Venice - city of Amore.

I cannot adequately - even after writing about my beloved city for so long, - describe my delirium in returning to Venice, apart from a sensation of being lifted simulanteously off the world and back onto it in a bubble of pure delight.  This is the city of my heart: where I found myself, where I found that I was capable of love again - of shoes and handbags, and a language, and a man.  

I'd sobbed when I left, broken hearted, because I'd wanted to be here for Carnevale, the mad masked show in mid winter, and had to leave early because my daughter chose that week for their wedding.  Now I'm back - with the man as my new husband, delighted to show him the light and life of this mysterious city. To show him what makes my heart dance and my spirits soar. To let him see me behind a camera, capturing my world.

And we're here, for Carnevale, on honeymoon, just as he promised. 

So happy was I to be here,  that when we were waiting for the orange line Alilaguna - the speedboat from Marco Polo airport to the Grand Canal -  (E8 for me with my IMob Venezia card left over from 2011,  and E15 for Reno sans his) I did a happy dance on the rocking pontoon, singing ... Oooh, I'm so happy to be back in Venice, tra la la la laaaa.  A traveller from Paris smiled, asked me how long it had been since my last visit. And so we began to talk, all the way in, on the silver calm water in just above zero temperatures.  His name is Gaspare Manos, he said, handing us his card. He's an artist. Have a look at my work, he said. He lives in Paris, with his wife and baby. He has children in Venice, he's the son of a diplomat, old established Venetian family. We should get together after we've settled in.  We docked at Rialto, calm and uncluttered, readying and steadying itself for the madness of Carnevale, the secondary reason for us being here, said goodbye to Gaspare, we'll meet again.

Fosca met us as arranged and walked us over ponte and scale and down narrow calli to our apartment, a splendid, if ridiculously over the top, Victorian, Rococo designed, apartment a few hundred metres from both Rialto and San Marco.  She's the go-between for the owner, an architect named Giovanni Broccolini Pasta Sempre or whatever. 

It's a splendid old palazzo from the mid 1800's, with grand terrazzo floors, carved columns and tall shuttered windows that look down onto crumbling stones and into rooms of our neighbours, voices ringing from the cobbles below.  At first inspection, fabulous.  Then we look around, um, where's the laundry.  Laundry? Sorry,  no laundry.  There isn't a hairdryer. Hairdryer? You're a woman, and it's winter in Venice and you need a hairdryer? But we pay the rest of our month's rent, in E cash, as requested, thank you very much, accept the bottle of champagne in a plastic carrier bag plonked on the table, and start to unpack.  

The apartment looks as if it should be in an architectural magazine, for it's apparent effective use of space. But when you've compromised a kitchen and laundry, the space is just that - visual.  The kitchen is beneath a white bench, with only a double hotplate and the cupboards open backwards. The sink tap must be depressed before the "lid" can be put down ... and the kitchen is so small, it's impossible for anyone to help. As for the stairs ... you have to walk up them with your legs apart as they are one big step, one little step. and  after falling down them the first night and realising that if there was a serious injury, we wouldn't know who to call, decided that the "design by brilliant Italian architect" (from Giovanni's email) was a death trap.   The bed is on a mezzanine, surrounded by glass on two sides, and only a waist high railing on the steps side - no glass or railing as protection.  One midnight foot in the wrong direction, trying to find the loo without bumping your head on the ceiling so low that Reno had to put up a luggage tag as a reminder not to give himself brain damage, and you'd be a pile of broken bones at the bottom of the steps. Seriously scary.  If we live to tell the tale.The upstairs shower leaks everywhere, the basin tap is broken so that it comes off in our hand.  The heated towel rail doesn't work.

But Venice waited beyond our gorgeous hand carved doors and the sour faced woman at the entrance whose job it was it intimidate anyone who dared leave with a smile on their face.  Or was she put in her little glass entry box to count the number of guests allowed in the apartments?  Invent stories of comings and goings?

As soon as we'd unpacked, we went in search of a supermarket.  Like everything in this secretive city, essential services are well hidden behind heavy doors. One twist and a faulty turn and the shop you thought was within reach is an olympic walk away.  I took Reno to the only supermarket I knew for sure existed: all the way to San Toma, which led us away from Rialto and into less touristy areas.   We filled our little basket with pasta, cheese, salami, and the essential finoccio, fennel, which we love in our salads, made a small lunch on the long refectory table in the apartment, and then tried to find San Marco, which was apparently very close.

