Nine days in the lagoon, work honestly, though you won’t see the results until 2023 🤞. Publishing is a long game. Reminder — you can subscribe to this newsletter trip for free here. Anyway here’s an issue about travel and travel alone.
So how is Venice?
The honest answer… pretty much as you’d expect in November. Quiet except at weekends and around the usual hotspots such as the Rialto and the Piazza San Marco. All the locals told me there were fewer tourists than usual and I’m sure that’s right. But it’s far from a ghost town. The steady transformation of essential local shops into places selling tourist tat and yet more bars continues. The huge cruise liners have gone but any idea that the pandemic is going to result in a huge reset for the nature of international tourism there seems to me naive. The people who think the place is Disneyland with gondolas are still around, and occasionally that colours their behaviour.
The big event when I was there was the Festa della Salute, an annual weekend ceremony very popular with the locals. A temporary bridge appears across the Grand Canal to the Salute church, and crowds gather to light candles. This year was quieter than usual I gather, with restrictions to try to keep down the crowds. It was pretty busy all the same around Salute, and sombre too since this is an event to mark the end of plague in the 17th century, an odd resonance with today.
Getting there and back
The last time I visited in July I had to quarantine for five days, which wasn’t fun at all. At least that rule has vanished — for now anyway. On this occasion I flew British Airways from Heathrow and it was, in part, fantastic. I was urged to upload my three outgoing documents in pdf — proof of vaccination, a pre-flight lateral flow test and a filled-in EU passenger locator form — to BA in advance. Without that, it appears you can’t check in online in advance.
It seems a touch bureaucratic, but I discovered the reason when I got to the airport. First there was American-style kerbside check-in just outside the entrance. The friendly chap there checked my status and passport, took my case, and guided me towards security. I was through in minutes. In Venice all I had to do was slap my passport on the egate, go to the officer at the counter, get my passport stamped (that always hurts) and I was through. Fast and easy and no BA’s crew didn’t say a word to the couple in the row in front of me who thought mask-wearing was for squares.
Just like last time coming home was the hardest part. The UK passenger locator form now demands a code for the lateral flow test you’ve pre-bought to use when you’re back. More awkwardly when it comes to proving you’re double jabbed it won’t accept an upload of the pdf provided by the NHS app. All it wants to see is your latest QR code. The online form offered to scan the code but that didn’t work for me. So I wound up screenshotting it and uploading the jpeg. A lot of hassle and a struggle for anyone who hasn’t got a handle on screenshots. This was on a laptop. It may work with the scanner on a phone or iPad — I don’t know. But however you do it you will need some device and a web connection before you leave for the airport.
Getting back was fine apart from the fact BA parked the plane at Heathrow on a remote stand and, after all those lectures on distancing, slung us onto a crammed bus to the terminal. This is happening a lot with them at Terminal 5 apparently. Oh, and the Heathrow egate machines still hate me. I was only allowed through on the third try by pressing down the passport very hard. Still, it could be worse.
Travel tip
If you’re in Italy — and quite a few places in Europe — you will have to show proof of double vaccination. The famed Green Pass as Italy calls it. You’ll be asked for it and ID at all museums and public buildings before entry. In theory, you should be asked to present it as you enter cafes and restaurants too though this only happened to me on a few occasions. When I queried this with one barista he said, ‘I’m not paid to be a policeman for the government.’
That said, mask wearing is standard everywhere, on vaporetti, in shops, in cafes until you get your food and drink. The lax approach to it seen in the UK will soon get you into trouble in Italy.
But back to that magic pass. If you have the UK NHS vaccination pass you’re ready to go. Italy has its own app for checking the QR code of vax passes and recognises the latest one provided by the NHS app. You can show it on your phone or carry a printout. But the easiest way I found was simply to stuff a copy into my phone case so I could show the code whenever needed like this.
This worked every time and saved me having to faff around with the phone.
What’s in the kitchen
I wouldn’t normally mention something you doubtless can’t cook at home. But since I was there for Salute I have to tell you about a dish you’ll only find at that time of year, and in Venice too… castradina.
As I said earlier, Salute marks the end of a plague in the 17th century. During this period one of the few foods people could get was smoked mutton from Dalmatia. This was made into a very rustic and hearty soup with cabbage… castradina.
Today it’s a traditional dish around this time of year. You can find the recipe here but to make it you’d need to find one of the chunks of smoked, spiced mutton the Venetian butchers sell in November. Much easier if you’re there to find a restaurant that’s making it for the weekend. By Saturday they were everywhere. This bowl was just €12. One of the locals who spotted me eating it was surprised a foreigner had even heard of it and wondered what I thought.
Lovely, I said, naturally. And it was too on a cold day, though very much the kind of cucina povera fare you’d expect from mutton and cabbage. If you’re around when it’s there you have to try it. Don’t think it needs to be a regular though.
David Hewson 