La Serenissima

Venice is a city of contradictions. It is as impossibly lovely as it is fraying and down at the heels. Its main thoroughfares are crowded with stalls selling cheap trinkets, it's canals are often littered with trash. Yet if you follow some of these narrow, winding streets past the noise and tourists or take a gondola ride away from the Grand Canal, you find yourself gone back in time. The gondola glides under lace like bridges, the damp cobblestones lead to small exquisite churches and quiet, leafy squares. The only sound is the tap tap of your footsteps or the slap of water against the hull. When I visited with my children, we were all captivated. My daughter Emilie vowed to return there to live. We ate gelato and pizza. We traveled up and down the Grand Canal on the vaporetti (water buses), had the most luxurious hot chocolate ever (and the most expensive!)in St. Mark's Square, and bought blown glass and cheap umbrellas ( that blew up in the wind after one day's use). Among the many questions I was left with: why on earth would any one build a city like this in a lagoon? How do its modern citizens keep the sea at bay? How much longer can it possibly stay afloat? At least long enough for me to return.