After returning from South America at the end of 2018 we planned to have a year off travelling before embarking on an overland journey down the Silk Road from London through Turkey and Central Asia to China in 2020 but the Covid pandemic put paid to that ambition so we abandoned our immediate travel plans until the world either resolved or learned to live with the pandemic.  However with the opening of the air bridges from London and armed with a number of travel vouchers we decided to dip our toes back in the travel market with a short four day break to Venice.  

Travelling through Central London in mid August on the Piccadilly Line was eerie and surreal with hardly any other travellers, and arriving at the cavernous Heathrow Terminal 5 with its subtle temperature and other Covid protocols was actually a pleasant and efficient experience.  Getting through check in and security was very quick and the Departures Terminal had very few flights, the majority of which were to European destinations.  The flight itself was around three quarters full and seemed to be well managed under the new protocols.  Similarly arrival in Venice was quick and efficient, again with very few other travellers.  Indeed the massive reduced numbers travelling was probably like travelling some 30 or more years ago.

Venice and Italy had opened up to tourists a few weeks before our arrival, and while there were a number of tourists there, numbers were significantly down on all my previous visits to Venice.  Many of the visitors were domestic Italian tourists, though there were a number of Brits, Germans, Austrians and French tourists, largely on a city breaks.  Indeed even the main tourist sites like Piazza San Marco and the Ponte de Rialto were very quite, especially early in the morning, and you only had to walk a few blocks away from those locations to find completely empty streets and canals.

It was also noticeable that away from the big ticket tourist sites the local Venetians had reclaimed part of their city back from the ravages of mass tourism.  This made the many small squares with restaurants and bars a particularly enjoyable experience to sample some of the fine Venetian food and the local Spritz.  

A further benefit in visiting at this time is that there were no cruise ships with their hoards of day trippers and their imposing scale.  Furthermore the levels of pollution in the water, which after all was August, was significantly reduced and many of the smaller canals were clear, so much so that you could see the small fishes.  There were stories of dolphins being sighted in Venice, but at this time with the city partially opened felt more like an urban myth.

Not every church or museum had re-opened and visiting some requires a bit of advance planning, but with modern internet and good mobile phone coverage in Italy, this was not too difficult to navigate.  We bookended our visit with the Gallerie dell’Accademia on our first morning and the Palazzo Ducale on our last morning.  Both were well worth visiting and broadly managed so that only a certain number of visitors were in any room at any one time, thereby enabling you to have an uncrowded experience of the artwork.  Sometimes there would be a backlog and thus queue as people moved through the museums at different paces, but that did not distract greatly from the experience.

The Basilica di San Marco is currently not open, but the museum is and from there you cannot only see both the original and the external copies of the four Cavalli di San Marco which date back to the 2nd or 3rd Century AD and were brought to Venice as war loot after the sack of Constantinople in 1204.  From the museum you get some great view of the Piazza and also can see inside the Basilica and all the detailed mosaics and other treasures.  Contained within the Basilica and its museum are many treasures from all the Venetian conquests, and the whole Basilica must be one of the finest gothic churches in Europe, with many influences from Byzantine and the Near East.

Sunrise at the water front by Piazza San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale is a particularly stunning experience, and with our local hotel a block behind the Piazza, made it very easy to pop down before 7am and experience the sunrise and the whole piazza without any crowds, and have an almost unique photographic experience.

Italy suffered one of the worst experiences of the early parts of the pandemic, and that experience, together with a particularly tough lockdown has ensured that Italy is one of the most disciplined countries in Europe in terms of mask wearing and social distancing.  Another significant change to travel now, is the further demise of cash, in our visit we almost entirely used contactless payments including Apple Pay.

While travel now will never be risk free, our experience in Venice felt reasonably safe.  Furthermore the opportunity to experience Venice without the mass crowds in the summer months was something to treasure and might not be repeated again.

Dates: 11/08/2020 to 14/08/2020