FEAR OF FLYING

I’m leaving Venice in two days to do the cruise.  

Because I don’t feel that I have yet found the meaning of my Venice experience, I’m happy - very happy - to be returning to Sydney, but I’m also very pleased that I’ll be returning to Venice late November.  I haven’t even begun to unravel the layers, because Venice is dense, impenetrable, and yes, unfriendly.  I have unfinished business, and I’m not sure what it is.  I knew I was ready to leave Nepal, England, Turkey, Morocco and Italy the first time. But Venice hasn’t yet shown me her hand.

San Marco and surrounds

My plans with S&G have unravelled. Remember I wore about them taking me their lawyer, and the conversations I couldn't understand, and the forms I refused to fill in?  And that I'd called Dawn and read her some of the Italian, and her replies could be heard from France. NO!    

I came here initially because I was ecstatic to be invited, under any guise, for an extended stay.   The reasons are quite convoluted, but basically it involves my not having a work permit and S&G not wanting to put my jewellery in their windows because they’d get into heap big Italian trouble because I don't have that work permit. (Lesson #1 in Italian logic.) Then they hit on the very intriguing idea of having me take over their shop, once the Guggenheim idea had floated down the canal, along with the flotsam and jetsam of Italian bureaucracy.  I have no intention of taking over any shop, even in Venice. I thought I was going to work here, with them, designing.  But I’ve realised they thought that if I took over their business, they’d be able to retire.

Briefly, over a seductive lunch of stuffed zucchini flowers, grilled fish and seafood soup, on the last days of summer, we sat in a courtyard under vines and in they suggested I take over their smaller shop, on which they still had many years of a long lease. Again, I stressed that I didn’t want to take over a shop, but I would consider it for a few months during winter, providing that I’d have enough free time to spend with MrM and my other friends when they come. I have re-enrolled in morning school for the first weeks of my return; they suggested I go in the evenings.  (When it gets dark at 4pm and the temperature averages zero, with a possibility of snow.) And when restaurants are closed, and the seasonal food isn't available and I can't negotiate Mestre.

So could I have the shop for a few hours a day for a few months, no contracts? Certo! Of course.  We clinked chilled glasses of wine from the Veneto.  Later G took me back to the shop.  The rent is very low, he said.  It is, I agreed.  After two years, you will earn enough money to buy a villa here.  I’m sure, I agreed, watching the thousands of people who pass there every day.  But, I said, I don’t want to be here for years, I have a life I want to return to in Sydney.   Oh, why, he said, you’re becoming Italian.  You’re learning the language quickly. You look Italian already. Forget Australia. 

Er .. what happened to the problems with the work permit, I allowed myself to think. 

Giardini, Venice

Of course, G smiled, when you take over the shop, you will need to pay me 30,000 Euro. For the shopfittings we put in ten years ago.  The lights, the floors, the shelves. 

But if I did want to take it over, I allowed myself to think, I would tear the place apart and make it contemporary.  I might leave the Murano chandelier, but right now it’s Brick-a-brack heaven. Although the thought of buying a villa here in two years is enticing.

In Australia, my mouth moved behind my poker face, the new owner doesn’t pay for past renovations.  But you will get that back when you sell it to the new owner in ten years, G replied unconvincingly. 

Also, G added, more unconvincingly, all their existing customers will come into the shop, especially to buy the rare collection of paperweights they bought from Murano a few years ago.  So I would also have to pay him 50,000 Euro for the 1000 paperweights.  Good news is that I wouldn’t have to pay him all at once.

I need a thousand antique paperweights like I need measles.

80,000Euro.  For goods I don’t want, a shop I don’t want, and a business I’m not sure I would have the courage to do again as long as it involves a contract and hours on a door.

Helicopter ride on Lido

Poker face firmly in place, I excused myself, and chuckled all the way back to mi casa. I called Dawn in Paris to debrief. She was agog.  F and P - who were introduced to me via a J, my beautiful Sydney friend, came from Geneva and Verona respectively to visit.  We had a fabulous weekend exploring the city on foot and boat.  Sitting at Al Buca under the Rialto bridge, while we settled into our seafood platter, they too were agog at the turn of events, as bright lunch turned pink evening over the Grand Canal, and the muscular gondolieri paddled their lovestruck tourists plonked on pink velvet down dark watery lanes.  To cheer me up they invited MrM and I to spend Christmas with them in Geneva.  P and MrM would stuff turkeys, and we’d shop for handbags.  Bellissimo!  Christmas is looking bright indeed.