As everyone who has been to, or even lives in, Venice knows, nothing is where you think it is.  Suffice to say that the first day it took us an hour to reach San Marco, where I sat on one of the yellow plastic chairs belonging to a dangerously expensive coffee shop, in a cold wind,  watching the mists across the lagoon hover above the cupolas of various churches.  Gondolas bobbed, gulls screeched and crash landed into the puddle of water on the square, where tourists sloshed in shallow puddles.  I sat in the weak sun, drinking in the atmosphere, pinching myself that I was here again.

Reno said he'd worked out that Venice was so calming to the soul because, unlike a city with cars, there was no unnatural stop and start, just a natural ebb and flow, which allowed the rhythm of the city to match that of the body.  I liked that.

We met Gaspare the following day, in La Cafe in Campo San Stefano, a large campo of restaurants and coffee shops. We talked non stop, of life and the universe.   He then took us to his studio, on the first floor of a fabulous 16th century cold stone palazzo with a cistern in the middle and murals on the ceilings.  The walls are lined with his large collection of diverse styled contemporary paintings (He’s exhibited with Miro, Klee, Pisarro, Picasso, Renoir, Bonnard, Braque, Chagall.   Lucien Freud is a friend who influenced his work. ) He's the son of a diplomat who’s lived in many continents, and currently live in Kenya, with Samburu Warriors as "servants".   We lunched back in the campo, on pasta vongole and Bellini, and Gaspare then took us also to his family palazzo - an enormous stone building off a narrow fondamente on the canal.  It's filled with the treasures his father collected over the years.  Gaspare is planning on doing a mural on the ceiling of the family palazzo and open it to the public for the next biennale.   The following day he took us to a restaurant called La Madonna filled with the who's who of famous Venetians where the waiter genuflected and led us to a private table.  I commented on the painting behind my head.  He said it was an Italian artist, and worth over 70000 E.   Has a fascinating family history … lives in Paris, painting in a studio at the back of a chateau.  He's invited us to visit him in Paris, which we may do from London.

Quoting Gaspare when I complemented him on a canvas:  "I feel totally empty and very excited I thing I may have painted something very important in terms of development in my stile and thinking."

Dawn and some other friends had given us a dinner cruise on an 18th century galleon as a wedding present, redeemable on Valentine's day. It was a cold and frosty night,  but we dressed in our wedding clothes, rode the vaporetto to Zattere, where nobody batted an eyelid at my outfit, and spent a wonderful evening eating the finest fish, with the most fabulous attentive service, romantic Italian love songs, and danced under a full Valentine's moon on the deck as the magic of Venice slid past.  When we docked at San Marco, we walked home through the chilly, deserted streets, saying it was the most romantic Valentine's night ever.

I met Francesca Foscara Faustina Peacock, an ethnic jewels friend I'd made on Facebook, also in Campo San Stefano. She lives and works in Milan, but has a lawyer boyfriend in Venice who doesn't want to leave Venice, so she commutes.  And we met.  I love how the world works.

Our days are spent walking, wherever we can, and ferrying when our legs get tired.  We're shopping at Rialto for the best fish and food, and cooking the best meals at home because as it's carnevale, the residents are taking advantage of the tourists. 

Salgado exhibition

We went to the Sebastiao Salgado exhibition at Zitelle, in the rain, magnificent four storeys and numerous rooms of his fabulous photographs, two books of which I got for my birthday.

The hunt for the a laundromat continued for four days, while we dried our smalls and socks on the heated towel rack.  Then two days ago some men turned up at our door with a washing machine, several new taps, a trolley on wheels, tools and four plastic chairs.  Earlier, Fosca had delivered some new cooking utensils, the cheapest you could get anywhere. The base of the pots and pans were so thin that they rocked on the stove, and one pan bent in the middle when I closed a cupboard door on it.   The workers spent two hours installing the washing machine, replacing the taps, adjusting the toilet, and talking about us in Italian.  Just as they were leaving, I asked if I could check the shower hose they were supposed to replace.  Oops.  They'd forgotten, but they'd done a year's plumbing maintenance.  And we now have a washing machine, right in the middle of the loungeroom, that rocks and rolls the apartment while it does its 1000 drying spins.  At least we'll be able to wear clean clothes.  No more excuses to buy the fabulous cheap wool dresses on every corner.   Then the maid turned up with a drying rack that can only also be installed in the loungeroom.  Now this fabulous contemporary apartment looks like a cheap flat in Brighton!  Reno has bought a beret and a wanne-be Borsalini, and the woman in the glass booth downstairs is finally smiling. 

To my delight, I once again found the bookshop owned by a crazy man who had them stacked floor to ceiling, in gondolas and boats and over life jackets and rings. He'd even made a flight of stairs up the back wall.

