Ah, Venice!
This is a guest post by Veraz
Ah, Venice! What a marvellous melange of art, culture, architecture, all reasons to visit the city, just once in your life, if only once. From its Medieval architectural wonders, its location, its Carnivale, it’s glorious foods, its ambiance, it is not a place you should miss in your life. If you have died and missed visiting Venice, you have missed the most romantic city in the world. Tourists flock to the city in droves, all hoping to absorb the beauty and romance of it all. The summers fill Venice with its tourists; the winters fill Venice with the mist from the sea. The pigeons remain. It is quieter then, when the mist rolls in.
My first time in Venice, we stayed at a hotel very close to the Rialto Bridge. It was in the days before the tourists actually came in floods like the sea does to Venice. It was May. There was a view of the Grand Canal from our window. The hotel was styled in the old traditional Venetian way. Old charm and elegance would describe this hotel, a little dusty in its age and withered beauty, with its high ceilings. I remember the room was dark; I remembered a darkness, with faded silks and tapestries, reminding one of times past when elegance had been the rule of Society. A gentle light flowed through the old arched windows. This was no longer a luxury hotel in Venice with its tattered beauty. Perhaps, it’s been renovated since then. I can only guess. I never went back because I never like to look back, as always, I wanted to look forward and to discover something new about Venice each time I returned.
From the window, I would watch the busy traffic on the Canal, the classic gondolas, the vaporettis. A gondola alone, black and sleek, bobbing on the water waiting for passengers. I heard music, the conversations of Italians, the motorboats, a cello playing its lonely chords. Young children ran through the narrow paths, laughing and shrieking with delight in their childish games. Waiters were setting up tables on the terrace, busy with their chores of laying out the silver and crystal. Colorful flowers, Murano glass souvenirs, fresh fruit and always the abundance of the sea that surrounds Venice.
The Piazzo San Marco was empty in the mornings, shrouded sometimes in fog from the sea. Except for the pigeons, a lonely hurried, traveller or businessman, rushing with urgency to their unknown destinations, the Square lay empty in the early morning hours. Someone alone, smoking a cigarette, thinking about something or other, I don’t know. I would sit in a café with the walls of frescoes, inside, in those early days of spring because it was too chilly outside. Handsome young waiters in white jackets served pastries and tea with a silver tea service to me. They treated me like a princess. Ah! A cup of tea or coffee back then was only a dollar. They served with an elegance and a style not known in my own city.
My days were spent, walking around the small streets along the canals, discovering small shops selling flowers, fresh fish from the sea, souvenirs, and designer clothes. Of course, I saw all the tourist sites, the Doges’ Palace, the Bridge of Sighs and I imagined the sufferings of its prisoners, and I shivered with the awfulness of it all. I gazed up at the vaulted ceilings of churches in silence, in awe of the power of man, inspired by God to build such temples of worship to him.
That was Venice to me in the old days. I’ve been back many times to the city of Venice, staying at various hotels in Venice. It’s renovated now. The crumbling beauty seems to have disappeared. The sea creeps higher silently, its power invisible and frightening and limitless. It is possible to disappear in Venice in the summers now, surrounded by the millions of tourists who now visit the city they should not miss, for just once in their lives.