I am not the first person to write about this magical, mysterious, and dark city which I visited in my ninth week. And though I was bowed by my own audacity, I still gave it a try.
You remember that scene in “Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy steps out of the house? That is exactly how I felt when I stepped out of the Ferrovia, the train station, at sunset and faced the Grand Canal.
As much as I had read about Venice, I simply wasn’t prepared for the magic of a city of water: without cars, without mopeds, only boats to get around.
Thanks to a wonderful old man at my hotel who took a liking to me–“Bellisima!” he would exclaim every time he saw me–I got some great tips on how best to spend my three days there.
One night I attended a violin concerto of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, played on 200-year-old instruments, in a 17th Century church by the Ponte Rialto. It was so beautiful, I cried.
After the concert, I did what I do best in Italy. I got lost. Every book I read said that the fun of Venice is getting lost. That makes it the perfect city for me. Dark, dank and musty corners, at midnight. Lapping water, no fences, no streetlights. All on tiny curving streets where around every corner, you could imagine men in cloaks wearing masks.
I’m here to say that the fun of getting lost in Venice is in the telling, not the doing.
In the morning, I walked the same streets upon which I had become lost. It will come as no surprise that I discovered I’d been walking in circles for an hour and a half–on a path that should have taken fifteen minutes.
Of course, I went to the Piazza San Marco and saw the towers, the pigeons, and the lion on the pillar. You don’t need my travelogue on that well-known sight.
I decided to spend one afternoon on the tiny island of Burano, most famous for its lace making. It was like spending several hours in an Easter basket. It was lovely, lovely, lovely.
My friend at the hotel sent me to visit a church, rich with art that is indescribable. When you walked in, perfectly framed through the arch in the carved wood choir stand, you saw Titian’s painting of the Virgin Mary with child, angels above, saints below. It was monumentally moving.
It was at this church that I learned that Venice lost one quarter of its population to the plague. Four hundred people a day. It is experiences like this that are illustrative of the perspective I have gained in this country of il destino. Whether it is in the face of the plague, or in the ruins of Pompeii. La Vita Continua.
UN PO P.O.V.
This precious little child is the American-Italian daughter of my second cousin. She was bridging the cultures and getting ready for Halloween. I think I learned as much Italian from her as anyone.
Before I left the States, one of my Italian-American relatives gave me the phone number of her son, my second cousin, Paul. Although we had never met, he became my guardian angel when I got profoundly lost in Calabria. Almost 500 miles away, he managed by phone to get me to the Patriarch of the family who then got me to Serra Padace.
I accepted Paul’s invitation to visit him and his family in Bologna. After Venice, I stopped in his city and had a great visit. His wife, a beautiful Italian woman, cooked us fabulous meals and his daughter, bilingual at the age of three, was an absolute delight. Her mother calls her “la bimba.” If she wasn’t reciting Italian fairy tales aloud, she was singing “itsy-bitsy-spider” in English. It always amazes me to hear a child speak in another language, much less two of them.
On Monday night, we all climbed into the family car in search of dinner. Italian restaurants are notoriously closed (chiuso) on Mondays. We drove through the dark night for quite a while. Suddenly, I hear this tiny little voice from the back seat whisper “ci siamo persi” — Italian for “we are lost.” I had to agree. More importantly, I finally learned how to properly say “I am lost” in the language of the country where getting lost had become my pastime.
It was in Bologna that I ran into my first and only pickpocket. Now, you gotta wonder, if you were going to be an old gypsy thief, why would you LOOK like an old gypsy thief. This woman was quick. But, I saw her spot me and was prepared to defend myself. Her hand moved swifter than a Michael Jordan swoosh.
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