinese Kung Fu slippers soaked up water like a thirsty sponge as we made our way to the only sensibly priced café that we had encountered so far.
We picked up some postcards along the way and spent an enjoyable age writing one of our best batches of postcards yet and sipping Cappuccino coffee. We moved on to the General Post Office which appeared to be a converted cathedral with pillars and arches in a range of tiers which advanced to a barely visible roof.
Internet research today shows that this was The Fondaco dei Tedeschi (Venetian: Fontego dei Tedeschi) which is a historic building in Venice, northern Italy, situated on the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge. It was the headquarters and restricted living quarters of the city's German (Tedeschi) merchants. In the 20th century the building served as the Venice headquarters of the Poste Italiane.
The Rialto Bridge (Italian: Ponte di Rialto; Venetian: Ponte de Rialto) is the oldest of the four bridges spanning the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. Connecting the sestieri (districts) of San Marco and San Polo, it has been rebuilt several times since its first construction as a pontoon bridge in 1173 and is now a significant tourist attraction in the city.
The present stone bridge, a single span designed by Antonio da Ponte, began to be constructed in 1588 and was completed in 1591. It is similar to the wooden bridge it succeeded. Two inclined ramps lead up to a central portico. On either side of the portico, the covered ramps carry rows of shops. The engineering of the bridge was considered so audacious that architect Vincenzo Scamozzi predicted future ruin. The bridge has defied its critics to become one of the architectural icons of Venice, especially when a gondola is passing underneath with the gondolier singing “Just one Cornetto”.
If the image of a man in a gondola whipping an ice cream cone out of the grasp of a pretty girl in a passing boat makes music burst unbidden into your head, you are perfectly normal. A survey of the top 10 catchiest advertising jingles ever has just put the long-running 1980s Cornetto advert on top.
We managed to find the Postage Stamp Vending Window amongst maze of windows and paid a reasonable 400 Italian Lira for each postcard. We came out onto the Piazza San Marco for the second time, this time devoid of the flocks of pigeons who were as much a part of the tourist attraction as the domed church and the closeted walkways surrounding the square.
The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark (Italian: Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco), commonly known as St Mark's Basilica (Italian: Basilica di San Marco; Venetian: Baxéłega de San Marco), is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, northern Italy.
It is the most famous of the city's churches and one of the best-known examples of Italo-Byzantine architecture. It lies at the eastern end of the Piazza San Marco, adjacent and connected to the Doge's Palace. Originally it was the chapel of the Doge, and has been the city's cathedral only since 1807, when it became the seat of the Patriarch of Venice, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, formerly at San Pietro di Castello.
The building's structure dates back to the later part of the 11th century, and the most likely influence on its architecture and design is the Hagia Sophia. Much work has gone toward embellishing this, and the famous main façade has an ornamented roofline that is mostly Gothic. The gold ground mosaics that now cover almost all the upper areas of the interior took centuries to complete. In the 13th century the external height of the domes was greatly increased by hollow drums raised on a wooden framework and covered with metal; the original ones are shallower, as can be seen on the inside. This change makes the domes visible from the piazza. At the time we were there it was covered with dust sheets and scaffolding!
Old looking figures waited with old fashioned hooded box cameras to fleece the tourists. We went on down to the waterfront where the main canal came out into the open sea (Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, where the Grand Canal opens into the San Marco Basin.) and took photographs of the restless empty gondolas that were buffeting about on their moorings awaiting the summer season. I took a few photographs despite the flickering of the red “low light warning” signal on my camera.
We went into a Travel Agent that dealt in Transalpino tickets and booked our train ticket to London with a Paris stopover. Once these had been paid for it was a relief to know that all of our travel expenditure was over and that all of our remaining funds were just for day to day living. The tickets cost us 113,300 Italian Lira which was about £47 Stirling each, and a £100 loan from George was added to my debt to him.
Nearby an Aussie girl grizzled as the Thomas Cook Cambio Desk refused to acknowledge that her Irish Pounds were a valid international currency. At one of the other Travel Agents that were not Transalpino Brokers we encountered a beautiful girl in a puffy-sleeved jumper who beamed at George with an amorous smile that exceeded the call of duty.
We took in a 1.5 litre bottle of red wine enroute to get us ready for the afternoon siesta, a snip for less than a quid (£1 Sterling), but far from sleepiness an almost manic mood afflicted us on this afternoon. We made the vino disappear in double-quick time and George had a shower while I launched into a frantic, frenzied dance routine, which almost resulted in the destruction of the white fishbowl lampshade, to the musical accompaniment of the B52’s Party Mix cassette (Rocking to Rock Lobster!).
At 18:00 hrs. we went back on the town. The only favourable point to note was that Venice was totally a pedestrian city. The people promenading on the narrow alleys presented a comic picture of wealth and indulgence which bordered on pantomime.
The shops seem to major in such useful items as Halloween-style masks, false plastic tits (women’s breasts), glass animals and elaborate pipes for smoking. Every sidewalk café appeared to be a small film set with mirrors and dicky-bow-tied waiters and elaborate silver optics to dispense measures of exotic spirit bottles.
At each square that we came across people in fashionable dress who appeared to be competing with the ubiquitous central statue for attention. Inane chatter was the order of the day. We gave up in incredulous disgust on our way to the Piazza San Marco and returned to our room with another flagon of wine.
We noticed more of the muzzled dogs that we saw all over Venice and guessed that a local law must be in force to prevent dog bites. Back in our room we adopted a mood of sanity that was soon distorted by another 1.5 litres of cheap red wine and the monotonous whining dirge of George’s Bob Dylan cassette tapes. He sat cross-legged with the wine bottle clasped phallically between his legs and did his best to match the tuneless wail from the tinny-sounding Walkman speakers.
At 23:00 hrs. we passed into oblivion.
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