Reno, Gaspare and I at San Stefano.

Outside our apartment

The city is getting ready for Carnevale.  It's cold and raining, but the Italian workers are constructing what looks like a mini colosseum in San Marco.  A few bewigged and masked stragglers are roaming the lanes already.  I've bought two masks to go with my wedding dress, feathers and glitter and skinny eyes, and Reno's bought his - Casanova! Yeah.

It begins tomorrow. Which promises heavy rain and freezing temperatures.  Yeah.

But when this man walked towards me, across Piazza San Marco, the fire in my heart raged, and I added this memory to the few that are the miracles in my life.

Taken down a peg or two by a little barefooted girl

TAKEN DOWN A PEG OR TWO BY A LITTLE BAREFOOT GIRL

13/02/2014

Staying in the Taj Palace hotels reminds me very much of the parable of Siddharta, who had lived out his childhood cloistered in his parent's palace, until he escaped through the gates one eventful day and saw how the rest of the world lived:  hard, fast, hungry and crowded. 

To my amazement, Reno took to the streets with the gusto he applies to every aspect of his life.  I thought he'd be whimpering at the thought of going into grubby streets, polluted by noise and  congestion, craving air conditioning. But in spite of his abdominal fervour of the night before, by lunch time he'd been conned by a fake holy man offering something white and crumbly to eat at the Gateway to India.  He'd had a "good lucky blessing" tied to his wrist, a tikka applied to his forehead,  been compressed by the crowds and impressed by the geniality of Indians.  He's reading Shantaram on his Kobo (aka Kindle) and loves that stuff happens in the book just where he happens to be.  The weather is divine - a mellow 25degrees with clear skies.

India has changed enormously in the 25 years I've been coming here.  The scenes that drew my photographic eye are now interpreted just as piles of rubble or dirty footpaths;  gone are the dhotis and saris from the city:  the faded peeling buildings are graffitied and padlocked; the dogs are still scrawny.  But the energy and humility and vibrance of the people still enthralls.  Nobody gets road rage here, in spite of humanity moving like molecules through the arteries of life.

I always like travelling with a motive: besides honeymoon and stock acquisition, we intend to photograph ourselves in our wedding clothes, and the red silk dress I made to photograph in every city we visit. The wedding dress was so spectacular, I'm going to wear it to shreds over the next few months.

So we dressed to the nines, and beyond, on our first day.  We're staying in the oldest part of the Taj, where the terrorist bomb happened; but it's been magnificently restored and the light that filters through the slatted roof and across the lattice on to the squared

Reno trying pure Indian essences for the first time.

black and white floors is very photogenic. My dress was spectacular amidst that decor; and what else could we do besides walk though the hotel, pose on the stairs, lounge against a baby grand, and pretend we were shooting for Harper's Bazaar.  I was in full makeup, and many of the hotel guests took photos of us and with us. Oddly, so elaborate and astonishing is the grandness of the decor, and so sublime the environment, that there were an equal number of people who didn't bat an eyelid that I was floating around in 50 metres of silk chiffon and net.

It has also been a long time dream of mine to have a wedding blessing in a Hindu temple. Reno, of course, in his amazing way, to add more shock to his astonished system, agreed immediately and we tore off at 40km an hour in a jalopy into the melee of horns, trucks, tuks tuks, cars, bicycles, bikes and pedestrians to the Badunath Hindu temple, a quiet place of columns carved with dieties amidst several ancient Banyan trees.  

We bought a basket of water lilies, roses, marigold petals and crystanthemums for 40rp, removed our shoes, and walked barefoot over ancient worn marble.  I covered my head and we stood sheepishly amongst the devout waiting for a sign from someone about what to do.  A gentle faced, white clad priest came up to us, and when Reno pointed his shiny new wedding ring, the priest nodded, fetched a brass pail of water and showed us how to pour it, with the flowers, over the shrine in the temple.  I held Reno's hand as we did this, and saw he was so moved he was shaking.  We sat on a step, as the priest had asked us to, until he returned to wrap a red and yellow cord around our wrists while intoning a Hindu prayer that was so powerful it made me cry. Thought of course I had no idea what it meant.

In my hand made silk dress, outside our room in the Taj.

