Going, Going, Gondola!
Our last full day in Venice has a slightly overcast hue to it. Not sure if it is my mood or simply a change in weather. Whatever it is, it does not change the fact that it is our last day here. We stroll slowly along the road from our condo slowly, watching people, drinking it all in and carving it on the forever part of our brains, taking mental photos. I have realized in the short time that we are here, and as a amateur shutterbug this is hard to admit, a photo can never really capture the essence of a place. Oh sure, it can capture and freeze a moment in time, it can be there for you to look at in years to come, but it doesn’t capture the sound, the background noise that makes up a feeling, the noise and atmosphere that even a video camera (are they still called that?) cannot really capture. It is the feeling, the momentary halt of breath when you find or discover something that no one else can ever feel at that precise moment because that precise moment will never ever present itself again, to anyone. So I am melancholy and cannot shake it.
We decide to do the one last thing on our list that we have not yet done, and while I don’t normally go in for the stereotypical touristy thing I find my mood brightening at the thought of a gondola ride. Where else will we ever get the chance? I’m in!
We find a gentleman who seems like he could take us for a ride without taking us for a ride and we are off. Having taken along our own bottle of red, we pour ourselves a glass, sit back and enjoy hearing about the history of Venice from a canal’s point of view. We see evidence of the rise and fall of the tides on the walls of the footbridges we pass under, our gondolier having to bend so he doesn’t smack his head; we go by various famous persons dwellings, though none but Marco Polo’s really sticks out in my head. We go through a number of back “alleys” eventually emerging on to the Grand Canal where we are immediately passed by motorized vaporettos and water taxis. We head for the Rialto and take pictures of the people above us taking pictures of us below them. Too fast it is over but I step out of the gondola still with a light heart.
That night as I sit at the table in our little condo I think about our time here and it brings a smile to my face. I laugh inwardly at our joy at finding out we could take our half empty bottle of wine home from the restaurant- and the even bigger smiles when the waiter brings us two plastic cups on the off chance we get thirsty on the way home. I think about wandering into the lively squares filled with music, and young people spilling out from the bars, shaking my head and thinking that the life of a young adult does not differ much between continents. Piazza San Marco in the morning before the crowds get there, wandering the shops and checking out the amazing shoes that I could never even contemplate teetering around on, our morning espresso cafe around the corner and the amazing pizza trattoria over the little bridge that we could never manage to find again. It’s all there, locked away for a rainy British Columbia day of folding laundry- there for me to feel worldly if only in between pairs of socks.
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