Italy
Venice
Day 1.
In a water taxi approaching the city, Venice appears before us, luring us forward. We feel like children at a birthday party, eagerly anticipating the gifts and joy she will offer.
Red, yellow, and orange crumbling bricks form palaces, hotels, and homes. The sound of Italian voices mingles with tourists, beauty surrounding us everywhere.
We immersed ourselves in Venice, marveling at her streets, passages, dead ends, and bridges - her squares, wine drinkers, her crumbling yet miraculously floating streets intersected by hundreds of canals. Vivaldi's music echoes through history, art, and gelato. It's almost overwhelming!
We’re in the air
And we don’t care
We’re on our way to Venice
On the ground
We’ll get around
By boat, and skip in Venice
The bustling town
Won’t let us down
For there shall be no menace
It’s food and drink
And wine and fish
As we explore dear Venice
Day 2.
Canals and passageways. The Doge’s Palace. We continued exploring this magical place. While the first leader of Venice was elected, we never discovered what became of the last Doge. I read that when Vivaldi lived here teaching music to orphaned and illegitimate girls, Venice had 150,000 residents - one third of whom lived lives of pleasure. This has been a city of indulgence for centuries.
The corridors of Venice
Have an air of menace
These tiny streets
That wind and weave are really hard to conceive
The walls lean in
The passages narrow
The men move about with barrows
It’s like a dream
And lost you’ll be
Of this there is no doubt
But surely there’s
No other place
That I would be without
Day 3.
The enchantment continues. An elevator whisked us to the top of the bell tower in St. Mark’s Square - where Galileo once demonstrated his revolutionary telescope to awestruck Venetian merchants.
Next, we visited the 18th-century palazzo “Ca’ Rezzonico”, now a museum filled with art, painted ceilings, porcelain, marbles, frescoes, and the watchful faces of historic Venetians. While many artworks featured nude women, we unexpectedly discovered nude male studies by a rare female 18th-century artist.
Our day culminated with opera - we saw Madame Butterfly in a magnificent opera house where countless Venetian visitors have been entertained through the centuries.
It’s goodbye to thee
And sad indeed
That we must leave behind
The place that kept us warm at night
That lost us in its labyrinth streets
That floated us on canals of dreams
That saw us climb its tower so high
’Tis truly sad indeed
That this is the day we say goodbye
Until next time we meet