On the way out, we passed a marble cow, at the entrance to another shrine. Many people were whispering in its ear.  Reno also did, while I watched, and when it was my turn I said this:  "Look, I feel really silly whispering into your ear.  You're just a piece of marble after all, and you're covered with flowers and the stories of a hundred thousand lives.  But I suppose a quick wish-prayer won't hurt."  Then I started to talk to this cow, really talk to him, like he was a priest confessor.  I said that I'd been thinking something I shouldn't, and that I was sorry because it had a sort of lousy outcome, so I promised that if I never thought that again, would he fix the lousy outcome?  The cow was poker faced, but I feel he may have listened because I felt him giving a wise sigh, and we'll see about the outcome.  Then I wondered what other people were saying to him, because I saw quite a few incredulous looks from the regulars who felt that they had the cow's ear, due to frequent whispering points, so did I have a right to fast tracking my guilt?

Wedding blessing at Badunath Temple

But I must admit, I was moved again to a profound sense of something New.  We were both quite silent in the cavorting cab on the way back to the Taj.

Amongst throngs of shrieking, excited fans, we went to the local bollywood cinema a short walk from the Taj.  While jostling our way to the ticket office, a little girl whined and tugged at my skirt, wanting money. I shooed her away and pushed through the crowds to see Hashee Pashee or it's subtitle Cookin Frazy ... to buy our 100rp stall tickets.  A police security guard had cordoned off the entrance, so we waited in a solid mass of people until we'd all passed through a magnetic security gate.  

Crushed just at knee height was the same little girl who'd managed to get some money to buy a movie ticket.  I looked into her dark little dust stained face, to her grubby, ragged clothes, her tiny little bare feet avoiding the stomp of sneakers, heels and boots. She had the most magnificent face I've ever seen:  a grubby little angel thrilled at the prospect of seeing a movie.  An enormous Indian man with an enormous wobbling stomach that covered the little girl's head almost squashed her. I said HEY, watchit, you're gonna squash this kid.  The kid tucked herself under my arm and sat next to us for the four hours of the movie. She shared our popcorn and ice cream.  She cringed and whimpered when the usher asked her to move so that a gang of teenage boys could sit in her row, she cowered into my side;  I said, no, she's with us.  We watched while she was mesmerised and transported into another world of laughter and great clothes, of food and shelter, of showers and parents.

Every time we laughed at something incomprehensibly Hindi, she looked at us and laughed too.  I thought about her parents, her mother.  How she managed to get around at night, alone, barefoot. Where she slept.  Who protected her. Reno held up a few fingers to ask her age: she held up six, her dark eyes dancing with excitement.  At six I could barely open my lunchbox unaided.  This little girl manoeuvred her way around a city of 18 million people, and dreamed one day of having all that was happening on the screen.  We left because we were tired, put a 100rp ($2.00) in her hand so she could buy another movie ticket – or plate of dahl – and I worried about her all the way home to our palatial room in a Victorian palace where staff handed us warm towels and chilled water.  And where earlier that  morning, after admiring a piece of jewellery in a window at the Taj, the jeweller allowed me to try on two necklaces of Tanzanite and diamonds, that collectively were worth $1.8million.  What a strange feeling to be wearing a house around my neck.

India always does this to me.  I remember on one of my early trips I was eating a plate of runny dahl and watery vegetables.  A dusty, vacantly-tired eyed girl came begging at my table. I’d been told by my tour guide not to give her money, and although I wanted to give her whatever I could, I didn’t. Instead, I’d lost my appetite and threw the remainder of my food away into a chute.  On my way out, I found the young girl, using her hands to sift the food that was washing through the drainpipe from the washing sink, lifting a few disintegrating grains of rice and shredded spinach to her mouth through trembling hands.  Twenty years later, I can still feel that lurch of sick-guilty in my heart, and see her eyes.  That was one photograph I couldn’t take, but it’s boiled on my retina.  When I got het up enough about these inequities in Nepal, I became involved in school building and trying to get glue sniffing kids off the streets.  Had I but world enough and time … instead, we gave this little child a few hours of delight in her undelightful world.  More money would have got her into trouble - this much I have learned on my journeys.

When I was in Mumbai in 2008, I spent days walking.  But the streets now are more clogged and more crumbled and I couldn’t find any of the landmarks that were familiar. So Reno and I took a cab to Crawford Markets, block and blocks of everything from electronics to gold jewellery. Reno had his first experience of buying pure Indian essences while I eyed the strawberries and baskets of fruit with equal, though unfulfilled, desire.  Only occasionally did we see a dhoti, but canisters of water were carried on trailers and gas is still carted around the city on makeshift tractors.

Reno’s reading Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, an Australian who’d become involved in a desperate heroin world from which he managed to escape, and wrote about his adventures and recovery in Mumbai.  The club, Leopold, around which the story is geographically centered, is just behind the Taj, and Reno went to check it out.  When he returned, a waiter at the Taj told us that Roberts visited the Taj frequently and sat where we did.  Reno felt as if he was in the presence of royalty, almost frothing at the mouth with excitement.

