I guess it really depends on each person but not having cars really makes up for many other disadvantages.
Which makes you think how bad cars in the city are in general.
You don't really appreciate this until they are gone.
I lived there and I lived in many other cities like Paris, London, Munich, Krakow, Bangkok and Bali.
Venice is one of the most authentic cities of them all.
The language is alive and evolving.
It's a bit like the fight club, real locals recognize each others, while the tourists think it's just a Disneyland.
Quite fascinating!
Charming restaurants, quirky bookshops, etc., that's not "authentic life." That's frivolity. Sharing frivolities with the locals doesn't give you any insight into their "authentic life." Tourism is always Disneyland. It's always fake. It's just different versions of Disneyland for people of different temperaments.
(It's funny you mention Bangkok. I was born in Bangkok. What exactly is less "authentic" about it than Venice? How can a city even be less "authentic" than another city?)
But then I saw a couple traces of authentic life. We ran into a local walking her dog, and my friend (who speaks fluent Italian) chatted her up. On one of the smaller canals I saw a road sign -- not seemingly aimed at tourists or even gondoliers, but at ordinary Venetians trying to get around.
All of a sudden, the whole city felt amazing.
Perhaps, if you're prioritizing access to hordes of tourists.
Some cultures seem more fit than others to deal with it.
Some are overwhelmed, others learn to manage.
Most of the locals live on the mainland, anyways. Venice itself is a living museum at best.
When I walk in Venice I constantly meet locals I know, going around their daily life.
It's hard to see this unless you are with some of them.
And even if you see it, it won't tell you anything unless you are part of it.
It's fascinating to see how two different "species" of animals coexist and barely interact on a meaningful level.
I'm not saying it's a good situation but it's not a living museum, people live, work, love and fight there.
We can't dismiss them because we don't see them.
You say there are other priorities that make Venice attractive -- like what? You still haven't made that clear. The nice parts of the city are completely given over to tourism, the hidden corners feel abandoned and listless.
- no cars. This alone raises the quality life by an amazing degree.
- 100% walkable.
- you meet people you know all the time. Feels like a village.
- international. Many interesting characters live there. A village but an international one.
- beautiful and decadent.
And of course there's also a long list of negatives such as expensive, uncomfortable, wet, touristy etc....
It’s called Cà D'Oro alla Vedova. We were shown it by a local, only realised McDonalds was near it after we finished eating.
Imagine, a place to eat in Venice that isn't a rip-off tourist trap restaurant. Free toilets as well!
Arguably its bad food. Anyways its mass produced food that has no attachment to the place where it is consumed (outside the USA). Food, like the appreciation of a city, has a cultural aspect that McDonald's lacks.
McDonal's for someone visiting Europe makes no sense at all. You've dropped a few thousand in airfare and hotels, now you're being cheap on the food?? (Here I make an exception for Europeans eating McDonalds. They live there, they know their culture and their food. Go ahead stuff your pie holes just for the purpose of filling your bellies).
"Disneyland is also great."
idem for Disneyland. It's a fake image of a medieval utopia that never existed even in fairy tales. It's purpose is to create value to the Disney brand by becoming, through sheer force of the ubiquity of the Disney company, a part of children's childhood replacing real experiences and the myths handed down through generations. You don't learn anything at Disneyland, you do not grow as a person at Disney because there is no substance to Disneyland.
At best you have "fun", whatever that means. More likely you're told you had fun, and you repeat that to yourself to avoid admitting you mostly just waited in line.
Venice as Disneyland is a place where hoards of bucketlisters checkoff yet another selfie at Piazza San Marco (or is Piazza Spagna? who remembers? who cares!?), not for the San Marco's sake, but to pretend they accomplished something merely by buying a cheap ticket and airbnb.
You made it to Venice! Big deal! How hard is that?
No. A person who wakes up 4:00am to make it to San Marco at dawn to see San Marco alone has accomplished something (albeit small). A person who goes to Venice and doesn't go to Piazza San Marco, but instead spends the whole time alleys long forgotten by the hoard has accomplished something.
McDonalds is better and cheaper than a lot of the overpriced, crappy food in Europe.
It's a fake image of a medieval utopia that never existed even in fairy tales.
That's quite a high horse you rode in on.
They’ve accomplished nothing the person who went to Disneyland didn’t accomplish. There is no value in doing something just because it’s different from what “the hoard” is doing. (Indeed, if you’re going one way while everyone else is going the other way, you’re probably the one who is lost.)
McDonald's outside of the USA is supplanting rich cultural histories.
Tourism, especially as practiced by those who eat at McDonald's while visiting a foreign country, is typically disastrous to the local way of life. Locals end up selling trinkets to people for afar with more money then sense. Eventually the city becomes affordable and unbearable for the locals and the city becomes a lifeless shell of what it once was. Insipid like Las Vegas.
If it found itself under the Adriatic in 50 years, I imagine it would simply become an underwater Disneyland. The architecture might actually be better preserved for future generations; for example, had Venice sunk prior to the mid-80’s, there wouldn’t be a McDonald’s there (yup, there’s a McDonald’s in Venice.)