Venezia

It is strange how little I could get from Venezia.

It is such a charming place. People are bound to fall in love with it with their first sight on the water and the church on the other side of the canal when they get out of the train station. Piazza San Marco is heart-breakingly beautiful. I love standing in front of the Basilica and look at the South, seeing the winged-lion (the symbol of St Mark) and the waterfront and the Santa Maria della Salute, or its shadow when it is hazy, across the water. When there is the sunshine, the shimmers on the water can make me feel dizzy and it feels kind of dreamy. These have been the same for I think at least five hundred years and they still work magic on me.

But I couldn't stay long in Venezia. As I have written before, it is too special, too unlike the other places. The water (there is too much of it), despite its beauty, made me feel uneasy. And the inconvenience of the compulsory journeys on the slow ferries (or gondola for those who have the money) if I wanted to go anywhere at all felt like a burden to me.

I remember that when I first visited Venezia (for about 2 days only) during my previous trip in Europe, I spent 2 afternoons in Verona and Padua, respectively. This time, I could only stay in Venezia for one day and a half, yet I could not help leaving it for Vicenza, where I visited the Teatro Olimpico, which was quite impressive. It seemed that I had to leave Venezia for a while during my stay there for some peace of the mind. It did not matter where I went. It also seemed to me that in Venezia, Piazza San Marco and the area around the railway station interested me most. I did go to some other places this time. I went to Murano and visited the boring Museo Vetrario. I visited the San Giorgio Maggoire, the Galleria dell'Accademia and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. I also took many ferry trips. But what I liked most was still Piazza San Marco.

The one dreadful experience in Venezia was that when I returned to the hotel on the first night, I found that I could not open my luggage, which was locked by a built-in digit-lock. I of course couldn't help but panic. Somehow I had stupidly pressed something that I shouldn't have and changed the code unknowingly when I locked it. There seemed to be no possible ways of opening it without damaging the case (that is, if I decided to break it open at all). Then I calmed myself down. I told myself that there were "only" 1,000 combinations from the 3-digit lock and I had a whole night to try everyone of them. I went to open the window (I was nervous and sweating), put the bottle of water on the bedside table, sat down on the bed and began to try. I had a notepad with me to mark the numbers that I tried. And I was so lucky that after about 52 attempts, the case was opened. Thank God!

It was mostly cloudy during my stay in Venezia. When I left the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which I didn't like much, at 6 pm on my last evening in Venezia, it started to rain. And the rain got heavier and heavier. I didn't have my umbrella with me so I had to stay on the ferry all the way back to the railway station, which was close to my hotel. The ferry I was on called at almost every stop along the Canale Grande. And at each stop, passengers had to struggle to get on or off the ferry in the pouring rain because the ferry was so full that people could hardly move or even breathe. We were lucky that no one fell into the water. It was awful. But never before had I had the chance, leisure or interest to see Venezia at night (I seldom go out at night). During this slow ferry trip, however, I had the chance to see some old buildings along the Canale Grande which sent out inviting dim light from behind the long curtains of the windows. It could have been most romantic if I was not with a crowd of wet passengers on the ferry.