Venice

 

For our ski trip in the Italian Dolomites, we flew into and out of Venice.  We hadn't been to Venice in 15 years, so we decided to tack on a short visit at the end, enough time to see a museum, go to San Marco Square, and just take in the atmosphere.  Anyone who has visited Venice lately knows that the tourist-to-local ratio is exceedingly high.  As the city continues to sink and the Mediterranean continues to rise, incessant flooding has made Venice a difficult place to live full-time.  But it is still lovely to visit, especially if one is there at a moment when water levels are low.  And we had the extra bonus (from an atmospheric and vibes perspective) of having very heavy fog for part of the time.  

We stayed at a hotel--The Palazetto Madonna--that was a little off of the beaten path for tourists, so we had a somewhat more favorable ratio in our neighborhood.  We had a couple of nice (not spectacular) meals and put in a lot of walking miles.  Mostly, I just enjoyed being surrounded by the particular Venice brand of beauty for a couple of days:  the patina resulting from centuries of habitation, destruction, flooding, and rebuilding; the architecture and motifs drawn equally from East and West;  views of cafe lights reflecting off the gently undulating water in the canals; all of this blanketed in a haunting mist.   I was definitely happy to be back for a couple of days, and glad that Venice is still there.  

I will put together a couple more posts of mostly photos from our short visit to Venice.  There are just so many images I want to share.  But I'll include just one more of the Grand Canal here.