India touched me only slightly this time, because I chose to remain cloistered. Reno, however, has his Indian oils, Shakti and Krishna lividly vivid tee shirts,  abdominal traumas, learned the ways of an Indian pharmacy, and thoroughly enjoyed being driven around in a tin can by a driver with eight words of English. He’s received a wedding blessing in a temple, seen a Bollywood movie, and watched with joy as the gateway to India changed colour every ten seconds. He bought a Nehru linen suit and some hand made shirts.  At the airport he ran out of rupees to tip the porters, negotiated Indian emigration, and entered a conversation with every person he charmed. I’m so proud of him.

And so on to Venice.  Where Reno wooed me, just over 2 years ago.  I can't believe my luck.

Your feedback, please.

We left Perth at 3am to start our journey into the rest of our lives together.  Four bags, travelling light, yeah.  Not.  Very heartsore to leave my baby granddaughter who has just started walking, and shouting.  When we return, she'll be talking.  I feel like Marco Polo taking off on his long adventures.  The Mama who sails away, dabbing tears with her disposable hanky.  The Mama who makes up the stories, lives on the edge, now has a Witness, ready to rock and roll with her.

Reno honed in on the food at the Silver Kris lounge.  It was five am and the baggage  handlers were wiping sleep from their eyes, but Business Class never sleeps. My new husband  loaded up with sausages, hash browns, toast, coffee, bagels, donuts, eggs, salmon, orange juice.  I nibbled on the fruits.  Then we had a business class breakfast on the plane; my ew husband ate pancakes, honey, cream, blueberries, coffee, yoghurt and a chocolate, accompanied by glasses of Bollinger, as we told everyone we were on honeymoon, just to get the Bollinger.  

During our six hour Singapore layover, surrounded by orchids and Gucci handbags, we tucked into the tikka, tofu, sushi, which Reno chased with grilled fish, assorted breads, spring rolls, muffins, tomato soup, sushi, and an attempt at the cinnamon decorations.  I reminded him there is food in India.  By the time we took off for Mumbai, he was complaining of being too full for the chewing gum I offered, and looked aghast at the grilled sea bass with mashed potato on a jus that was specially cooked by the chef, and served with a wine of his choice. Reno drank water.

We were met at the airport  and whisked out into the bath-warm air into a river of cars, peacock feather fan and strawberry sellers, mobile phone charger vendors, and tiffin wallahs.  Reno was less interested in the avalanche of new impressions that screamed and hooted and leapt in front of us, his entry in the gateway of India, as he was about finding some Zantac in my emergency kit. 

It was wedding season in India.  Families spent years saving for these noisy, hysterical, drum beating, taxi hooting, Mercedes festooned celebrations.  Rose petals littered the lobby and the Mumbai night sky lit up with fireworks. 

Bypassing hotel registration and passport inspections as we too were newly weds (though not eighteen, virginal and terrified), we were garlanded and tikka-ed, blessed and escorted to our upgraded honeymoon room in the oldest part of the Taj, which was knee deep in red heart shaped balloons, heart shaped flower posies, bouquets of red gerberas, and towels tortured into shapes of kissing swans and hearts, strewn with rose petals. A giant bed with frothy sheets awaited our jet lagged bodies.  A hot rose petal strewn bubble bath also awaited, scented with lavender and ylang ylang.  Enormous knitted gowns that dragged on the floor waited to envelop us.  Candles flickered from Indian mirrored lamps.  Marigold petals littered the floor, in little mandalas.

It was our first official honeymoon night. Reno took my hand, and led me to the bedroom.  We were in India, land of Kama Sutra and 18 million people. He kissed me tenderly on my shoulder.  He slipped the red silk strap of my cami down my arm.  He stripped off his shirt, kicked off his shoes, dropped his jeans to the floor.  Stepped out of them.  Flexed his muscles. Grinned.  Showed me his Michaelangelo David bum that I first fell in love with two years previously.  I'll be back .. he winked  ... and went into the bathroom. 

Trembling with anticipation, I waited for my prince to return to our nuptial Mumbai bed. The moon was high, dawn was on the horizon.  Gongs and drums and whistles and toots and shrieks from the streets.  Shouts in the corridor.  Then the noises began from the bathroom.  No Romeo croonings here, no sounds of love, but abdominally projected noises that made my hair stand up. My prince was wrestling tigers for me, strangling cats and beheading pythons, obviously.  In between the gurglings and flushings, I asked through the crack between the floor and door, if he was alright.  Yep, perfectly fine, came the stoic response.  More gurgles and strangles issued.