So I walked away from the “deal” with S&G which was beyond ridiculous.  Never mind the cash investment I was supposed to make, but I don’t have a work permit and won’t be able to get one.  And though I love Venice, I don’t want to marry her!

(So ... postscript filled in years later:  Apparently it happens in Italy, that little old ladies are tricked into buying businesses as tax dodges for the owners.  If everything goes pear shaped, the little old lady who now owns the business she knows nothing about, takes the blame and the crunch and the legal ramifications, while the original owners get away with - everything.) 

Which left me in a bit of a quandary about what to do with all the beads I’d couriered from Sydney.  So I packed up the pieces I’ve made here, ready to return with me to Sydney.  The rest I put into Mario’s (let’s hope waterproof) basement as I saw my first hint of high water today, lapping the fondamente at Rialto Mercato, as I moved my winter luggage on the vaporetto to my new home in Cannareggio.  I’ll think about that when March comes ... in the meantime I’ll enjoy creating during winter.

My mood lifted immediately in the new apartment: it’s filled with afternoon light. My current apartment in San Toma has morning light, which is quite beautiful, but mornings I’m at the Institute. Cannareggio is less touristy, although there are plenty of restaurants, bakeries, patisseries, pizzeria, and a local fruit and vegetable shop. I know I’m going to have long happy days curled up on the sofa learning Italian, or reading, or when friends arrive, cooking with the local produce. Heaven.  Priceless heaven.

Luggage stored, and with 6 hours left on my last Venice day, I met P and M from school for a helicopter flight over Venice and the lagoon, under the Cavalier in San Marco, lured in by touts who didn’t have to do much convincing. Riding in the wooden paneled speedboat that reared up in the grand canal like a wild windblown horse, our hair tore around our heads, salt stung our eyes and I clung to the ridge of the roof as we bounced along at high speed screaming at the top of my lungs - I LOVE VENICE!!!!!

Sitting white faced and shrunken in her seat inside, ignoring the villas and palazzos and promenades that she’d never see walking,  was a woman in her fifties;  I don’t want to go on a helicopter, she complained. He wants to.  (Pointing to her husband).  I don’t like heights.  I don’t like water. I’m scared we’ll crash, we’ll drown, I’ll vomit, I’ll feel sick.

Here’s a woman whose husband has brought her to Venice. Has paid for her speedboat and her helicopter, because he wants some adrenalin, some excitement, some butterflies.

And I got to thinking about fear, and how nothing has scared me for a long time.  I got to thinking about how if we were limited by fear, we would never do anything.  Explorers would never have left home, discoveries wouldn’t be made, music and art wouldn’t break boundaries, and I wouldn’t be in Venice. Marco Polo would be fat with pasta, and he would have had time to argue with Mama.

Burano at dusk

Fear is limiting, inhibiting and debilitating. I’ve learned, through many fearful experiences that the only way through it is a physical letting go. You don’t have any control over the fear inducing situation - you have control over how you handle it.  I was in a light plane crash in a field south of Perth, and I remember that cold, sickening knot of visceral fear, that dried my mouth and weakened my legs, made me sick to my stomach, and fast tracked the blue light of impending death.  I watched as my life flashed behind me. Then I felt the fear pop inside me like a bubble. Flooded with adrenalin, I became calm, relaxed and detached. Once in a helicopter flying sideways through a canyon, I was so petrified I couldn’t take any photographs.  If I’m truly terrified now, I try to reach that spot.  It’s how I handled hurtling to the ground from three kilometres up, with no visual reference of ground or sky. I just let go.

Burano from the air

I looked again at the frightened, cowed woman in the speedboat, dreading her aerial discovery of this magical city.  Just let go, I suggested.  It is your choice to get on that lovely yellow helicopter - let yourself enjoy it.  You won’t have time to be scared.

