we alighted just a little further down from san marco, at arsenale. arsenale (not to be confused with the north london football club we support) is the site of the historic venetian shipyards. the might of the venetian empire was built on its naval dominance and the arsenale was the engine powering it. we visited the naval history museum and were pleasantly surprised when our rolling venice card scored us a discount - entry only cost 75 cents each.
the museum itself is probably a little off the beaten path, and we were the only ones there until we were about to leave. although it's not very flashy in presentation, its contents are quite impressive. the first room you walk into contains massive cannon barrels from warships of old. you see scale, 3d models of various fortresses. we were pleased to see quite a few models of fortresses from crete, including the one we had visited in rethymnon.
models were the name of the game here and there were lots of model ships. this included ancient ships used by the greeks (basically glorified covered rowboats) to sailing tall ships to modern supertankers, naval destroyers and cruise liners. there were even ships from other cultures, including chinese junks and viking ships. of course, the museum would not be complete without a model of the arsenale shipyards, showing the progression of a ship being built and set to sea. however, the highlights had to be the full-scale venetian wedding barge and the gondola collection, which includes peggy guggenheim's personal gondola.
after we'd seen enough ships (surely for a lifetime), we headed back to the streets of venice. if you wander around enough, you begin to realise that many of the streets (as seen on a map) aren't really streets at all, and are little wider than an alley. some are passages with doors on either end and give you the distinct feeling like you're going down a tunnel. every now and then, a gap appears between the buildings and, voila, you have a throughway. toss in a few dead ends (some end in enclosed squares, others end in a canal), and even with a good map, it's not that hard to get lost. we suppose if you stick to the main streets, then you wouldn't really get lost. but then again, you don't see much traveling that way.
we eventually made our way back to the ponte di rialto, the postcardesque bridge that spans over the grand canal. after a few pictures, we headed across to the western side of the lagoon and the areas of san polo and san croce. running the gauntlet of tourist stalls, we made our way over to the bank with the hope of catching the fish market in action. but it was not to be, as most of the traders had packed up for the day and only a few stragglers were still in the last phases of cleaning their stalls.
to console ourselves, we stopped at a small pub - the ostaria antico polo - for some refreshment. we wanted to try some more cichetti and this ostaria had a fairly good selection from which to choose. we settled on classic venetian choices of baccala mantecato (pureed cod), sarde in saor (marinated sardines), as well as some other tasty snacks whose names we never knew (we simply went up to the bar and pointed "that one"). this time, we washed it down with spritz, which is a typical afternoon aperitif in venice made by mixing soda water, white wine and some form of bitters (sometimes just a lemon peel tossed in).
we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around san polo, passing by the odd open square and more than a few churches. it seemed as if every turn we took, there was a postcard shot waiting for us. venice gets progressively less touristy the further you go from the grand canal, and we noticed that san polo and croce were sleepier parts of towns and many of the people we saw seemed like locals. we tried to find a couple of gelaterias recommended by our guidebook, but unfortunately, they were closed. we were quite disappointed because the guide did quite a good job marketing them. we made up for it by sampling some italian pastries, including canoli and a fornarina di cioccolato e pistacchio.
for dinner, we crossed back over the grand canal and headed up to cannaregio and the jewish quarter in particular. we settled on a little trattoria by one of the main canals in the area and discovered that we were literally the only ones there (it was probably still too early and most italians were still in the ostaria for an evening, pre-dinner drink). we had a delightful meal that included steamed clams, gnocchi with crab sauce, frittura mista, and canneloni, topped off with some panna cotta for dessert.
after dinner we went to see if we could get tickets to see either an ensemble play a tribute to vivaldi (who was born and raised in venice) or la traviata (verdi, on the other hand, was not from venice). we could get neither, so we took another romantic stroll back to our hotel, stopping briefly to pick up yet another round of gelato before retiring for the evening.
to be continued...
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