I waited. And waited. I dozed.  The sun rose, hot and bothered, into an Indian February. 

Half an hour later, pale and green around the gills, my shaken and stirred prince returned to his bemused, sleep wrinkled bride, his Silver Kris splurge ungraciously given as feedback in all its technicolour glory.   

"Hey husband," I winked in the semi dark behind our silk curtains,  you feel like a little taste of ... Mylanta?"

"Why does it always look like sweetcorn?" were his first moaned words of amore in Mumbai.

Making hay while the sun shines ... in Mumbai.

The first day of our long honeymoon. 

Who knows what lies ahead.  Someone asked when we’d be back in Australia. I replied … “Oh, I’ll be back around July.” Was this a Freudian slip?  Would goat/Capricorn Reno, so keen on home and solid turf,  turn tail and flee home, leaving me catatonic in Cappadocia because I wanted one more hot air balloon ride?  Having had just one long international jaunt excluding the one when he was five and remembers everything, how would he manage all the twists and travails of such long travel in my wake?  Would my perfection about packing, and predeliction to talk to everyone drive him mad?  Would I want to kill him every time he told me how to cross a road in Rabat?  

There are times that spending an hour together in a car in Sydney has us both frothing at the gills, so when we return we are either going to have the strongest marriage on earth ... or .... as Reno said .... the strongest marriage on earth.  Whatever, we have both fastened our seat belts for a wild ride.

I am a snob about a few crucial things in my life, and I’ll admit it, here, at the outset of this blog about travel, that travelling business class is a fabulous way to travel. Yes, of course I like to get down with the locals to eat grasshoppers.  And yes, I've slept in some frightening beds, so you can't accuse me of being a precious princess all the time. The point is, I've done all that, for more than 20 years, so at this uncertain age, I want a soft bed, with air conditioning and thick towels. Room service if I want.  I've worked hard and lived long enough to become an embarrassment to my children.  So there.  Don't knock the good life it till you've tried it. 
 

But I'm quickly discovering that I like Reno's travelling style.  He's a fidgeter ... and doesn't like to sit still.  And he's a well built man.  He decided we'd fly business class so he can move around as much as he wants. Eat the food he likes. Sleep flat, wake refreshed.  Talk to interesting people.

I like to travel incognito.  Stare out the window for hours.  Immerse myself in the creation of my stories.  

I don’t like sweating over extra luggage, nor having to decided between my Youth Cell regenerative Face cream or my warmest coat.  Both need to be lathered or layered onto me.  And I don’t like having to pay more for that gram of cream when it’s in the air, than when it’s on the ground.  So I like my extra weight allowance. I don’t like deep vein thrombosis, nor having a fat neighbour’s lung germs attach themselves to me via a florid cough.  I’m not crazy about eating mashed potatoes and limp spinach out of alfoil containers. I like the options of Thermidor or scallops, and truly, secretly, desperately, I actually like to HEAR what I’m watching.  Yes, I know I’m hearing challenged at the best of times, but trying to lipread a dark screen for 6 hours is beyond even my resilience. So I like Bose headphones, white linen napkins, bread that doesn’t feel like a hand grenade, air before those in the back, and all the simpering that accompanies business class.

We managed to get a great deal on business class seats from an online company called Alpha Flight Guru.  It routed us through Mumbai, so I booked us four days at the Taj Palace Hotel, that glorious Victorian edifice right across from the Gateway to India, and yes, the place where the lunatic fringe of terrorists ran amok killing and bombing.  

The Taj Hotel stay was, in real terms, a gift from a client.  She'd arranged to come to our home to buy some jewellery.  I told Reno that whatever she spent would be spent on our first night/first few days of our honeymoon. She spent enough for us to have four days at the Taj Palace Hotel in Mumbai.  I had to stop myself from dancing around the room after she left.   

Reno wants to see India?  I'll show him India!

We packed tight and thoroughly. We packed as light as we could, but collectively it came to 63 kg which is ridiculous, but we'll dump along the way because we’re travelling from mid summer and 40 degrees, to mid winter, snow, aqua alta,  and possible sub zeros.  We’ll be in spring and autumn as well.  We packed just two or three changes of clothing with everything layerable and co-ordinating.  We’re taking our wedding clothes –to get our tax refund and because we want to wear them whenever we can. I felt so alive and fabulous in that gown that it deserves to be displayed again and again.  Bugger the weight.  Being cold is no joke. 

