The World of Venice

"Today it is too old a story. The world has forgotten the mighty fleets of Venice, her formidable commanders and her pitiless inquisitions. The dungeons of the Doge's Palace have lost their horror, to the generation of Belsen and Hiroshima; and even power itself seems too frail and fickle a commodity to waste our lyrics on. The Venetians may still half-mourn their vanished empire, but to the foreigner the sadness of Venice is a much more nebulous abstraction, a wistful sense of wasted purpose and lost nobility, a suspicion of degradation, a whiff of hollow snobbery, the clang of the turnstile and the sing-song banalities of the guides, knit together with crumbling masonries, suffused in winter twilight."
Excerpt from "The World of Venice" by Jan Morris.

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On a rainy night in Venice, we sat outside and listened to popular classical music by a quintet of musicians in St. Mark's square. The lead violinist was a virtuoso. She played so lightly, so easily, that one could easily have fallen in love with her musicianship alone. But upon looking at her face, it was much easier to fall in love with her arrogant beauty.

She knew she was good at the violin and even though this was neither the grand concert hall of Paris nor the orchestra of a major city, she acted as if Issac Stern himself had something to learn about playing the violin.

I sat mesmerized for that hour. And then promptly, at midnight, the music ended and she rushed off with her cell phone -- surely texting her husband or a boyfriend.

I didn't even get to say goodbye.

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I have no desire to visit Venice again. None at all.

Venice, for me, is like an ex-girlfriend whose beauty no longer holds the same place as it once did.

The churches and monuments are stained with graffiti. The waiters and bartenders seem tired of the tourists even though we keep the city afloat. The daily way of life is completely absurd for Venetians.

Small boats navigate the canals to deliver cans of Coca-Cola, bottles of Peroni and cheap, trinkets for the tourists to buy. Rough-looking men unload these goods and seem to move as slowly as possible. I imagine their day doesn't involve a great deal of work -- just enough to keep us tourists happy.

Venice was once a great nation but now it is a Disneyland of sorts.

"A city with canals for streets and hundreds of little bridges?" the tourist says with a sense of wonder. "How truly interesting."

No wonder then, that upon my second visit to Venice, the facade of winged lion's and Doge's names in the buildings had started to turn to ruin for me.

Being treated as a tourist isn't why I travel to Europe and Venice treats you like a tourist, whether you like it or not.

Venice is a city that lives in the past and it's as if the world still clings to her dying breath -- finding beauty in the melancholy of it all.

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Our hotel in Venice was nice enough. I enjoyed the Peggy Guggenheim museum and had a couple of decent (but by no means great) meals.

The cuddlefish in ink at Al Conte Pescaor was actually very good and I enjoyed the octopus-celery salad even though it was ridiculously overpriced. Two glasses of Prosecco and my bill for lunch was soon 35 Euro ($50 or so). A very good meal but not worth $50 in my book.

I think the best time I had in Venice was sitting on the edge of the city with a friend drinking a Coca-Cola Light and eating some prosciutto and cheese. A cruise ship passed by and we waved to the people aboard the ship.

"Ha," I thought. "Look at those silly tourists."

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We made our parting trip to the Venice train station during the morning rush hour for the water taxis of the city. As we traveled from the Salute stop to the station stop, I moved to the front of the water taxi and sat by myself.

I watched the gruff men unloading their goods for the day from the various boats. A worker stood in a plaza filling a hole with dirt -- looking around after each scoop to see who was passing by on the Grand Canal.

Somewhere in the city, Timothy Dalton (who my sister took a picture of during a water taxi ride the day before) was filming a movie called "The Tourist" (appropriately enough) with Angelina Jolie.

More tourists were coming into the city as we were being taxied out.

We got off the water taxi and headed toward the train station. A girl in our group came running up to me as we walked up the steps.

"You'll never guess who I just sat by on the taxi," she said.

"It was that violin player you were so in love with the other night. She was taking her daughter to school, I think."

Twice I had been so close to her but each time I wasn't even able to say goodbye.

So with a tip of the hat and a smirk on my face, I turned to the Grand Canal and told Venice, for what was probably the last time, "Goodbye."