Bordeaux and Palmiers

When I was growing up, I was lucky to have parents who wanted to travel. Even considering the fact that they had four children under the age of 12, when I was in the 6th grade, we went to Italy.

We visited Rome, Siena, Venice and Florence, and my favorite by far was Venice. Some compare the gondolas and canal-lined streets with some sort of Disney-esque theme park, but I thought it was magical.

However, it wasn’t until I returned six years later that I truly fell in love with Venice. You see, the problem with traveling with four children under the age of 12 is the fact that every five minutes, someone is hungry, thirsty, has to go to the bathroom, tired… There’s really no feasible way to just walk around the city and explore, which, I’ve since learned, is by far my favorite way to experience a city.

On my infamous backpacking trip after senior year of high school, we visited Venice, staying at a hotel in Mestre, a bit outside of the city, and riding the bus in every day. Because the last bus left Venice at midnight and because we weren’t quite experienced enough with drinking to even consider a Nuit Blanche, our biggest brush with true Venitian nightlife culture was the “spritz.”

We wanted to do what the Venitians did, so when, after a day of walking around the city people-watching, we saw all of the natives, nearly automatically pull up a seat at the nearest outdoor café and order a bright orange beverage, we knew we had to do the same.

As you can probably tell from the picture, I didn’t enjoy the bitter orange drink. But I did love sitting around for the northern Italian version of apéro, the French tradition that I have since come to love. I loved watching the native Venitians. I loved getting to the point with the magical city that happens in every relationship, when the goggles that appear the moment you fall in love start to fade, and you see things as they are clearly.

Venice was no longer the glamorous, magical knight in shining armor that I had met in the sixth grade. Venice was dirty. Venice was bitter. But Venice was real. And that’s the point you need to reach in every relationship, with a city as with a person, before you can truly say that you are in love. I may hate spritz, but I love Venice.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS