[venezia] the romance or the pong

Reuters reports:

In Piazza San Marco, seven women have been deployed by the lagoon city to improve decorum and cleanliness in the square Napoleon called "the drawing room of Europe".

Since June, tourists cannot eat their own food or walk around bare-chested. Signs warning of fines have been plastered on bins as well as canal water bus stops, and the stewards - dressed in special T-shirts - give out leaflets telling tourists where they can have their picnics.

In early August, more than 100 tourists were given 25 euro fines, according to news agency ANSA. One of the stewards, Giovanna, said:

"People usually say they didn't know. We advise them that there is a picnic area where they can go, we do not want them to get angry - usually the reaction is positive but there are times when we've had to make calls [for back-up]."

But in a city where a simple breakfast of coffee and a croissant can cost over 5 euros - more than double the rate in Milan - many day-trippers bring their own food or opt for take-away refreshments.

"There were people … who mistook the Grand Canal for a beach," the council's Augusto Salvadori, in charge of tourism and the city's image, said."Venice is a city of art and a city that belongs to the world, guests are welcome - but Venice has to be respected."

Mario Martini, who sells grain to feed pigeons, which pose their own problem in Saint Mark's Square, thinks the stewards are good for the city's image but one tourist grumbled: "They don't want it to be scruffy but maybe they could just provide more bins."

Let me see - 20 million tourists, at 5 euros a snack, not counting the fines - hmmm, yes, I'd want to "clean up the city's image" too.

And it's not as if Venezia has a history of freedom la dolce vita either - the Ponte dei Sospiri is testimony to a tradition of prisonhood and torture, if not the actuality.

Actually, I believe all these legends about kissing under bridges, kissing the Blarney Stone and so on. I've done the latter but only visited the former - so clearly time for a poem:

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I sniffed from out the wave her smells rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their pungent wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice held her nose in state Thron'd on her hundred isles!II

Remember, it's not the smell you go for - it's the romance ...