On the Road with Julie

Time to Read:

Venezia, Venezia, ooooohhhhh, Venezia!

If you are overcome with inspiration in a place when you step out of a bus at the BUS station, typically the dumpiest part of any town, you know you are in a special place. My first post about Venice was from, not even, 48 hours ago, inspired only by the 40 minutes it took me to get from the bust station in Venice, in the dark, around the outskirts of town, to my bed for the next 2 nights. I hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.

Now I am sitting at the train station after a mere 40 hours of heart-palpitating, sensory feasting, trying to summarize the intoxicating beauty of this world famous city. The best way I can communicate it at the moment is this. I have sat at a fair number of train stations in my life. This is the first time I’ve waited for a train feeling like I could easily be in the most beautiful part of whatever city I’m in. Nope, this is just the view for those waiting to catch a train out of town. That is Venice. There is no part of life too small to turn it into something gorgeous.

And whatever degree of beauty I managed to capture with a click on my camera, it is only a portion of what the real thing looks and feels like.

The sun is shining bright. The water is glowing a rich emerald green, calling up to the mirrored minty sheen on the soaring half globe roof floating above.

And this is just run-of-the-mill Venice.

There is no place in Venice to find the absence of beauty. There is ZERO that is not worth looking at. It’s all beautiful. From the grandest bit of soaring architecture, to the smallest adornment in the local gelatoria to the cormorants landing on the wooden posts marking the invisible depths of the canals amidst the expanse of open waters that surround the city.

On top of all of this beauty, I feel so fortunate and spoiled that my lack of ability to speak Italian held no barrier for me here in this highly touristed location. English was more than enough to get around. That said, it also means it is more possible that I may have accidentally offended anyone that walked close enough to me to hear me walk through Venice yesterday. Apparently, when I’m overwhelmed by beauty, I get profane. For approximately one hour or more, if you had been walking inside my personal space, this is the monologue you would have heard…

“Ho-ly sh&^t.”

Followed eloquently by,

“Hooooooolllllllleeeeeeee sshhhhhyyyyy*&%t. Oh my go–, oh my, HO. LY. SH&%T.”

This articulate soliloquy of expletive was a constant response to one incredible sight after another and it was the best I could do to handle the moments of awe that were pulsating through every cell of my being.

I’ll have to steal the words that two of my friends have used to describe their experience of this magical place after reading my first post. Venice is absolutely enchanting – a place where fairytales feel real.

I probably took more pictures in 24 hours in Venice than I did in my whole month in France – and that is not because France wasn’t amazing. It didn’t hurt that the weather gods smiled upon my timing for a visit to Venice.

I must say, I’m feeling pretty proud of myself for shoving this little weekend stop in Venice into a packed schedule and I’m super excited about how I managed to use my short time here. I spent the morning lying in bed, recovering from 3 or 4 days of non-stopness in my last week in Vienna. Then, I got that non-stopness back in gear and went on a 90 minute water boat tour through the canals and out into the lagoon through an AirBnB experience to be followed by an afternoon 3-hour walking tour that I found on Viator.

I really wanted to find dairy free gelato and gluten free pizza or pasta, but I wasn’t sure I’d have the time to do the research and add the travel time to go out of my way to find them. Then, the fairytale that is Venice decided to grant me one of my wishes. In the short time available for lunch between my two tours, on the way from one to the next, I just happened upon a gelatoria filled with the most delicious looking dairy free, gluten free heaping mounds of goodness. And they even had gluten free cones. Oh Venice – you already had my heart, what more can I give you?! Then, I indulged in the most delectable ice cream I have ever even thought about having! I figured, if this gelato was my lunch, I could be happy. But, the fairytale wasn’t done with me yet. I stumbled upon 2 restaurants advertising gluten free pizza and pasta. It was just too easy! Then I was off to my afternoon tour of the DOGE and St. Mark’s Chapel. I did my best to control my expletives of awe – but they were going on BIG TIME on the inside.

Wow. Wow. And more wow.

Venice is an absolute festival for the senses. If Vienna is a refreshing walk in invigorating air followed by a rejuvenating deep tissue massage, Venice is a tickle fit – every single one of your senses being teased out of any dormant state into a convulsion of glee, to the point you have to scream, “Stop! Stop!” through your uncontrollable laughter. There’s only so much you can take. At least that’s how I felt after a full day of walking through its delights. I expected to head back to my AirBnB for an hour or so to rest my feet and head before heading back out to drink in whatever sensory enchantments the night would bring. I’m sure, whatever they were, were spectacular. But I didn’t see them. I got in bed for a short rest at 6:30PM. Before I knew it, it was 9:30 and I was ready for actual bed. I didn’t get out of that bed again until 7 the next morning! Might it have been nice to get more time on the streets of Venice? It absolutely would have, but I didn’t regret a moment of just resting and digesting the feast of a perfect day.

Being in Venice is like being notes on a page and the whole city is just plucking the music right out of you. Whether it is the glow of the water, the soaring architecture encircling you everywhere you look, the perfectly striped shirts of the gondoliere painting the canals with their stripes with each stroke of the paddle, the music of the Italian language bouncing through the air all around your or the mighty Dolemite Mountains rising high in the distance framing it all – Venice will move you.

And, in the short time I’ve been here, I learned enough history to submerge my awe to tremendous, new depths. Some mysteries, when solved, lose their mystique – not Venice. When I first arrived here, I could not begin to imagine how this city could possibly have come into existence. Now that I’ve learned how it did – I STILL cannot imagine it. It is a testament to human ingenuity, creativity, persistence and sheer will to survive. And, it turns out, when you bring such things together into one concentrated place with enough time, surviving turns into thriving.

I asked both of my tour guides what it was like to grow up in this remarkable place. They both got glowing smiles on their faces thinking back to a childhood filled with the twists and turns of life in the lagoon. But they also both sobered up to share other sides of things. My waterboat tourguide got nostalgic thinking about growing up on one of the fishing islands, remarking how his childhood was so closely intertwined with nature and how lovely it was. “It’s not like that for the kids today.” He lamented with a resigned acceptance. When I probed why, his explanations were general and gave me the impression that the answer in Venice was the same as it is everywhere else in the world. “The world has changed.” he acknowledged, and left it at that. My other tour guide lit up thinking about the extra priveleges of being a child in Venice. Venetian children get to have bikes. The adults do not. She then went on to describe, “For teenagers and even in your 20’s, it’s a nightmare.” She said. “Nothing to do!” I suppose I could imagine, when you grow up in a place, the novelty of it is nonexistant. What was busy blowing my mind with every step is normal for a kid that grew up steeped in it. Both of them though, were very happy to be living out their lives in this special place.

As a weekend visitor though, there is MORE than enough to do and I am leaving Venice beyond enriched for having gotten to do just a little bit of it.

There is nothing new about being intoxicated by Venice. There is no great discovery or revelation that I am reporting here. News flash – Venice is gorgeous. But, falling in love is new every time it happens. There’s nothing original about being alive either, but man am I glad I am getting a chance to take the ride.