June 5, 2005: Not Motorcycling Venice

The Breva pushed me all the way to Venice today, the Sunday afternoon and the last day of a four-day bank holiday. Everyone had predicted that the traffic would be crammed with people coming home from vacation but I found the roads empty, some almost ghostly, especially the toll booth outside of Venice. The toll ticket I'd put in my pocket when I entered the autostrada was creased and it didn't read in the machine, but there was so little traffic that the two or three cars that pulled in behind me simply backed up and chose another booth while I pressed the help button – a woman came out finally and took my ticket. I sat there for a long time waiting for her to come out again and finally noticed that the screen had some instructions on it – I put my credit card in and sure enough it read it and the gate opened. Such is the helplessness of being a foreigner. Imagine that happening on the Golden Gate Bridge were it automated and not manned.

The journey from Mandello del Lario to Venice probably should have taken 3 1/2 hours but it took 4 1/2 hours for me because I stopped four times to make sure that the duffle bag strapped to the back of the Breva was secure. The first two times I stopped it had slipped to cover the tail light. The third adjustment had it right, I found at the fourth stop.

On the Italian autostrada one stops at the AutoGrill complex, which consists of the massive AutoGrill restaurant (sit down) and a snack bar (stand up) with coffee and quick sandwiches. There's also usually a separate "quick stop" store much like our gas station marts, full of junk food and beverages and motor oil and a myriad of other items useless and useful depending on your state of need. There's also the gas station, an Agip or an Esso, and someone to efficiently fill your tank and take your money. It is a place hustling and bustling with travelers and everyone knows what they're doing and how to do it except for you, who can't even find small change for the toilet attendant or even figure out how to open the stall door with its complicated button and turn system.

As to the excessive time I took to motorcycle to Venice there was also the factor of speed. As a rule in Italy scooters and motorcycles of all sizes and power capabilities speed to just above capacity but I, with a Moto Guzzi Breva 750 IE perfectly capable of running comfortably in the mid-hundred kilometer range and certainly capable of running well past the speed limit, was running at the low end of the auto speed average on the autostrada – 115 km/hour. This tends to confuse auto drivers who expect you to pass them and not vice-versa, but I was getting comfortable with how the bike handled, the load distribution, and also dealing with the wicked cross-wind coming from the Adriatic and across the plains of the Po Valley from about Verona all the way to Venice.

As Japanese superbikes and Ducati Monsters and even a few Harley-Davidson's zoomed past me – most without fairings – I wondered how they were handling the lambaste of wind I found so tedious. Some of them were as loaded as I was, though with items from the grocery store or a pillion passenger wearing white Capri's and lime green stiletto heels. I settled in behind a car that was going a consistent 115 and stayed there as long as he did though he slowed a couple of times and motioned for me to pass.

I'd found out at a tourist information center at one of the AutoGrille complexes that the Parking St. Marco is a covered garage and the safest place to park a motorcycle loaded with gear and so after the toll booth I followed the signs to highway SS11, a land bridge across the bay to Venice and more blustering wind, and easily found it and was waved in next to a BMW GS 1100 with a duffle lashed to the pillion.

A lot about motorcycle travel is an ordeal, especially when you can't ride the motorcycle straight into your hotel room or, in this case, the city you're exploring. As the parking guys were occupied – they were having a yelling match with a German who said his Mercedes had no dents in it when he gave it to them to park (I know, because their common language was English) - I used the shelter of the GS and the Breva to quickly slip out of my motorcycle gear and into my city clothes. I piled everything I didn't need in Venice (camping gear, motorcycle gear) into the duffle and everything I did need (computer, camera, clothes) into the panniers, slipped the PacSafe metal net around the duffle and locked it to the bike. I hauled the panniers to the water taxi about 1000 meters from the garage, put the ticket in the time stamp machine at the ramp (I saw somebody else do that and figured I should, too), and boarded about 30 seconds before it left.

A Viennese water taxi is a barge outfitted with wooden benches and mostly enclosed with windows that open from the top down like most city busses. This one was about 3/4 full and held about half tourists and half locals just doing their daily thing – shopping or going to work or visiting friends. I'd been told that that the trip to Piazza St Marco was about 40 minutes I slid in next to the window, slipped the panniers under the seat ahead of me and had room enough to put my backpack at my side. That is, until two tiny elderly women with shining white hair and silk scarves and ivory skin and black eyes plopped down next to me, the oldest and tiniest one shoving me violently to the window and yelling at me pointing her finger at my backpack and my lap.

I looked around thinking that the bus must have filled up while I was arranging my bags but there were plenty of empty benches so I didn't know why they chose to sit there and harass me. I must have looked fairly distressed because a man a few benches back stood up and yelled at the ladies pointing to me and to an empty bench a few feet behind us. The rest of the boatload of people started chattering, too, and the ladies moved, leaving me alone.

"Grazie mille," I said to the man and he said, in English, "Nothing. Enjoy your Venice."

The water taxi moves like a houseboat, that is to say that stopping is a matter of reversing at the right moment. We came to about a dozen violently churning stops to pick up and drop off people before the Piazza St Marco where I hauled my panniers across the magnificent square with cafes and orchestras and a humongous cathedral...St. Marcos.

I found my hotel in the warren of alleyways but not without asking and turning left and right and right and left and coming to a couple of dead ends at canals, and was put into a room a tiny bit larger than the size of a double bed – the smallest room I've ever rented for $130 a night. I didn't plan to stay in it much, anyway, as I was eager to explore the famous city I'd heard so much about.

I have to say it didn't impress me very much at first even with the charming shops with masks and puppets and glittery Venician glass. I have lived in old European cities – Lyon and Nice and Amsterdam – so the cobblestones and the cathedrals on every corner and even the canals didn't especially thrill me. St. Marco's and Rialto areas are heavily touristed and I walked and walked to get out of them, making a circle or a curve or a triangle, who knows, following the signs for Piazza Roma where I parked the bike, hoping to get out of the crowds. I finally found myself in an area where most people were speaking Italian and wearing real clothes (not white shorts and camera bags – I will never understand the white shorts mentality) and standing in bars and eating at restaurants where everything didn't cost 15 Euros or more for a single course. For 15 Euros total I sat at a long table outside with many other people in singles and in groups and ate a three-course prix fixe meal of minestrone and roast chicken and salad and red wine in the humid night air filled with chatter and laughter in another language. I realized I was tired, and enjoyed sitting and knowing that I didn't have to talk to anyone at all.

I walked slowly back away from direction Piazzale Roma where I parked the bike following the signs to Rialto and St. Marco, and found the Rialto area fairly empty only now there was some ambient jazz music coming from a bar at the canal and a scene of young Italians drinking from an extensive menu of wines by the glass chalked on a board. I enjoyed a red recommended by the bartender, enjoying it just inside the doorway at a rough wooden table lit by a long white candle dripping with wax. Across the square a number of people came out of a church and milled around, then went back in. I followed them and paid half price for a concert that was half over to see a small ensemble of classical musicians and an opera singer in the fabulous acoustics and ambience of an ancient small cathedral.

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