Life in Venice/The Landing

Why would anyone write a full post about Landing in a city? But Venice is not like any other city and landing in Venice is not like any landing! In my trips I always leave the airport and either take a taxi or the underground to my destination, but leaving an aeroplane and jumping on a boat was something I have never experienced before. The airport Marco Polo is 40 minutes away from the city and the only way to get there is by boat… I have always associated Europe with old beautiful buildings, huge cathedrals, clean streets, greenery and clean air but never with the sea…. Even when I went to Barcelona that is a Mediterranean port, I did not feel that what I saw there was a sea, it was rather some watery space that has no waves nor does it give the characteristic smell of the sea that we I am used to. But Venice is something else, for all those things that I associate with Europe were combined with the sea, deep, blue, vast and with this characteristic smell that I love. Venice is built totally inside the sea, the city itself is an archipelago (a group of small islands connected together) of 118 islands, connected by about 150 narrow canals and about 400 bridges that serve as roads. The buildings are literally immersed in the water and many of them have their staircases going down into the canals, so that you can only reach them by boats. The only means of transportation is boats (this will be in a separate post)and walking… can you imagine how clean, clear and calm the atmosphere could be? The buildings are very short, not a single building is higher than three stories including a ground floor, a middle one and a roof. The only high buildings that you can see are the church towers. But venetian Churches will need a post of their own. The streets are extremely narrow and the buildings –accordingly- are very close to each other. All through the city you will never see a "modern" building, actually the word modern does not exist apart from the way people are dressed. So with no cars nor any traces of them, narrow cobbled streets, historical buildings and ancient architecture, classical music playing everywhere, even in the boat stations…what else do you need to feel as if you had a magical journey into the past? As if suddenly you jumped into a fairy tale and all you can do is look around in amazement wondering how the word beautiful would really underestimate what you see? Walking in Venice is an experience that I cannot describe. But what amazed me and kept me thinking till now is something that I cannot really find a logical explanation for… those who know me well know how I have bad memory with streets, I really need to visit a place at least ten times (and here I literally mean ten times, not just metaphorically) to be able to visit it again without a map. Now as soon as the boat dropped me in the small port "Fondamenta Nove" and I was told that my hotel is 10 minutes away, I sank into that feeling of "Ok… this is trouble". The narrow streets and the similarity of the buildings should –logically- conspire to make things worse! But…and to my extreme amazement, I didn't have to look at my map even once, and before your mind jumps into conclusions, there were no signs leading to my hotel, I just walked and walked and with a strange sense of direction I found myself at the hotel door. And for the next days I have been roaming the city, visiting all kinds of places and going back to my hotel several times a day without needing a single look at my map…Now I really cannot find an explanation of this, nor do I care to find one, who can speak about logic in a city as enchanting and legendary as Venice ? So that was just about landing in Venice , what about being there? This will come slowly, as a nice walk by the canals and into the friendly streets of legendary Venice , so follow me