La Serenissima

Venice is beautiful at all times, but the nights, with their desolate streets, tiny alley ways, beautiful lights, blustery passages are what make Venice her most radiant.  There weren't many tourists when I was visiting due to the time of year, but when they left with the sun, the city completely changed.  In 'The Aspern Papers' Henry James wrote that Venice was like a large apartment, with it's streets as it's hallways, it's piazzas and courtyards it's rooms.  You never really leave the apartment.*  And that feeling really is true.  As I was walking down a tiny, dimmly-lit street back to my hotel (after a last minute decision to go to La Fenice!), passing an odd Venetian returning from work, it really felt like I was just in the back passage of an old villa passing a fellow worker.

I spent too long a time trying to capture the spirit with these pictures.  If you had been on the Grand Canal last week you would've found a boy laying stomach-down on a dock trying to set the shutter and capture a pleasant view at the same time.  But alas!  no one was around to find him there, which made him love the city even more.



*Read this lovely quote in 'Venice is a Fish' by Tiziano Scarpa.  If you go to Venice, I highly recommend you make this book your first companion as I did.