This is to be a long trip, dipping into Mumbai for a few days with a splash at the Taj Hotel on the shores of the Arabian sea, then spanning a large chunk of east and western Europe: Venice for Carnevale – masks, mayhem, madness, ball gowns and traipsing in the footsteps of Marco Polo and being seduced by the ghosts of Casanova.  On to Verona, where Shakespeare set his Romeo& Juliet, a drive to Lubljana in Slovenia, a few days in Saltzburg, then the Czech Republic with Prague and art deco as focus. Off to London, then down to Marrakech in Morocco, along the west coast passing Essaouria, El Jadida, Rabat, Meknes, Fez and back to Marrakech.  Via London to Turkey, Istanbul and down to Cappadocia for hot air ballooning, then Rome to meet Sharon & Oren Snir, who were at our Sydney wedding. From Rome we’ll drive with them through Tuscany, staying in Florence, then a week in Varenna , Lake Como, where we’ll meet a group of friends – Dawn, who was with me when I said I would marry there one day, Francine and Pippo who would also have shared our Venice apartment during a few wild Carnevale days and nights, perhaps some of Reno’s relatives – for a celebration wedding lunch.  Then back to Venice to learn to ride a gondola (wedding gift from Liza and Ben), a cruise down the Adriatic passing several important Dalmation sea ports, Malta, Sicily, where we’ll meet Reno’s family for a lunch on land, and home from Rome.

Not bad, eh? 

Which is why travelling for this length of time has made Reno a little anxious, while I’m like a thoroughbred at the starting gate.  I can smell the diesel on the tarmac, the heat in the streets, the crunch of suitcase wheels in pre dawn, and I’m already hyperventilating with excitement.  

Dance me to the end of time!

Wedding Belle and a Handsome Groom

Two days pre wedding, local hotels and homes were filled with our family and friends.  My children arrived from Perth.  Mel and Sophie from Melbourne.  Sherry from Albury. Lynette, Sheridan and Melody from Perth. Uncles and aunts from Queensland.  We were devastated that Carmen, the sister in law I wanted to love forever, didn't come.  We begged, we pleaded, we ignored her excuses and protestations, we pretended we didn't care. But we were cut to the core. First she said yes, then she said no, then she said maybe, then she said yes, then no, then internally, we said Vancuno. Or some similar Italian curse.

Neither did my brother and sister in law come from London, and that cut too because they didn't come to my first wedding. Perhaps he doesn't believe in me? That love has finally settled in my life? But we do have plans to see him on our honeymoon in Italy, in about 5 months.   Reno and I went at 5am to Flemington markets to buy our flowers - what glorious smells and shouts and colours.  I chose roses, waterlilies and peonies.  In between I baked 50 chocolate filled meringues, just because I could, and because I wanted to.  Baby Noa arrived with Mama and Papa and got her share of cuddles and kisses and once again took to Reno like a duck to water.   The rain came down in buckets, and Oxford Falls lived up to its name.  The grass turned vivid green, the trees shimmered and the council did a fabulous job of trimming so much verdant growth. But the grounds were sodden, the rocks covered with moss, and it would have been impossible to put a hundred guests in the cottage on the grounds. 

Don't worry cara, the sun will shine for us, promised my prince. You must believe in me.

December 8th 2014.  Two years to the day that I returned from Venice to a brand new relationship that came at me from nowhere but promised me so much. That I fought so hard against, but ran towards with so much passion.

Gail - my sister in arms and geography,  and I stayed at a beach front hotel, with Lynette and her girls, my longest friends in Australia,  and Sherry who stood by me while the idiot/cafuno/slug/moffie/betrayer trashed my life, came from half way across the country. We gathered for a raucous pre wedding dinner where I toasted my self, and my sistas, unable really to believe that I'd get married the following day. To a man I really wanted to be with. To a man I'd decided to be with - not because I was homeless, or financially compromised, or pregnant, or because society expected it of me, or because I thought I'd be losing my looks or my waistline or because I wanted a baby, or wanted someone to look after my baby.  

I was marrying him because I understood, finally, the importantance of commitment.  Of promising to be there - no matter what - until my last breath.  That I would l love him in many, many different ways, on many different days. That the challenges would hurt us, and perhaps harm us, but that neither of us would take the rug or the lifeboat from under each other's feet.  I was marrying him because I couldn't conceive of another way of showing him how much I loved him.  I wanted to marry him because Tina Turner showed me  how to do it. To stand by him.  

I was also marrying him because the thought of him walking off into the sunset without me really rattled me.  It wasn't about ownership - I had done that.  I liked the freedom in our relationship, to become who we wanted to with the knowledge that we believed in each other.

