Venice, the melancholy, mysterious city, creaks and moans in its watery maze…After my first visit there in 1996, I was thoroughly enchanted by it, drawn in by its mystery, its uniqueness and its beauty. I was there for 3 short days and vowed to return someday for carnival.

Years passed and although the memory of Venice surfaced from time to time, it remained a place of wishes and desires. Well, finally the lightening struck after my return from Morocco last May and it drew itself into my consciousness once more, screaming for attention. So, I asked my 'partners in travel,' Tiina and Janet, if they'd like to go to Venice for Carnival in February 2002 and they responded with an enthusiastic yes! Add one more traveler, Rebecca, a friend of Janet's from work, and we had four. We arranged everything several months in advance, and I secured us an apartment at Campo Sant Angelo in the sestiere of San Marco. Over the months, two more people were added to our group, Pia (a friend of Tiina's, also from Finland), and Constance, a friend of Janet's from Germany. One month before our trip, another person was added to our entourage - my boyfriend, Alex, who lived in Italy several years ago (in Rome and Milan). He set about planning his costume quickly, and it turned out to be quite a spectacle with 3-foot glowing horns as his headdress. I referred to him as the "horned god of Venice."

We arrived in Marco Polo Airport and took a local bus to the Piazzale Roma (which is where the carpark is, the only place in Venice where you can drive a car (or take a land bus). Additionally, you can take very expensive water taxis or more affordable water buses, otherwise known as "vaporetti", but the land bus was the cheapest of all, so we took that. We took a vaporetto from Pizzale Roma and I was once again amazed at the beauty and uniqueness of Venice. A friend of mine, after looking at some photos I took in Venice, said "Venice looks like an opera." I agree that it's a good description of a hard to define city.

We arrived in Campo Sant'Angelo and it was indeed a lovely campo (or "square"), with a few ancient crumbling palazzi and an rather alarmingly leaning tower. Many building are a bit lop-sided and tilted in Venice, because many buildings there are very ancient and the foundations are also slowly sinking.

Anxious to go to San Marco Piazza in our costumes, we unpacked quickly and wandered through the maze of streets, following the signs to San Marco. There were less people dressed up than I would have thought - a bit of a disappointment for me. By this time, it was evening, and San Marco is a little dead in the evening, we were to discover, because when we returned the following day, we were shocked by the sheer number of people in the streets and in San Marco Piazza. Also surprising was the fact that many tourists wanted to photograph us, sometimes also posing with us. We felt like hunted celebrities and at first this was fun, but after a while it became a bit tiresome when we wanted to leave to get some lunch. We couldn't walk 5 feet without someone asking us to stop so they could take a photo! But it's funny to think that we're on so many people's vacation photos.

Some of the people with the most elaborate costumes would pose near columns or buildings in the piazza and people would gather around them to take photographs.

Additionally, we experienced some "non-costumed" time in Venice, and it was just great to wander through the streets. We didn't usually use the vaporetti (except to go to Burano and Murano), and preferred to just walk.

Murano, is the island of the glass makers. In my opinion, most of the glass was rather hideous - just downright gawdy and obnoxious. There was one shop of blue glass (dominate color) on Murano that had very nice things, but the majority of it was just perfectly awful. We went to the glass museum there and I noticed that the glass was quite beautiful, simple and elegant about 2,000 years ago, and the closer we get to modern times, the uglier it gets.

One rather ornate and gawdy spectacle in Venice is the Basilca of San Marco. But although it is rather ostentatious, it is quite amazing and beautiful. Upon entering the basilica, you can feel the dark, medieval mystery that it radiates. I quite liked the atmosphere inside, very dark, silent, quietly glittering in gold.

Alex had arrived 3 days after we did and joined our little tribe of women. After 5 days, Tiina and Pia went to Rome, Janet, Becky and Constance went to Florence, and Alex and I stayed in Venice one more night, in a lovely hotel in the sesitere of Dorsoduro. After that we also left for Rome and stayed there for 4 nights in the center of old Rome, and met Tiina and Pia for dinner one night. After Rome, came a trip to Bologna to visit Andrea, a friend of Alex's and then one more night in Venice together where we ate at a very interesting restaurant with amazing food, called the Osteria La Zucca. Zucca (butternut squash) is a very common dish on the menu (surprise, surprise) - the pureed zucca with potatoes and smoked cheese was quite good! It was a memorable last dinner in Venice.

One interesting thing about Venice is that is so amazingly "dead" in the evenings. That last evening there, we were walking back to the hotel around midnight, and the streets were absolutely deserted and fog billowed down the quiet streets, just our footsteps echoing into the stillness. It was perfectly eerie. I loved it. It was quite different after the carnival was over, and to me, preferable. Although I loved the carnival, dressing up and seeing and photographing the costumes, there were just too many people in the streets and it was often quite uncomfortable just to walk down the street, resulting often in "pedestrian traffic jams." One memorable and perfectly horrific "traffic jam" occurred on the Rialto Bridge (I swear it took us 15 minutes to cross it.) and I vowed never to cross that bridge again. Well, several days later, I did cross it again with Alex. But with carnival over, it was quite simple, easy and uncrowded.

So I still think of Venice and know I will return one day as I feel that my time in Venice is not over. I know I'll return there once more, to wander through the maze of streets and dine at the Osteria La Zucca. If for nothing else, I need to go back and retrieve the lens cap I dropped in a canal.

March 2002 Kristin Piljay