Jumping off the Rialto Bridge
Why not?
I read that the 78 moveable seawalls designed and built to protect Venice during acqua alta were deployed successfully this weekend. No footage of tourists wading through two feet of floodwater in Piazza San Marco this year. A rare bit of good news in 2020 (updated 10/4/2020).
I was watching this cam the other night after doing some writing and couldn’t believe it when first one and then a second guy jumped off the Rialto Bridge and swam over to the piers on the right of the screen. Have you been to Venice? Do you know what’s in those canals? Neither does anyone else but there’s a reason no one is swimming in there.
After all, Katherine Hepburn developed a life-long eye infection after falling into a canal (three times!) while filming David Lean’s Summertime.
Similar to Katherine’s character in that movie, a middle-aged me went off to Venice on my own some years ago. Unlike Katherine’s character (or those two crazy guys the other night) I stayed on dry ground and, also unlike Katherine’s character, I did not fall in love with a married man. But I had my first experience of traveling solo to another country and loved it!
This was before Airbnb but I didn’t want to stay in a hotel and be mistaken for a tourist. I found a short term rental in the Dorsoduro on Craigslist. It was a pretty stripped down kind of place but I could afford it and, as long as I made sure to shower as soon as I got in from walking while I was still warm, I didn’t catch my death of pneumonia.
Did I mention that I went in February, the week after Carnival, thinking there might be about a million fewer tourists? Yeah. Right.
Oddly however the plane was only about a third full and we all got to stretch out and get some sleep on the flight over. Never happened before and certainly has never happened again.
My landlady met me at the train station and we bumped up and down what seemed like twenty arched bridges over canals and then turned down a dark, narrow alley. This was the kind of alley where those of us who watch too many movies know that throats get slit.
Once I was somewhat settled into the apartment and had determined that there was no wifi signal to be found I set out on my own into the city. Every couple of dozen yards or so I’d turn around to chart any recognizable landmarks so that I wouldn’t get lost.
I did not get lost that night. I made it home and tucked in under all four blankets wearing my sweats and hoodie (with the hood up), waking throughout the night to the surrounding church bells that rang, yes, every hour.
The next day, however, I walked boldly out into the maze and never looked back. I knew I was going to get lost no matter how careful I tried to be and decided to go for it. And, no, in 2007 I did not have a smartphone with GPS not that I think that would have been much help in the winding labyrinth of just about any medieval city (as my partner and I recently discovered in Toledo, Granada, and Seville, Spain).
I did get lost. I got lost that day and every day after that. In fact, if I made a turn and found myself anywhere near a shop selling masks or “genuine” Murano glass, I’d turn around and go in the opposite direction to get lost again.
On my second night out wandering, I made a turn and found myself in a largely deserted Piazza San Marco. No tourists letting pigeons sit on their heads in any direction; I was thrilled. The next day I wasn’t so lucky but I’m glad my first experience of that heavily photographed space was at night in the fog all by myself.
Different days I got lost differently. One day I kept going in circles. It was strange because I’d be sure I was going in a different direction and then I’d turn a corner and be right back at the same piazza I’d left three times previously. The next day was Dead End Day. Twenty times or more I found myself having to turn around and go back the way I came. Venice is tricky like that.
Much has been sung, said, and written about the melancholy of Venice. In addition to the decay and general sense of a centuries’ long collapse I never escaped the sense that I was walking through a dead city.
The only vitality seems to come from a hundred thousand pointing cameras swinging around in every direction trying to capture some vanishing magic. I have read that the actual population of people who live in Venice proper is under 90,000. There was no indication of any industry, any business, any endeavors at all that didn’t cater to the almighty tourist business.
On the Dead End Day, it was especially cold and I finally gave in and dropped a euro into the big wooden box at the door so I could go into a church and sit. There was the usual amoeba of tourists, craning their necks to see up into the darkness. On either side of the main sanctuary were private chapels that had once belonged to wealthy families. I went into one that was unoccupied by camera hounds and sat down.
As I sat there I could feel the soft inescapable weight of centuries settle gently around me. Time felt flexible and arbitrary. All those long dead faithful with their weddings, christenings, funerals, and endless Sundays seemed present. There was a time when Venice was a formidable world power. The 1% of that time had sat piously in these chapels. Did they see their prosperity as proof of God’s love and favor?
One night I joined some new friends for a meal over near the Arsenal. The lovely elderly French woman with whom I’d arrived had to leave early so I was on my own after dinner. To get home to the Dorsoduro I knew I had to get to the Ponte ell’Accademia (the Academy Bridge) and that it was somewhere in “that” direction.
I was nervous about being totally on my own at night and not knowing exactly where I was going. I highly recommend putting yourself in that position at least once in your life. We can get too attached to feeling at ease and secure. It does us good to get yanked out of that once in a while.
I figured that if I kept the Grand Canal to my left and kept going I would eventually get to the bridge. That worked long enough for me to start feeling a little less anxious. Then I hit, what else? A dead end and had to turn up an ally and into the city. I tried as much as possible to maintain what felt like the right direction and almost shouted with glee when I made a turn and there was that gorgeous bridge. Home free!
Carefully saving my money at the start of my visit meant that I could afford a 72 hour vaporetto pass for my final three days. After that whenever I got lost or was just tired of walking I’d look for the welcome sign with an arrow that would get me to a vaporetto stop and I’d jump onto the boat. Getting on and off a crowded vaporetto is not very different from navigating the subways here in New York.
One of those days after getting off a vaporetto I recognized the route I was taking as being the one I’d taken several nights earlier to get to the Academy Bridge. And then I looked up and realized that there were signs all along the route with arrows pointing the way to the bridge. Ha!
I spent 8 days in Venice on my own. I did not have any flings nor did I make any real lasting connections. What I did was get there safely and not hide out in my apartment. It was very cold while I was there and I was out for hours and hours by myself every day.
I had some tough lonely times when I wondered why the hell I’d done this and then I’d go out and get lost over and over until I found familiar ground only to get lost again. I went to Murano where I was sure the glass tulip I bought for a friend hadn’t been made in China.
There were nights, as a kid back in Ohio, when I’d sit out on a ridge overlooking the freeway and watch the cars and trucks all whizzing off to Somewhere Else. I think every small town has kids like me who know that they are meant to be Somewhere Else. How lucky for me that I got up and out of that little town and pushed myself to live and travel and explore and take chances on Somewhere Else.
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