My Affair

Forgive me in advance, for this post will likely be flowery. I just cannot help myself. I had an affair. Yes, I cheated on Rome with Venice. It has been a few weeks. I think I can talk about it now. I have always thought Venice was something, but this visit was different. The weather was a tumultuous tempest peppered with glorious sun breaks. The clouds puffed and swirled and the world was suddenly made only of water and sky. This was the perfect recipe for plays of light that went beyond imagination. It danced under the bridges as though it were alive and inhabiting some unseen upside down otherworld. It glowed inside the water, illuminating the waves in a jade green that I only thought possible in the pigments of the paintings with which I spend so much time. What could have been a stressful and crowded romp hustling 22 students through the tourist clogged back streets of mucky cobblestones, was instead viewed through the rose colored glasses of romance that can only be felt between a person and a city.

I am being abstract. Let me elaborate. I began my Venetian romance with a night-time private visit to San Marco. This is a traditional excursion for the Art History program, so this was my second time enjoying some quasi-alone time in this Byzantine masterpiece of a religious space. The inside of San Marco is covered in gold plated pieces, making up a vast program of mosaics. To play up the drama, the custodians of San Marco turn down all the lights and slowly, slowly illuminate the gold interior. The effect is breathtaking. What is at one moment a dark cavernous interior, becomes a glowing rich gold haven that warms the spirit and is apt to turn any non-believer into part of the flock. Such was the first encounter of this trip with the seductive Venetian light. We all left the church feeling wooed and special and slightly smug at our amazing good fortune. My infidelity began right there.

My previous experiences with the city had been jam-packed gauntlets of art and sights and bad restaurants, all swarming with mobs of tourists complaining about the damp, pigeon infested piazzas and confusing mazes of passages. Venice, although certainly awe-inspiring, was slightly tainted in my mind. This time was different. While our mornings were filled with visits to churches and museums, our afternoons were our own time. I used these precious moments to find a new Venice, bathed in that light I had seen in San Marco that first night. I fled the claustrophia of the Rialto, lined with its fluorescent lit shops of crap, and found myself alone in the backstreets watching the shapes on the water and the colors on the buildings. I was motivated by nothing else than to cross the next little bridge and sit in a new sunny spot where the water lapped up against the buildings and the city felt finite and fleeting. Venice threw a few curve balls in the form of torrential downpours that emptied the streets, soaked the clothes and made the light that much more impressive when it came back out and reflected the drenched cityscape in its own surfaces.

Venice stole my heart for that weekend. I found myself fantasizing about running away and donning a thick scarf and galoshes for a wintery season of melancholic dampness and gloom, pierced by occasional sun breaks and flirtations with the ephemeral dancing light. It occurred to me in these special solitary moments with Venice that although I think of Rome as a home away from home, only a true Seattle girl would fantasize about a sinking wet city, where the promise of color and light are enough to flutter the heart and delight the eyes. Venezia, until we meet again.