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Missing Venice

Sun lit alleyways, wooden windows, coffee smell, masquerades for sale, soft accordion in the background, stone pebble driveways, people drawing, flowers, fresh vegetables for sale, summer dresses, gondolas, Italian yells, glasses clinking, melting ice creams, chuckles and kisses.

I always think of Venice as a painting, a distant painting impossible to get acquainted with. A travel myth, an illusion, that only the people in the myth tells the love stories. A dream that only one can dream. I mean why wouldn't I, so many emulations of this canal city everywhere in the world. From the casinos in Macau, to Vegas, to every other entertainment city in the world, creators creating an illusion of a place so synonym with love and dream.

Until last May. 

Everything I envisioned of Venice was unfolding right by my eyes from the moment I stepped out of the train station. A grandeur of a welcome by the iconically decorated gondolas, slowly cruising the green blue waters in between the bridges and canals I remember mostly from paintings, amidst throngs of people clad in hats and summer dresses. I think it was the perfect season too.

I am in love. Am I the few that loved Venice so much?

I always fell in love with every, destination I've been in. I am a hopeless romantic when it comes to learning new places. I come nothing but with an open heart and mind. I take everything as lessons, and essentially part of the experience, I enjoy the good and the trials of an exploration, like I personally think every adventurer should. And Venice, was no less.

Staying with Cecilia was one of the highlight of the trip, yes. But the walk with her friend, Alessandro was when I fell head over heels with Venice. It made me put some soul and weight to this beautiful canal city, learning every trick of a pathway there is and every history ever embodied told.

But most of all, I genuinely, simply, just miss staring at the buildings stacked right next to each other almost creating a rhythm, a song in between the blue green waters. Worn and torn from time but still depending on one another. And the suave cruise of the lovely gondolas by slick tanned Italian blokes that seem so easy in small alleys but strangely tougher in big water pathways. Or maybe not so strange. And then it reminded me of my wobbly platform, the boat I was standing on.

I loved Venice. 

Like every other place I've visited, I miss everything about it. I miss everything I've just described, and I wished I could do it more justice then from my one dimensional pictures and words would, I wished that time and distance would give me chance to visit Venice again and relive the pleasantness of being in a painting I thought I've seen before. But like every promise, coming back to a place you've loved is almost always impossible to keep :(

I hope everyone that comes and sees Venice, sees Venice in her best days. 

Like I did, and fell in love with.



Love,
Jacqueline Rowena @ Jacqkie.

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