An unforgettable trip to Venice in high tide

We planned a trip to Venice for a four-day weekend back when we were on holiday in Australia in late-September. At the time, Venice in November seemed like a reasonable idea - easy to get to from London and in theory, ideal for a long weekend. I have a friend who lives quite close to Venice, who was the main reason for this trip. She had suggested that Venice would be ‘depressing’ during winter but I had no idea what exactly that meant until the record-breaking high tide hit international news a few days before we were due to fly to Venice!

Until this point, I had never heard of Venice’s issues with high tide so had no context for what this would mean for our trip. International news made it seem like a flood but after experiencing it myself, it was something altogether different. Like any tide, the water came in quickly, rising to its maximum height over six hours and then went out over six hours. This meant that the by night time, the water had all departed and it was like it had never happened (unless of course, you entered a building that suffered damages as a result).

High tide in St Mark’s square on Monday (a good day)

We arrived in the middle of the day on Saturday and there were very few signs of the high tide earlier that week. We decided to wander aimlessly around the island and managed to fall into a tourist-trap restaurant with over-priced, very average food. After this experience, Asher became very wary of any restaurant in a piazza. The lunch experience was made up for in the evening when my friend took us to a restaurant she knows well towards St Mark’s Square, where we shared delicious bigoli and gnocchi, among other dishes.

We had one extreme high tide day while we were in Venice on Sunday. On Saturday, we witnessed shops preparing for the incoming water by boarding up their doors and spraying a water-tight foam over the seals of doors and windows. I had a small pair of wellington boots with me and considered whether I should buy a pair of the disposable wellingtons that street vendors were selling but decided not to. My friend had decided that we should leave Venice on Sunday to go somewhere on the mainland and so we chose Padua (also known as Padova). After looking outside of our hotel in the morning, it seemed like we might be able to make it to the train station without wellingtons… until we looked up either end of the narrow alleyway to see shin-deep water! I had to stay put while Asher headed out in his proper wellingtons to buy me a pair of disposable wellington boots.

Padua is a beautiful old city known as a university town. I was really impressed by the pretty, clean streets and Prato della Valle, a very large piazza featuring historic statues surrounding a ring of water. Padua is known for the old frescoes by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel but unfortunately, we didn’t realise this until we got there, when the tickets were all sold out. I would have also liked to see the interior of Palazzo della Ragione, however, it isn’t open on Sundays. We did manage to visit a nice impressionist art exhibition in the afternoon.

I developed a bit of a love for Bigoli, a pasta local to Venice and surrounding areas. The shape is like a thick spaghetti and often served with a salsa made from sardines in Venice. The bigoli I had in Padua came with a duck ragout, which was also delicious.

We were originally meant to spend our Sunday at Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) on the Secret Itineraries Tour. The extremely high tide had meant that the palace was closed so we went there on Monday in the hope of still being able to do the tour. Unfortunately, damage from the high tide meant that the tour wasn’t operating on Monday but we still managed to enter on a normal ticket. The location of the palace right near the water in St Mark’s Square makes it very susceptible to the high tide, but also incredibly pretty. Inside, there are some incredible halls full of paintings and murals. Beneath the palatial rooms are prison cells, which are equally interesting. Possibly the most interesting part of the cells is the Bridge of Sighs, a passage that prisoners would cross on their way to their cell, with a magnificent final view over the canal.

Before our whole plan for this trip was turned upside down by the high tide, I had hoped to visit Burano Island on Monday. We left Palazzo Ducale around midday and after lunch, headed to the ferry but just missed the Burano ferry by about two minutes! We decided to go to Murano instead as we wouldn’t have reached Burano until sunset. Despite many people telling me that they found Murano boring, we still quite liked it and really enjoyed the Glass Museum. It may not be everyone’s thing, but if you’re interested in the history of arts and crafts, I think it’s worth having a look.

Thanks to my local friend, we managed to organise a cooking class in the evening at one of her friend’s apartments. We made a delicious three-course meal of cicchetti, ravioli and tiramisu. While the ravioli will take some practice to perfect the pasta dough, the cicchetti and tiramisu are really quite easy to make. The ravioli was filled with prawns and burrata, which isn’t a pasta filling I’ve ever tried before, but it was delicious. Our cicchetti were topped with a lot of delicious ingredients, including gorgonzola, walnut pesto, Calabrese pesto, sundried tomatoes, ricotta and balsamic cream. Not all of these ingredients are easy to find in London, but I am sure they can be found somewhere. After we had finished cooking, my friend and her friend’s partner joined us for the delicious dinner.

Our final day in Venice was spent at the Biennale. I was really impressed by this art festival - in fact, I would go back to Venice for this reason alone. We had only allowed one day to see it so we spent our day in the Giardini section, which has a dedicated building for each participating country. The variety of different exhibitions were really interesting - everything from performance art by Israel to a dark, contemporary take on a bible passage by Russia. We didn’t quite finish all of the countries in the Giardini and there is a whole other section that we didn’t visit so next time, I would spend two days at the Biennale.