Reflections Part 5 & other assorted thoughts

Sick Micah = no posts for a few days. Sorry to all that missed my rambling. :) The good news is that the bug has been kicked to the metaphorical curb, and we're prepped to go for a good week that will end with a weekend in Florence.

Before I continue on my Reflections slant, a few random thoughts:

It's really, really expensive to live in Italy. The nasty exchange rate right now is probably to blame. I'm basically paying twice as much for everything that I would back home.

I get to see Damien Rice, in Rome, on my birthday. How cool is that?

It hit me the other day that I'm over the halfway point of my time in Europe. That makes me sad. Surprisingly though, I'm fairly ready to get back stateside, if nothing else to see my family and my dog. And eat Mexican food.

Onto Venice reflections:

I fell in love with Venice in my time there. The city definitely has its lows in its stooping nature towards tourists, but the urban fabric of the city and its unique relationship to the natural landscape intriuged me to no end. It took me a day or two to really get a feel for Venice (the overt tourism gimmicks jaded me despite an amazing arrival), but I can safely say it has been my favorite place to be so far in Italy. A recount of one unforgettable moment:

The initial entrance to the city is unbelievable. A train carried us to Venice from the mainland, arriving on the northwestern side of the city. This path meant that we didn't see anything but ocean until arriving in the station, with nary a look at the city itself. After arriving at the train station, I left Kara with our luggage so that I could venture out into the drizzle outside and buy some water taxi tickets. As I walked out the door of the stazione, I felt like Tom Hanks in "The Terminal" as he steps from the harsh airport into the sweeping New York streetscape. Suddenly, all of the hustle, the chaos, the stuffiness, the coldness of the train station were gone. In one step, a horribly confined space had transformed into a breathtaking vista, and along with that was an experience that I will never forget. A large piazza spread out in front of me, terminating into the Grand Canal that ran left to right in from my perspective. On the other side of the Canal, the familiar-through-movies-and-pictures buildings speared out of the water, seeming to float. The buildings each shared a side, tightly knit together, creating a whimsical patchwork quilt of varying heights, architectural styles, and once-vibrant colors that still shone, only with the wink of many years of history. People came and went in a peaceful manner, strolling throughout the piazza and over a stunning bridge that spanned the canal to my left. Boats idled through the water in front of the houses, made up of as many styles and sizes as the buildings they scurried around. The drizzle provided a welcome refreshment from the stale station air, and the faint smell of the sea drifted in front of me, adding a strong reminder of the sea's all-important dynamic relationship with the city. A typically beautiful Italian church on the left and another sublime government building on the right framed the view.

I froze in the door of the train station. This unexpected vista riveted me in place, bringing a crooked, childish-wonder kinda smile to my mouth after the initial shock. I was in Venice. I closed my eyes, trying my best to cement this moment in my mind. The smells, the sounds, the views. Familiar elements, but set to a composition that I had never experienced. Love at first sight might be true after all.