A Birthday in Venice

We celebrated my birthday in December with a trip to Venice. This was our second time in Venice. We originally visited in 1988 during a 10-month bicycle trip, which included 3-1/2 months pedaling from Rome to Dublin. In the 22 years since we first visited Venice, we've changed a great deal. (There's nothing like a birthday to remind you how much you've changed.) Venice, on the other hand, is exactly the same. And that is the beauty of Venice: it is a city frozen in time. The time was around the 13th Century when Venice was the major trading center in Europe for goods and crusaders coming in from and departing for the East. The thriving trade center became a center of banking, manufacturing, and the arts. Wealthy citizens built splendid palaces along the canals and subsidized great works of art. But Venice's preeminence as an international trade center declined in the 15th Century after Magellan found a sea route to the East, shifting Europe's center of trade from Venice to Lisbon and other European cities that were prepared to set sail. Venice, with it's fleet of oared boats, slid into obscurity, preserved in its lovely, slightly decayed medieval-renaissance state.

From our original visit, we both had fond memories of Venice. I loved getting lost in the maze of little alleyways, and Jim loved that the city is without automobiles. (I find it funny that a guy who owns five vehicles loves car-free zones.) You can drive to Venice from the mainland on a long causeway, but then you have to park at one of the few outrageously expensive garages. (Cheaper alternatives are on the mainland and along the causeway, but we were only in Venice three nights so we opted for convenience.) From the parking garage, we rolled and carried our luggage to the vaporetto station, where we picked up the public boat that would get us, our dogs, and luggage closer to our hotel near St. Mark's Square. Bruno carried his own backpack, which made him a big hit on the vaporetto. After disembarking, we wandered around looking for the right alleyway to proceed down, but when we started retracing our steps, Jim pulled out the GPS and took us directly to the Hotel Locanda Canal. Venice is great for walking, but not with suitcases. A GPS is handy.

Venice has some fantastic sights to see, including the Doge's Palace, St. Mark's Basilica and Square, and the Frari church, but I didn't feel the desire that I feel in Florence to visit sights. Venice makes me want to walk and walk and walk, and when I'm tired of walking, it makes me want to eat. I did visit St. Mark's Basilica on my birthday, admiring the golden, stone-studded mosaics covering the ceiling, studying the detail in the Paolo d'Oro altarpiece, and marveling at the waves created in the black and white mosaic floor from the settling of the pilings under the weight of the cathedral. Jim and I also spent a day visiting half a dozen churches around the city, the best of which was the Frari for the masterpieces it contains. They say that Venice has an amazing café culture, but it was too cold when we were there for it to be in full swing. The cafes were full inside, but outside tables and chairs were empty in the near freezing temperatures. The only thing to do was to walk to stay warm and dip into a café or restaurant at meal time for some local cuisine. On my birthday, we dipped into Osteria al Mascaron, snagged the last table, and enjoyed their seafood antipasto, pasta, and house white wine.

Walking the streets of Venice is like hiking the canyons of the American Southwest. The footpaths are narrow and are hemmed in by buildings rising 30-feet overhead, as though the watery canals had carved out the facades of these buildings over time. These urban canyons angle this way and that, slowly revealing the path forward. Little canyons merge to form bigger canyons, and bigger canyons divide into many narrower canyons. Venice begs you to come to the next bend in the canyon and peak around the corner for a visual treat. It hardly ever disappoints.

I've posted more pictures of Venice and created a short video highlighting some different forms of Venetian transportation.

Olive Oil

Much of the mystery of olive oil production has been solved for us, including the answer to the question "why is good olive oil so expensive?" The answer: harvesting olives is really hard work! But if you've ever tasted fresh extra-virgin olive oil, then you know it is worth the expense if you buy it or the effort if you happen to have an olive grove, which we do now. Of course, having a grove of olive trees is common here. Italy ranks second after Spain for production of olive oil (22% of the global market) and per capita consumption (12.35 kg per person per year). All of our neighbors have groves that range from 10 trees (ours) to 200 or so trees (Letizia and Francesca's next door).

Another mystery of olive oil production is when to harvest the olives. We've heard everything from October to February, but I think the honest answer is whenever you can find the time. If you do it earlier, you have better weather, but you also have more green olives that aren't yet ripe. If you harvest later, you run the risk of harvesting in cold, rainy weather, but you'll have a higher ratio of black, ripe olives. Green olives are not a bad thing for olive oil, but they contain less oil than black olives and that gets into the third mystery of olive oil production: the yield. Apparently, Italians discuss their yield--the ratio of oil to olives--like Americans discuss horsepower in their cars. It's a serious topic that reflects on an individuals self-worth and image. We haven't been privy to any of these conversations, but we have heard men fight over the size of meat in the ragu, so it seems likely that olive oil yield could be an important and sensitive topic.

It took Jim and I about 8 hours to harvest the olives from our 10 trees. That was after spending a few hours with Francesca learning the ropes. The harvest involves spreading nets under the trees and then using small hand rakes to remove the olives from the tree. Once all of the olives are picked, the nets are lifted and the olives are dumped into a crate. Pretty basic, but Francesca had two valuable tools: an oliviera, an electric tool with gyrating prongs on a long handle so that olives can be harvested from hard to reach spots, and an olive cleaning machine that removes the leaves and twigs.

Once we had our olives (10 trees produced 56 kilograms of olives), a co-worker of Jim's made an appointment for us to take the olives to a frantoio, or olive pressing facility. We knew the frantoio had a minimum amount, which we would be under, but we were able to buy olives from them to get the 130 kilograms we needed. The frantoio we went to was Lucchi & Guastalli in Santo Stefano di Magra. When one of the owners discovered that I spoke English, he went and got his partner, who explained the process and served me a cup of coffee. I spent the next two hours at the frantoio watching my olives be weighed, washed, ground up into a peanut butter paste, and then spun through a centrifuge to extract the oil. An entirely automated process. The air was thick with the smell of olive oil and the warehouse buzzed with the fervor of harvest. Men stood in groups discussing their crops. One would break away when his oil began to emerge. He would watch with great intent, occasionally sticking a finger in the flow to take a quick approving taste.

When it was my turn, I watched with pride as my 25-liter stainless container was filled to the rim. The attendant did a quick calculation and handed me a piece of scrap paper with my yield (17.6 percent, an extremely high yield that I contribute to dumb luck) and my bill (150 euros for 80 kg of olives and the pressing fee). The final cost is 6 euros a liter (about $8) of the most delicious and certainly the freshest olive oil I have ever tasted. A fantastic deal, particularly when you factor in this truly Italian experience.