Venice; silent but for the jabbering tourists, the water taxi and ferry engines and the timid yapping dogs trailered by a thin flora leash. Nights upon the isles were mesmerizing as the gypsy coin jinglers of Florence felt like a gossamer memory of youth.
Amidst the city, some four hundred gondolas made their rounds, kicking off the enclosing walls for guidance. In their adept grace and good humor, the stillness simply added to a hypnotic state found upon the lands of the Venetian lagoon. Albeit, even the temporal state of a traveler’s enthrallment comes with a price. The fee for a few days upon “The Queen of the Adriatic” was priceless.
What the Venetian Creature Calls Home
On our first evening’s arrival within the northern Italian lagoon, a numinous fog hung onto the water of the canals. Within Piazza San Marco, the 16th and 17th century walls faded into a dream as tours of pigeons and people gathered for feed and sociability.
Under the mystique of the sky and consumed by the omnipresence of these Venetian creatures (pigeons and peoples), lights along the outside of the San Marco perimeters snapped into luminescence by the touch of some secretive finger behind its molded stone. The crowds, under the trance of the sudden whim of magic shrouded in a cloak of enamoring fog, set wail an extended exasperation of awe. Together, we hummed as one—a whole piazza!—creating a synchronized tune of San Marco’s grandiosity.
Like the Doge’s command, or like the wizard Merlin’s twitching wand, the crowd’s sanctified choir faded as Beethoven’s quintet enraged with passion. Before one café a classy band battled with another equally classy band opposite the square. From Mozart to Italian tradition into the classic modernity of The Sound of Music, the front ensembles in stiff tuxes fought each other for the thickest audience at either table or observing bunches. By feet, the music was free to the ears. However, under the carefree ambiance at an open-air, piazza-side table, nothing was without a charge in Venezia.
Excuse me, Waiter?
With the appellation applied to the Adriatic city, every nook and cranny was entitled to the Queen’s throne and crown.
At Caffé Florian, my mother and I took our seats. At a small table we drew up two metal-framed tweed seats—our throne. We settled into San Marco’s atmosphere, people watching and inhaling the cool thick sea air. Our order by well-tucked and tight-fitted waiters consisted of a glass of white wine for eight euros and a set of tea infused with lavender for €7,80. An hour ticked under our enchantment and upon our throne. Upon request after one more glass of wine our tab appeared.
Twilight morphed into a yellow evening. Pigeons disappeared, as did the clusters of traveling families with their young members throwing feed and karate-kicking the squeamish rock doves. Our day of travel had been short, a train from Florence to Venice, but needless to say we were feeling the peacefulness of the isles without the pumping noise of traffic and the sequestering merchants of the city. Ready to rise in search of the intimacy of one of Venice’s restaurants tucked deep within its neoclassical alleyways, we flipped the tab to face us.
The total of our two glasses of white wine and lavender-infused tea surpassed our presumed estimation; over twenty-four euros with a cover charge.
No, this was Venice: Venice—the city of cash-come, cash-go.
Within the foggy ambiance of surrealism, or whether sunny, rainy or dreary under a gray layer of high cloud, the mystique of San Marco’s Piazza never existed without an exorbitant price completely unexpected. Our bill reached €34,80.
Of course! We had left out the fee for the “supplemental music” charge.
Looking around, the tables were full. I assumed they had been for most of the late day. Therein, each person at each table paid a bill and coin of five and fifty euros just to sit, just to indulge in the magic of Venice. And it was not just any Venice, but the city’s Piazza San Marco with its gaudy basilica; its bell towers and their clapping ring upon each hour; and don't forget its pigeons and infinite gazing upon the people coming and the people going. With the music, with the company and the peace of the air, however much the bill totaled—to be in the piazza on the isles of Venice on that foggy evening—no price would have taken away the surreal beauty of the moment.
The Bell’s Bronze, The Heart’s Gold
With Time’s strike of the hour, the two bell towers rung and heads turned skyward. The same hum radiated from the many mouths at that moment, looking up and then turning back down to smile and find the lover’s, the family’s, the friend’s or the stranger’s eyes to stare into. Venice was a silent paradise marooned from the cultures abroad where the Queen timelessly sung.
