See Venice without the guidebook

Our first evening in Venice, a choir sang for us alone.

Song floated on the twilight air outside the Chiesa di San Nicola da Tolentino. Inside, 15 voices seemed like 50 as they reverberated off the marble walls and rose to fill the squat, painted dome of the late-16th-century church.

My wife, Kate, and I were the only audience, and for those 20 minutes of choir practice, one of the world's most magical cities belonged only to us.

We hadn't intended to visit San Nicola, uninspiring by Italian church standards, devoid of world-renowned art and ignored by the guidebooks we'd pored over before our trip. It stands in a part of town visited mostly by Venetians, and we had just wandered there.

By following our ears instead of our guidebooks, we'd found something that -- in a city full of history and crowded with monuments, art, churches and people -- made Venice intimate and ours.

Where camera-clicking travelers stand shoulder to shoulder to ogle world-famous sights, how do you carve out an experience different from that of every other tourist in town? We found the beaten path, and then took some pains to not spend too much time on it.

The strategy began with our decision about where to stay, the unpretentious and reasonably priced B&B Leonardo.

In a city where almost every building dangles its feet in the water of one canal or another, the Leonardo stands high and dry in a neighborhood scribbled with tiny, winding alleyways full of shops, restaurants and people pushing their children in strollers or walking their dogs.

Befriending a Venetian

Along one of those little alleyways, we ran into Marco, almost literally.

Marco, a sculptor who makes some of the fanciful Carnevale masks for which Venice is famous, has a storefront studio on the street just behind the Leonardo. Kate and I were strolling the shadowed lane -- no more than 10 or 15 feet wide -- and nearing a corner. Marco was hurrying around the other side of that corner with a large bucket near to overflowing with soupy plaster of Paris. Only some nifty course correction by the three of us kept the bucket full and on its way to Marco's shop, where he invited us in to see his work.

On a table sat a grinning, slightly buck-tooth skull in green clay. It was soon to be home for much of that plaster of Paris. Marco waved me back as he dipped a large scoop into the bucket and flung the thin mixture at the skull, bending over to gently blow some of it into place. I asked how long it had taken to make the clay model.

During a sunrise stroll a couple of days later, I heard my name.

"Buon giorno, Dennis," Marco called and waved as he headed across the piazza in front of San Barnaba.

Maybe you don't quickly forget someone you've nearly plastered.

In our wanderings -- and near-accidents -- we found that the real Venice, populated by real Venetians, was never farther away than the next quiet lane or piazza.

A serenade with gelato

Piazza San Marco, for instance, is insanely crowded by day and on every tourist's hit list because of the Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica. We saw its famous sights in daylight, waiting our turn with the crowds. But we also returned at night, when cruise-ship tourists are tucked safely back aboard and the grand space grows calm.

We had the waterfront promenade to ourselves as we walked from the end-of-the-line vaporetto stop and saw the moon puncture the blackness above the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore across the lagoon. The lit-up Doge's Palace looked like an architectural confection.

We were at the Piazza San Marco that mid-spring night to listen to the small orchestras that perform under tents outside its historic cafes. Each orchestra played a selection or two -- from Bach to Vivaldi and even the Beatles -- then surrendered as another took its turn. Most people herded from cafe to cafe, following the tunes.

We took an outdoor table and ordered dishes of overpriced gelato that we shared slowly, staying just ahead of the melt rate.

Kate and I even did our best to turn the every-tourist-does-it gondola ride into something more memorable.

Donello was our gondolier. He had the requisite black-and-white striped T-shirt, gondolier's hat with a jaunty ribbon and 10 years' experience at the job. Good thing, too, because tight corners and traffic on the side canals leave no room for error.

Of course, Donello sang, slightly off-key. But, mercifully, he sang softly and stuck mostly to propelling the boat. That left us more time to chat with him, and I didn't feel compelled to compliment him on his voice.

I asked if there were any female gondoliers.

"No, there are only men right now, but there soon will be a woman joining. In a few months," Donello said of the tightly controlled, highly trained profession.

Just then, we passed another gondola propelled by a woman, dressed in what looked to me like a regulation red-and-white striped T-shirt and gondolier's hat with ribbon.

"She is not a real gondolier," he replied indignantly. "She works for a hotel."

Art in its original homes

While we visited art treasure houses such as the Accademia, we looked, too, for places where the art still is displayed in the settings for which it was designed.

That brought us in front of the nondescript Franciscan Chiesa dei Frari. Standing before early Renaissance master Donatello's wood sculpture of John the Baptist, I noticed that John seemed to gasp for breath as he trudged out of the wilderness, gaunt and haggard in his animal skin.

I had a chapel to myself as I sat mesmerized before Giovanni Bellini's "Madonna and Child Enthroned," marveling at the painting's three-dimensional realism. The dome above the Madonna seemed to recede into the distance, and I wondered about the leap that men like Bellini and Donatello took as they rediscovered our humanity and left the Middle Ages behind.

At those times, I'll remember our first evening in Venice. I'll lean back, close my eyes and listen again as the song of San Nicola's choir rides the spring air to heaven.