Venice in a Postcard

My father cleans the tears after hugging my mum

once again, and he turns to me and my sister with a big smile. I haven’t seen him in over 6 months: he was with his work, the Navy, doing the NATO.

He opens an envelope with a collection of postcards from the places he has been:
“…and this one was my favorite city: Venice, in Italy”.
A little boat is reflected in the water, a man stands at the rear end of the boat holding a pad, he wears a hat with a red ribbon and a stripped jumper, very elegant, I thought. “In this city, the roads are rivers and the cars are boats” – my father explained to me.

I was fascinated and immediately I wanted to go there, so I asked “Can we go there?” “Yes, We will all go back there someday”, I was only 6 years old…

16th March 2012
17 years later, we arrive in Venice!

The crowded bus drove us from the airport to the Piazzale Roma – and this is the furthest we can go by car. From here we walk 10 minutes to the Hotel.

By now, my mum seems to have forgotten the moments of anxiety she had earlier gone through in the airplane – she fears flights. And we fear for her.

Free from our luggage, I grab a map at the reception of the hotel and we go exploring… our destination is Piazza de S. Marcos.

Bridge after bridge, we turn in little alleyways, end up in another square, more bridges, more alleyways…

Every now and then this sound keeps coming out of our mouths “ahww!!!, look at their taxis!”, “ahwww, that’s the police car – well, boat”, “ahww, and that’s their ambulance” even the garbage truck is a boat!
And we also did a detour to check the hospital entrance!

Market Boat, Venice We are fascinated by this cute surreal little city and how people actually live here. Some streets don’t even have a sidewalk and people just park their boats in front of their house door and jump inside. How cute!!

Later we come across a little market where the vegetables are sold in a boat.

After 1 and half hour of slowly walking and multiple stops for photo shooting (my sister is addicted… well yes, she can be worse then me), we arrive in Piazza de S. Marcos!

A piano fills the air with soft notes… there! Just outside a restaurant a gentleman is entertaining the guests sitting in what it looks a very fancy cafe.

On the other side of the square is the Cathedral, we walk around and follow the smell to a pizzeria in one of the little streets next to the square.

Back in the square, we walk pass the cathedral and the big river/sea faces us. So many of those elegant gondolas parked here...And suddenly I see him! The elegant man from the postcard is just right in front of me! Sitting in a little harbor, having a chat,… for a moment I feel like we have known each other for years. It just put a smile on my face. Gondola Venice

After the sunset, we slowly start making our way back to the hotel through a different route…

Soon it’s dark, and it feels darker walking on this lightless alleyways, a bit scary if walking alone. At dinner we start planning the tomorrow, shall we go for a ride on a Gondola?!…