Sempre Dritto

As I step out of my apartment, I realize that I have no idea where I am or where I’m going. So I take a cue from conceptual artist, Sophie Calle, a woman known for wandering, and choose someone to follow.

My target is easy to pick out from the crowd, a curly-haired man with kind eyes who smiles at me when we pass in the street. He’s carrying a closed umbrella under one arm and moves at a quick pace, so quick I almost lose sight of him immediately. I can tell he is a Venetian, a local, because he walks with a sense of purpose; he knows where he is going. He takes one sharp turn after another without hesitation. Without consulting a map. 

I follow him to a campo, at this point I still don’t know its name, though it’s the one where I previously spotted a mannequin in a store window wearing a gold lamé shirt with no trousers. At the base of a statue, the man greets a friend. The two men walk to a nearby café. I hesitate. Rather than finding a table for myself, I continue walking across the campo and turn on the first street I see. Today, I need to roam.

A maze. A labyrinth. A puzzle. A web. There are so many ways to describe Venice, so many descriptions that have been used a thousand times before. With its narrow, car-free streets, it’s a city made for flânerie. Even with a map it’s tough to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B; there are infinite twists and turns, followed by infinite turns and twists, and just when you think you’ve found your way, you hit a dead end or water with no bridge (or even better, you find yourself back in the place where you started). 

I’ve quickly realized it’s best to just give in and let yourself wander. Venice is a small, safe city, and while it’s easy to get lost, it’s just as easy to get found. You’re surrounded by water, so it’s not possible to walk all the way to Rome (though it might feel like you’ve walked that far sometimes). Come to a crossroad…Feel like turning right? Turn right. Feel like turning left? Turn left. If you hit water with a bridge, it’s okay to cross it. If you hit water without a bridge (or a dead end), just shrug your shoulders and turn around. You’ll be fine. See cars? Don’t be afraid. You’re only by the train station.

Yes, Venice is mobbed with tourists to the point it can feel at times like a parody of itself (more on that in a few days). But keep in mind that most of the millions of tourists who visit Venice are day trippers. They roll in early in the morning, either on trains or on cruise ships, and they roll out in the evening, and most stick to the areas surrounding Ponte di Rialto and Piazza San Marco. Take a few steps away from these places and then make a few turns down a few calles (the narrower the better) and you’ll find yourself alone or with the locals. Go out early in the morning, before the cruise ships arrive, or late at night, after they’ve departed, and you’ll have a moment of solitude in front of some of the most stunning architecture you’ve ever seen.

Still, as much as it’s fun to get lost in Venice, at times even la flâneuse needs to get where she’s going. Maybe she wants to go to a specific museum or she needs something at la farmacia or she wants to head back to her apartment. It can be frustrating to be so disoriented. If you don’t want to live with your face in your map (or more likely, buried in your GPS) it helps to know a few routes by heart.

The problem, though, is that the buildings, campos, and calles in Venice at first all look the same, and the names of calles and campos all sort of blur together. You’ll find yourself saying, “How in the hell can anyone figure any of this out?” 

My first night in Venice I had to go to a grocery store. As it was a Sunday evening, a lot of places were closed, but I found a Conad that was still open, only 20 minutes from my apartment. It was a similar route to the route I had taken when walking in from the train station, but even so, in Venice, in the dark and in the rain (and often in the bright sunlight as well) everything looks the same.

On my walk back home, trying to balance my groceries while holding an open umbrella and my cell phone, my GPS stopped loading. I started to panic a bit. Here I was, in the middle of Venice, in the rain (always the rain), completely clueless where I lived. I kept walking, hoping I’d magically stumble upon my apartment, not that I knew the address, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a hat for sale at a kiosk.

Turn left here, I said to myself. You turned left at that hat on your way in from the train station.

I was back on course.

There are a million hats for sale in Venice and a million hat-selling kiosks. Why would I remember this insignificant hat at this insignificant kiosk and not another? Funny how the brain works.

Last week I started collecting objects like this in my head, using them to create an internal Venetian map. Because there are signs all over for Piazza San Marco and Rialto, I decided that if I could figure out to get home from these two landmarks, I could never be truly lost. So in my brain I made a list of visual cues:

• At that one campo (you know the one), take the bridge on the left, the one where the gondolas are
• Yarn shop
• Cork collection in window
• Glass jellyfish
• White shirts I want but can’t afford
• Cross bridge, don’t go through green door
• One-eyed glass face
• Gold lamé shirt wearing mannequin with a bare butt (sidebar: at publication time he’s changed to a sequined thong and nothing else, so make a note if you’re trying to find my apartment)
• Colorful pigments
• Monkey wearing glasses (trust me, it’s a thing)
• Dancing graffiti

As random as it all feels, it’s worked. I barely consult my map anymore and already feel like I’m home.

Sempre dritto, Straight ahead. If you ask a Venetian for directions, this is the answer you will likely get. And, if you look at a map, it is sort of straight ahead. Sort of. Imagine drawing a line drunk, and then trying to retrace that same line, still drunk, and you’ll get the idea. In fact, it might be easier to walk through Venice after drinking a few Spritzes (though you should be careful of falling into a canal). 

Straight ahead in Venice might involve turning right, then left, then right again, then doing a couple of switchbacks before you get to where you’re going. Sometimes it involves taking an alternate route and still winding up at the place where you originally want to go (or at a place you never knew existed). It often involves stopping for an espresso or a gelato. It always involves seeing something unexpected, something beautiful. 

In the end, the key to getting around Venice is letting go of the idea of getting around. Judith Martin, Miss Manners herself, explains in No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice that for the Venetophile, encountering street sights with arrows pointing in opposite directions starts to make sense over time: “Eventually, you could get there either way, and how is the sign painter to know which route you would prefer?” 

The logic of it is its illogic, and if you can accept that, you’ll fit right in. Don’t resist it. Embrace it. The point, I’ve learned, to walking in Venice is to just let it happen, to just see where the road leads you. Even if that road leads you to water without a bridge. Just smile and remember to take a few seconds to absorb the view.

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