Several cities are sometimes called “The Venice of the
North” (largely by tourism boards, I would guess). A brief internet search
tells me that Amsterdam and St. Petersberg are the two most common, but I’ve
also heard Leiden, Ghent, and Brugges referred to in this way. Given my
superficial impressions of Venice gleaned from scenes from Casino Royal and
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, I suspected that such comparisons to be a
little silly. A four day visit to Venice last week confirmed this suspicion –
while lovely, Venice is not the Amsterdam of the South, Amsterdam is not the
Venice of the North, and the two cities seem to have little in common outside
of being beautiful in markedly different ways and being especially vulnerable
to rising seas.
Venice had never been on my radar as a travel
destination until two close friends of mine invited me to attend their wedding
there. I never asked Francesca why they planned the wedding in Venice rather
than Amsterdam, but I suspect the decision had something to do with Venice’s
more reliably warm and sunny weather, the convenience for Francesca’s family
(Dan’s family is from Wisconsin, so differences in travel efforts between
Amsterdam and Venice were small), and the fact that the beauty of Venice might
be more suited for romance and weddings than Amsterdam’s beauty is.
Venice takes one of my favorite things about Amsterdam
– the relative lack of cars, compared with places like Phoenix and Albuquerque
– to an extreme; there are zero cars in the city, which is accessible only by
water and via foot bridges. There are also no bike paths and, from what I saw
during my short stay, no bike paths. Everything is by foot or by water taxi.
One of Francesca’s relatives actually bemoaned the government’s lack of investment
in alternative transportation in the city, since the heavy emphasis on walking
and the ubiquitous bridges, all of which are covered in steps, present
challenges to the physically disabled and parents with strollers (as well as
tourists with roller baggage). It’s not clear to me how the city could be
changed to be more accommodating, though; it feels like it is has been oriented
in its current form for centuries, and that this orientation is constrained by
the water on/in/around which it is built.
The streets were quite narrow, and they snaked their
way in between buildings that, again, felt as if they’d been there with minimal
changes for hundreds of years. The main pedestrian arteries between major sites
were nearly as narrow as the side streets, and they were clogged with people
walking in different directions at different speeds and stopping to look at
shops. There was a minor feeling of claustrophobia in these areas. But after a
90 second walk down an adjacent street – many of which were narrow enough that
I could touch the buildings on the left and the right side of the street at the
same time, simply by spreading my arms – I could find myself alone, with no
other people in eyesight, and only the muffled sound of the crowd within
earshot.
The contrast with the tourist zoo was even stronger at
night, when many of the visitors have taken buses or trains back to the cities
around Venice in which they are staying overnight. These side streets – and
after midnight, even some of the previously bustling main streets – were not
only empty but also silent. There were few street lights, and the sole source
of light came from dimly glowing windows. Walks down these streets at night
felt like walks into a different century. Apart from those dimly glowing windows,
there were no obvious cues to indicate that it was the 21st century,
and even then it was easy to imagine those lights replaced by candles.
The canals in Venice bore little resemble to those in Amsterdam. Many of the Venitian canals separated houses rather than separating roads, most were far narrower than those in Amsterdam - some narrow enough that a person could touch both sides of the houses lining the canals at the same time - and the water was a striking teal color, which contrasts with the dark gray of Amsterdam's canals.
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And, finally, the wedding was beautiful. Dan and Francesca picked a perfect venue, and they pulled it off marvelously.
