My Venice break made me see that rude people are universal!

AH, wouldn’t Ireland be perfect if we could only get a handle on the scumbags?

It was night-time, and for the first time since before the pandemic, we were abroad.

Last year, about four million tourists visited Venice, a city renowned for its beautiful waterways and floating gondolas, its spectacular gothic, renaissance and baroque architecture; its winding, narrow alleyways.

An absolute haven, one would assume, for rowdiness, litter, pickpockets and assorted thuggery of every possible kind.

Yet, here we were, utterly relaxed at 10.30pm on a Saturday night, strolling alongside lapping canals and over picturesque bridges, admiring the reflection of the city’s lights on the water.

There was no hint of the edginess so apparent after twilight on the streets of Dublin, Cork or Galway, no Saturday night disarray, no anti-social behaviour, no sense of threat, no looming possibility of random violence.

Nobody was out of their heads or giving passers-by malevolent looks; nobody was lurking on pavements. There were no groups of young males standing around with their hoodies pulled up or lurching roughly past pedestrians.

Not a single person of any colour or ethnic origin - and there were people here from all over the world - was being attacked, beaten or head-kicked by psychopathic teenagers. And in this city crowded to bursting, there was no litter.

The carabinieri were around. Alert and crisply uniformed, they patrolled, conversing, in twos or threes. They carried batons and guns in holsters. They were visible without being overly conspicuous and they weren’t everywhere. But they were there.

We met a couple from Vancouver. They were planning, they told us, to sell up and move to Ireland. Vancouver was beautiful, they said, but property had become mind-blowingly expensive.

They planned to sell their beautiful home for a small fortune and return to Ireland.

“Not Dublin,” we said sadly. “It’s gone very rough.”

Oh no, they said immediately. Dublin was so dangerous now! So rough! Absolutely not Dublin! They didn’t want to live anywhere like that!

Oh dear, I thought, cringing and crossing my fingers behind my back and wondering if this nice couple realised that it’s not just Dublin.

We left them to it and went for a meal.

Eating out in Venice can be interesting. The price written on the menu is not what you pay. You might think you’re going to pay €60 for a meal, but once you get to the till and they start adding in the cover charge, the service charge and a tax, maybe a city tax, maybe VAT - God knows, I was starting to lose track - you end up playing closer to €80 or €90.

And then there’s the attitude.

We decided to attend a show, and a few hours before the performance, we arrived to buy my ticket, a birthday gift.

At the ticket desk, the man treated my husband like he was a bad smell that had just wafted in from one of the less savoury canals. He was incomprehensibly impatient, curt, dismissive and rude, behaving as if he had far better things to do with his time than sell tickets to the likes of us.

That night when I arrived, the young female door attendant barked at me. When I didn’t understand what she was saying, she snapped at me again, and when I still looked bewildered, she clicked her fingers as you might do to a dog and gestured at me to basically push off and get out of her hair.

Arrogant doesn’t begin to describe her. I pushed back. “No need to snap,” I said shortly, giving her my best 1,000-yard stare. “I just don’t understand what you’re saying.”

The show was magical, but my abiding memory will be the sheer bad manners displayed by those staff.

Can you imagine being treated like that in the Opera House or the Everyman?

Then there was the hotel; beautifully appointed, on the canal with its own water-door with gondolas sailing by.

One morning I forgot what I’d done with my key and asked if it was with the reception desk. The male receptionist checked the cubby hole and bellowed that if I didn’t find their key immediately, I’d have to pay a fine of €100.

Five seconds later, and almost trembling, I found the key in the pocket of my shorts. My jaw was on the floor. Without another word the man turned his back, staring into his computer.

Breakfast in this hostelry was a poor show compared to that provided by any halfway decent Irish hotel. Not only was the cooked food tepid, but tables were in short supply because, once used, they were left piled with dirty crockery.

A young barman told us that hordes of permanent residents - including his own parents - were leaving the city and renting out their homes. 

The sheer number of tourists is putting such enormous pressure on sewerage and recycling facilities, local transport, accommodation and quality of life that Venice is a difficult place to live in.

A mother-of-three revealed that she paid €1,500 a month in rent for the miniscule shop where she sold her artisanal wares. She’d paid €28,000 for a tiny, windowless storage area nearby.

We didn’t invest in a gondola ride after noticing how many passengers, and in one case the young gondolier himself, floated along just staring into their mobile phones

Waiting for the bus to Treviso airport, we had a grand chat with a couple from Carrigaline. On the plane home we met a witty pair from Limerick.

At 10.30pm I was struggling up those ridiculous steps from the Tarmac into the main body of Cork Airport when a tall young man loped up alongside me.

“Gimme that,” he said abruptly and hauled my suitcase all the way to the top of the steps before disappearing into the crowd. I barely had time to thank him.

Wouldn’t Ireland be wonderful if we could only get a handle on the scumbags?