Venice

Grand Canal in Venezia

  “The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.” ― Cornelia Funke

Mike and I went to Venice today.  Actually, we went to Murano and Burano, both islands in the Venetian lagoon. In all, we probably spent about 30 minutes with our feet on Venetian land since we had to take a water bus from the train station to Piazza San Marco to catch another water bus to the islands.  And, we repeated that when we left.

It takes about 20 minutes or so to go to Murano from San Marco, and it takes another 45 minutes or so to get to Burano from Murano. At the end of the day, to get from Burano back to San Marco, it took over an hour.  Add in the time we spent going to and from the train station, and you could say we spent a good three-to-four hours on boats today.

 While we were riding, I was thinking about how much I love being on the water.  I'm not a great swimmer (Long story...almost drowned when I was a toddler...still water shy), so unless my feet can touch the ground, I'm not wild about being "IN" water. That said, I love being on boats most of the time.

Last night, I saw photos that my friends Tim and Maureen Finnerty posted to Facebook about their weekend on the lake, and I thought how cool it was that they do that. Living in the desert, we don't get the chance to go out on the water too often. We could go to Lake Mead, I guess, but, we don't have a boat, and neither do any of our friends out west.

 When we were on the water buses today, I thought again about the lake photos, and then I started thinking about the people who were going by us in their own boats.  What, I wondered, is it like to grow up on water like that?  Is it in your blood all your life?  Do you have to go out on a boat every so often?

My father loved to fish, and I remember going out on a boat with him a few times. I didn't like it at the time though. The worms and the dead fish smelled. The sun was too hot. The dragonflies buzzed around my head and scared the bejesus out of me. I just wanted to go home.  I probably wasn't more than five or six, and I don't think I went out on a boat again until after college.

 At any rate, I looked at all of these boaters today and wondered about their stories. Do they live in Venice? Are they tourists? Were they guests on some big yacht and on a small boat for the day?  (We did see one yacht bring in two speed boats.  Yikers! I wonder how much the yacht cost.)

I also thought about how much I really do like Venice.  I say I don't, but the truth of the matter is that I do like the place itself; I just do not like the people—tourists and residents alike—who ruin it.  Mike even brought it up, and he wasn't too wild about seeing Venice again.

"You know," he said to me as we were heading back to the train station, "we could really spend a week in Venice, stay away from all of the tourist spots, and just go to different museums and islands."  He had to pick me up from the floor of the boat because he shocked me so much, I fainted.

They're European. How do I know?

You know, I might just take him up on that.