A Northern Adventure - Venice

For me, Venice is a city, like Paris, that lives up to its hype. It's iconic in a way that doesn't disappoint even after you leave the train station and see the Grand Canal for the first time. In person it looks exactly like all of its photos and feels like all its descriptions. It's almost overwhelming. I felt the same mixture of uncertainty, excitement and awe as I did when I was on the Metro in Paris and came out of a tunnel and saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. The sudden realization that it exists in more than just a picture or the imagination.

Mary McCarthy, in Venice Observed wrote: "Nothing can be said [about Venice] (including this statement) that has not been said before." And it's true. We arrived in Venice on 4 January during the period between New Years and the start of Carnival when the biggest crowds have gone and the tourist Venice that mostly sustains the city closes down and the one the people who live there inhabit takes it over. It was cold and snow was falling the day we were there, creating the perfect back-drop for seeing the almost totally silent city.

Venice has an interesting relationship with us. We sustain the city as there are few jobs that are not somehow related to the tourism industry, but we are also one of several contributors to the slow decay of the city along with time, flooding, and the deterioration of the lagoon. Every guidebook and travel blog tells the reader to see the "real Venice" by "getting lost" and "observing the locals" going about their day as if the city is an amusement park built to entertain us. It's within this framework that we passed a few hours beneath the falling snow lost in the streets of Venice taking in a real, authentic experience. I spent the day cold and exhilarated while also feeling like a complete cliché.

The Italian poet Mario Stefani said: "If Venice didn't have a bridge, Europe would be an island." My first, unexpected glimpse from the train window of the Venice afloat in the lagoon did nothing to contradict this observation.


Venice is actually 118 small islands spread over a lagoon, separated by canals and connected by bridges. Ernest Hemingway described it as "a strange, tricky town" and walking in it as "better than working crossword puzzles." On a map is looks a bit like a fish. It is completely disorienting. The streets are narrow and winding, the routes of the canals confusing and there are few landmarks that can be seen from any distance. But as John Berendt wrote in his book The City of Fallen Angels: "To me Venice is not merely beautiful; it was beautiful everywhere." He's right and it's true and maybe you can see a little of it in some of these pictures. (click here)