I’ve ridden a fair number of cycle-ways in Europe, including most of the French canals. La Loire à Vélo has beautiful chateaux (if not always a well-signposted route). Canal des Deux Mers has the quintessential tree-canopied beauty of the Canal de Garonne, and the at times diabolical track of the Canal du Midi. And the Nantes-Brest Canal is nothing short of bucolic, and should be on everyone’s cycling list.
But one of the best one-day rides I’ve ever done is to a place where bicycles aren’t even allowed. Nevertheless, it provides you with seven (!) ferry rides, the opportunity to share vicariously in the lives of fishing folk, and the chance to check out a high-end Italian enclave. And best of all, you can still spend most of the afternoon in one of the world’s most famous and beautiful cities. Yes, you can pedal to Venice!
If you search the websites, you’ll find that bicycles aren’t allowed in “The Floating City”, and fair enough. Every piazza, bridge, covered passage way and alley is filled to bursting with tourists, all taking selfies and shuffling from one seemingly endless queue to another. And then, of course, there’s the little issue of canals everywhere.
But a lot less is written about the wonderful route I managed, which takes you on the journey I’ve just described, and deposits you at the vaporetto (water bus) terminal on the Lido, an island in the Venice lagoon that for some reason has also lent its name to seemingly countless movie theatres, cruise ship decks and swimming pools around the world.
The trip actually begins at the other end of the lagoon, in what can only be described as the workingman’s Venice, the far less scrubbed and polished town of Chioggia, where you can buy a 20 euro pass that lets you use every form of public transportation in the whole Venice region for 24 hours. That pass gets you and your bike on the 20-minute passenger ferry trip to the island of Pellestrina.
That’s the place that seems to be made up of one continuous fishing village, and what a wonderful island it is. In true Italian style, fishermen park their boats right at the wharf, then walk 20-30m across a paved area directly to the fronts of their houses.
The pavement is where they dry and fix their nets, drive their cars and tiny Piaggio three-wheeled scooter/trucks, and sit out on the seawall at night and chat with the neighbours. It’s also where you’re allowed to ride your bikes.
I have written elsewhere that I love nothing better than islands where people carry on with their daily lives as they have for generations, doing honest productive work, and where suburban sprawl hasn’t been given the chance to carve out the soul of the place. Pellestrina is another Île d’Orléans, but in this case the kind inhabitants cheerily offer to share with you the intimacy of their actual front yards.
The ferry to Lido island, on the other hand, is a roll-on/roll-off that runs almost continuously, and you park your bike on the deck alongside the cars and buses. It’s all very casual, though. No one even looked at my ticket, and on the return, even though the barrier was down and the ferry engines were beginning to rev, a crew member just smiled and waved me aboard.
Lido can best be described as a wealthy suburb of Venice, with houses becoming ever-more substantial the closer you get to the vaporetto terminal at the northern tip of the island. There the main street reminded me of Mission Bay in Auckland, or Carmel in California. Very manicured and chic, it has the air of nothing being hurried or out of place.
That is until you arrive at the terminal itself. It’s surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of bicycles, all crammed together in such a jumble you have to wonder how some of the owners manage to extract their bikes at the end of the day.
And this confirms what has become something of a revelation to me – the Italians love their “bici”, and use them as a major means of transport in cities and towns. They also have their own makes and styles you won’t see anywhere else in Europe, often with very thin tires (despite the many cobbled streets), and sometimes even with built-in windscreens, especially if they have a front-mounted seat to pick up the bambini from school.
Venice itself, it’s sad to say, is just as it’s now portrayed in the media – a unique and beautiful city that has clearly become a victim of its own success. I had heard that the authorities had started collecting an entry fee from visitors, perhaps in an attempt to reduce the throngs that descend on the place every day, but also no doubt to help pay for all the infrastructure needed to cope with the massive crowds.
I was never asked to fork over any euros, but when I arrived at the overwhelmed ferry dock at Piazza San Marco, the thought occurred that even if they charged everyone the full cost of our one-day ferry ticket, it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference.
I had been to Venice several times in the long-ago past, and taken in at least some of the interior sites like the Doge’s Palace and the cathedral, so I didn’t feel the need to do that again. It was just as well, since in both instances the lines of people waiting to enter snaked back and forth across the whole length of the square.
I instead opted for what I have often done in famous cities with equally famous waterfronts (Sydney and Hong Kong immediately come to mind). I used my ferry ticket again, and managed to get a front-of-the-bow seat on the Vaporetto #2, which gave me a grand tour of the entire Grand Canal.
The only problem with cycling to a famous city, it has to be said, is that it’s easy to over-stay. Previously I had done that in Bordeaux, and ended up riding 25km home through a quickly darkening forest. This time, however, after a restorative gelato, I took the vaporetto once again to the Lido, and opted for a much more leisurely pedal back.
There was time for an Aperol Spritz and beer (always with a complementary snack) at the bottom end of the island, and then as the sun began to set, a return to those fisherfolk front yards on Pellestrina.
Many people had taken chairs out of their houses and were sitting outside enjoying probably one of the nicest evenings weather-wise they’d had in weeks (Italy had just experienced the rainiest May on record).
The temperature couldn’t have been better, the sun was doing its best to dry the moisture out of the cloud, and as always in this country there was plenty of time to have a good chat.
But as I cycled by, for the first time in my visit to Italy I had people engaging me the way I have come to always expect in France. Instead of “bon soir”, though, it was “buona sera” or just “sera”, and even sometimes “ciao”. It was a magic moment, and my pedalling slowed to a point where those along the way must have started to wonder how I was actually managing to stay upright on two wheels.
It is at times like this that I realise what a wonderful gift it is to have a bicycle as a tourist, and to be able to use it to see so much more of the many cities and towns and rural areas in Europe than I would ever manage on foot.
And yes, you really can cycle to Venice, a city that has far more canals than streets. It’s all just a matter of using all the transport options at your disposal, and deciding to go for a ride.
~originally composed in May, 2019~