My Reasons for Loving Venice
The call of the calle.
There are many sights in Italy that will bend your mind, causing you to question if you have, in fact, stepped into a lucid dream.
Arriving in Venice is one of them.
But first, let me acknowledge the reality: Venice can be hard. It’s soul-crushing in the same moment it’s ethereal. It’s damp and crowded. You’ll smell the mildew. The food is not great (until it is), and with bad tourism1 on the rise, you’d be forgiven for thinking you could skip over it in favor of somewhere smaller, quaint, and undiscovered.
If you’re craving such—then come visit me ;) However, let me tell you why I’ll still insist we take the train into Venice and you discover its timeworn charms. Venice is small. Venice is largely undiscovered (there are over 100 islands in the lagoon). Venice is quaint when you break away from the main routes and suddenly it’s just you and some pigeons in a piazza. Venice is real in its own way, and that is part of the allure.
The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity …