by Lizz had been in Germany for roughly six months when we decided that Easter 2008 called for an extended weekend away. Somewhere romantic. Somewhere a little different from everyday life in Germany. Venice seemed to fit the bill rather nicely. This would be our little honeymoon.
We took the night train from Munich Central Station straight to Venice. It sounds wonderfully romantic when you write it down. The rain that night was doing its best to undermine the picture. It was pouring, and some young American travellers on the train were already worrying that their trip would be a washout.
I felt it was my duty to reassure them. With complete confidence, I explained that there was absolutely no need to worry: Lizz and I were going to Venice too, so good weather was guaranteed.
They looked a little bewildered. I suppose they hadn’t realised they were sharing a train with someone who had a personal arrangement with the sun. Still, they seemed to feel a bit better.
There was a little more behind my forecast than sheer cheek. The Alps form what we Germans call a Wettergrenze, a weather divide. Depending on the weather pattern, it can be raining on the northern side while conditions south of the mountains are much brighter. On so many of my own trips across the Alps, I had left bad weather behind in the north and found sunshine on the other side that I had developed considerable faith in the arrangement.
Not a scientific guarantee, perhaps, but quite enough evidence for me to issue one on a night train.
And when we arrived in Venice the next morning, the sun was shining. Exactly as promised. I accepted this entirely predictable success with the modesty you would expect.
We felt considerably less refreshed than the phrase “night train to Venice” might suggest, but very excited. Sleep could wait. We were in Italy.
For Lizz, who had arrived in Germany on 15 September 2007, this was her first trip outside the country since moving there. Now there was Venice to discover, and eventually stories and photographs to share with her family back home in Davao City.
Thank goodness we weren’t using Facebook yet. Nobody needed an update before we had even put our bags down. For those few days, the trip belonged to the two of us.
We had booked a room in an old house tucked down a back lane in the heart of the city. A palazzo would have been lovely, naturally, but ours was a rather more ordinary residence. Still, it put us right where we wanted to be: in Venice, with plenty to explore on foot.
Next door was a Chinese restaurant that didn’t look especially inviting. Chinese food in Italy? We gave it some thought and walked on. Remember that moment of culinary principle. It will become relevant later.
The famous Venice, gondolas included
Of course we visited the well-known places too. The Rialto Bridge, the Grand Canal, St Mark’s Square, the basilica and the Doge’s Palace all had their turn. We stood on bridges, admired buildings and took the sort of photographs that make it absolutely impossible to deny you are tourists.
Around St Mark’s Square, Venice seems to have gathered an unreasonable amount of splendour in one place: the basilica, the bell tower, the Clock Tower and the Doge’s Palace. The palace was once the home of the doge and a centre of government for the Venetian Republic. It makes our modest accommodation look even more modest, but then we weren’t trying to run a republic.
And there were plenty of us. One photograph of the crowds in St Mark’s Square rather settles any question about whether we had Venice to ourselves over Easter.
And yes, we admired the gondolas. From the bridges. A gondola tour did not receive approval from the honeymoon finance department. Lizz had seen the prices and decided we would be perfectly happy walking. Romance was very much alive; it simply had to travel on foot.
A city with its washing out
But what we loved most was turning away from those busy routes and wandering into quieter lanes. We wanted to see the places where Venetians lived: ordinary doors, green shutters, little balconies, boats moored outside houses and washing hanging overhead.
I know. Everyone says they want to find the “real Venice”. We were tourists looking for places without tourists, a slightly inconvenient arrangement if everybody has the same idea. Still, those quieter corners were what appealed to us most.
The washing lines were a particular favourite. Shirts, trousers, towels and entire sets of bedding stretched between the houses. Back home, laundry is a job you put off. In Venice, apparently, we considered it worth photographing from several angles.
One little square had bedding airing above it and someone working at a table below. Elsewhere, an archway framed a canal, a narrow path and yet more washing. These were the details we kept stopping for. A city full of extraordinary buildings, and there we were admiring somebody’s sheets.
Having a few days gave us time to wander and occasionally find those quieter places. We walked a lot. Across bridges, along canals and through passages narrow enough to make you wonder whether they really led anywhere. Venice gave our legs a thorough introduction to married life.
Our photographs also took in the view across the water towards St Mark’s and a much higher view over the rooftops and lagoon. From a distance, the city looked wonderfully peaceful. Down at street level, we knew perfectly well where everyone was hiding.
Across the basin from St Mark’s stands San Giorgio Maggiore, with its church and bell tower. The elevated photographs look back towards Venice from that side of the water: rooftops, domes and the lagoon stretching away beyond them. A useful reminder that there was rather more to the place than whichever narrow lane we happened to be wandering down.
Euros, pesos and a memorable dinner
Food, meanwhile, involved a different sort of sightseeing: studying menus and looking alarmed at the prices.
Lizz was still converting euros into pesos. A perfectly understandable habit, although it meant that dinner could become expensive twice: once on the menu and once again in her head. Fine dining was therefore not a major feature of our little honeymoon.
We certainly didn’t go hungry. Please don’t ask me to name every meal or restaurant, because most of those details have gone. One meal, unfortunately, has remained with me.
We ended up eating Chinese food because it was cheaper than the local alternatives. So much for our earlier principles. Faced with Venetian prices, we had become considerably more open-minded.
It was the worst Chinese food I have ever eaten. At least, I think it was Chinese food. By the end, I wasn’t entirely sure what it was trying to be.
Does everything cheap in Venice have to be bad? Surely not. But that particular dinner put forward a remarkably strong argument.
Venice after dark
The evenings more than made up for it. Walking after dark was one of our favourite parts of the whole trip. Once many of the day visitors had left, the streets felt calmer and we could enjoy Venice at our own pace.
We loved the warm light in old windows, the quiet corners and the buildings lit against the dark sky. There was time to stop and look without immediately having to move out of somebody else’s photograph. After all the walking we had already done, we somehow still wanted to walk a little further.
Looking back, I remember the grand sights, of course. But I also remember the washing above the canals, the quieter lanes, Lizz smiling beside the water and the pleasure of being away together.
Our little honeymoon involved a night train, an ordinary room in an extraordinary city, a great deal of walking and one very questionable dinner. We loved it. Though I think we could have managed perfectly well without the dinner.
And when we left Venice? It was raining.
This is something we have noticed on so many of our travels together: we get lovely weather for most of the visit, then, just as we are leaving, the rain arrives. Call it luck, coincidence or whatever you like. For us, it is a very real and rather familiar part of travelling.
It even happened on our last trip to Sri Lanka. Three weeks without a single drop of rain. Then we were sitting on the plane, ready to leave Colombo, and down it came: heavy rain. It carried on in the days after we left too. You can see why I have such confidence in our weather arrangements.
So my promise to those young Americans had held up nicely. Sunshine for our little honeymoon; rain when it was time to go. Apparently, I should have mentioned that the guarantee expired on departure.