Venice again and this time in love with it

4 min readMay 13, 2023

I really love old history laden places with a darker energy (not the evil dark kind, but womb feeling sort of dark mix of history)

I’m in love with Prague for that, but even more so I´m in love with Venice.

How could I not be?! Yet, you are right, I was not that smitten first, when I was here in December and January. But now it´s May and I´m back!

I´m so taken away by it, that I am ready to graciously overlook the fact that in the touristy areas almost exclusively Chinese and Bangladesh people are running the show when it comes to businesses like shops and cafes. Seriously I hate globalism! But back to the city herself. I feel its a she, its “la Serenissima”. Yesterday she was all sunny and generous for my visit.

Venice is so loaded with all the old mysteries and extraordinary characters like Giacomo Casanova, Tintoretto, Carlo Goldoni and Antonio Vivaldi, it carries a richly ornate tapestry of events and secrets I can tune into and it’s almost like this is not the old 3D reality we know otherwise, but some shiny time bubble out of the usual.

It’s well knows that google maps fails in Venice, as if the lanes and street rearrange themselves like in an enchanted moody labyrinth. Even Venatians have told me this.

You never know where you will come out and places you are looking for suddenly show up elsewhere or not at all, but therefore you come out in an other charming campo you did not know about, its opening in front of you like a picture book.

Venice rearranges itself to its own amusement and to the confusion and awe of those who wander it’s streets and cross its uncounted bridges with awkward names like “ponte dei incurabili” — bridge of the unhealable ones or “Ponte dei Sospri” — bridge of the Sighs.

More then 1000 years ago this glorious yet decaying beauty was a dirty little fishing place that has been dreaming of becoming big and ruling the world. It created itself out of nothing but mud with grandious dreams, cunning trickery and smart chess moves. For Centuries the beautiful Venezia , “la Serenissima”, the most serene of all, was ruling the world. Probably the whole cabal chessboard was invented here. Venice is not a real place, it’s a mystery out of the normal. And being here it feels like everything is possible, if we only want it, and probably it really is. I enjoy modern Venice that takes place in the historical stages set centuries ago. I enjoy the afternoon sun, the aperitifs in Dorsoduro, my favorite quarter or sixtel, as it’s 6 different hoods, “sestieri” , and Dorsoduro is the cheap Venice of the normal people and the students. I love going to the small unspectacular places that are ran by Italians still where a Aparol Spritz costs only 3 Euros, and where the local people meet. It’s totally possible to find normal Venice if you are looking for it and not reaching in the San Marco quarter. In my month in Venice last December I have found such hidden places. They are off the track and unpolished and charming without the hoards if tourists that are at San Marco and Rialto. If I would live in Venice again, which I am definitely aspiring to do, I would look for something in Dorsoduro or Santa Croce.