I woke at four am, to a dark but cloudless sky.  I lay there thinking that from today onwards, everything would be different, but also the same.  I didn't want to waste a moment of it.  I walked down to the beach, along the shoreline, my feet in the creamy waves.  I was all alone on a long dark beach ... watching my footsteps in the sand, single now, but from midday, always alongside Reno.  I'd wanted to swim, to do a ritual Jewish cleansing (a mikvah)  of the past to enter the present, but the strong backwash scared me - who'd eat all that food if I was washed away ? Who would Reno marry instead of me? 

Instead I took the car he'd given me for a wedding present and drove alongside Narrabeen lake where ducks skimmed over the misty surface, to our wedding venue. The garden was shimmering with early morning sun and the grass steamed.  The rain had washed everything, and had disappeared over a horizon to go and torment another pre wedding.  

It was the most glorious day I'd seen in a year.   

I walked around for a while, knowing that when I returned it would be festooned just the way I wanted it to be.  I met my gals for breakfast, quite relaxed that I was due to be married after so long.  Thirty years without a husband, but with adventures and misadventures in between, with nobody I wanted to spend more than a few months with.  Of course there were a few who hung around for longer, but that was because I had to lose children, and homes and cars and businesses to get rid of them; this stuff takes time.

I've just realised there when one important letter is removed from married, it makes the word - marred.  When the I goes missing, I'd be marred. Something to consider!  Would Reno take the I out of me, as so many had before him?

Was I nervous? I tried to feel some anxiety, some terror:  I've excelled at being a runaway bride.  I've never had any qualms about marrying Reno. I'm sure we'll have collisions as we're both very headstrong and determined people:  he's an alpha male Capricorn Italian Australian who is built metaphorically and physically like the Great Wall of China.  I'm a perfectionist and a Libran and I like multiple choices where he is linear.  But I need his wall and he needs my balance.  And he has a very gentle and patient way of talking our collisions through.

So I washed, and plucked, and tweaked and smoothed for my Day.  Gail, my matron of dishonour,  laced me into my magnificent gown. My makeup was applied by the professional that Reno found for me, although I'd protested that I wanted to do it myself.  I wore a short black veil with some gardenias and a slash of red lipstick.  I spritzed myself with Elle parfum, pouf, ready to marry. In the background, the wedding planners were stringing up chandeliers, adorning tables with fruit and silver, and festooning the trees with paper lanterns to complement the parasols I'd bought for the day.

I walked to marry my prince. The sun was blazing, dazzling, amazing.  The guests had arrived, dressed to thrill, as requested. Well, some of them had.  If they got sunburned, I wasn't going to be responsible.

Reno was waiting.   He'd chosen Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Fanfare for the Common Man" to herald himself in.  Our guests cheered.   He jumped and leaped, and ran and twirled, holding his children Alex and Jordan by their hands.  Both of whom, it seemed, tried to hold him back, but he chafed at their reigns.  This was a long way ahead of the purple haired angry teenager who told me, as she tried to push me down an escalator, that she'd managed to get rid of all her father's other girlfriends.  I even thought I'd succeed in befriending Reno's first wife, but that screeched to a grinding halt when he told her we were actually getting MARRIED. After 16 years apart, she still believed they had unfinished business.

When I arrived in my divine black and white dress, to the beautiful strains of our beloved friends Robyn and Adrian playing Lakme's Flower Duet while Denese sang, our guests hooted and cheered, clapped and whistled.  Reno looked divine in his Casa Adamo white suit;  Alex in her black sequinned dress and the red fascinator she wore just to make me happy.  The day was splendid, gorgeous, remarkable, great fun.  We had a Buddhist ceremony under a Jewish chuppah with Sicilian dancing.   We were bound by cords, and vows, and Denese sang Ave Maria as I'd always wanted. Rhondda and Clyde - my friends from my first lonely Sydney days - were our witnesses.  Mel and Sophie came from Melbourne, Mel to walk me down the "aisle".  Baby Noa was our "flower girl" dressed in a black tutu.  Reno's little nieces were sunset coloured pompoms.  Gail was our matron of dishonour, even right down to a very politically incorrect speech that I barely remember but everyone else does! Everyone left far, far too early ... right after they'd finished their tottering platters of food (leaving little for most of the guests) and gorged on the vintage tea so we didn't even have time to play the music we'd spent four months putting together.

So Reno and I were left alone, under a late evening sky, and a brilliant sparkling chandelier.  He put on our special music, and we danced alone under the stars and lights, making our own magic.  What a special way to end a magical day ... and start a marriage.

Writing blessings.

David crooning 20's jazz.

Our celebrants, Mary Ord and her husband Peter, with the new Mr & Mrs Storm Russo.

Liza and mama.