Burano at dusk

What a treat that ride was; skimming over Torchello and its gardens, Venice’s cemetery, the ruins of the monastery,  Murano and its glass furnaces, colourful Burano and its lace, the Lido and its beaches and then Venice and San Marco’s footsore tourists, green Giardini, Biennale and the boatyards of Arsenale, all of which gave us the best insight into the sort of land that was settled by people fleeing persecution more than a thousand years ago, to become the biggest and richest seaport in the world.

The frightened wife took the flight and made no comment on her 12 minutes over Venice. I wonder how she’d feel, back home soon, this experience gone forever. I, though, was on my last day, determined to get the most out of it.  We landed at San Marco and immediately caught the vaporetto to Burano, but landed up on a distant mainland by mistake - our boat hugging the weeds and passing fishermen. In fearful mode, we’d have fretted over to get where we needed to be, but instead enjoyed the unfamiliar scenery until a change of boat eventually took us to Burano, where we spent a few very chilly hours walking and refuelling with linguini and coffee, before we returned late to Venice floodlit with a full moon.

Murano and glass foundaries 

Did I take a boat along the canal back home? Not on your Tintoretto! P and I shared a seafood platter at the Rialto, watching the gold and pink water, and the ghostly gondolieri. I walked those dark, shuttered, echoing, cold lanes at midnight, remembering the three enormous Americans in their bullet proof vests who asked me if it was safe to walk Venice at night, and my reply.  And remembering that I’d survived a cold night long ago in Patagonia, when I’d walked to my cabin alone, and turned to find a pack of wild dogs following me so close I could feel their breath on my heels.  I’d picked up stones and flung them at the dogs, and then ran as fast as I could - two very stupid things to do. There were no stones unturned in Venice, no wild dogs - they’d have been well fed and perched on velvet cushions, their pink tutus and diamante collars tucked away,  this time of night.  Of course I wasn’t afraid.  This was my last night in Venice for a while and I wanted to breathe in every experience.

I packed away my party frocks, brought for the many evenings I’d be introduced to Venetians by S and G.  I put my summer clothes in my coming home case, and my winter clothes in my staying behind case.  For my last breakfast, I made a mushroom, olive and carciofi omelette, finished the last of my pomegranate juice and took some crackers for the boat ride to the airport. I went to the shop to say goodbye to G, who said, Oh! You’re leaving already? How long have you been here? When you return, you will come for dinner at our villa.  Magiare!

M, my landlord upstairs,  apologised for being so busy while I’ve been here and for not having me over. He offered to make me his speciality onion soup when I return.  He helped me with my luggage to the vaporetto, and I caught the Alilaguna to the airport. Everyone was bundled up to their earlobes. The glove sellers were out.  There wasn’t a sandal in sight.  Hats were pulled low.  The wind was wild, the water choppy, the vaporetto lurched and struggled through the waves. I turned green.

I was blown into the airport.  I wasn’t upgraded.  Two young Australian men sat next to me. We don’t like Venice, they said, we saw everything we needed to in three days.  I didn’t bother correcting them.  Venice will only show you what you’re ready for, I tried to tell them.  They were ready only for three days. We don’t like Italy, they said, the Italians are unfriendly. They’re all talk.  Here, I reluctantly concur. I’ve made friends from Geneva, Verona, Holland, Switzerland and Sweden, with the girls in my favourite bag shop who are from Moldovia and Korea,  but not my landlords or the people who asked me to come. Maybe when I return. 

My time in Venice has yet to reveal its purpose.

Flying into Sydney very early, I was delighted to be coming "home" where all is familiar, and dear, and easy.

The city of mirrors

To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius. - Alexander Herzen.

Rialto

I've attached myself to Venice like a jealous lover.  I stalk its calli during the day, hating the tourists, wishing they would go home and leave it to me so I can fawn all over it undisturbed. Then alone at night with my beautiful treasure, I gaze at it in raptures; all the dark nuances of shadows, the chinks of light that tantalise me, the mysteries that just might reveal themselves if I am patient enough.  I love that the season has changed, and with it the light.  I've never seen light like in Venice, and although I'm aware that it has been rhapsodised over, eulogised over, poetry and art and music poured over it, I still feel, like all jealous lovers, that this light belongs to me. No day or night is the same;  the moon changes the shapes and stature of the buildings, waxing and waning with the tides that I'm now conscious of on a cyclic level. The colder air changes the shape and form of the light; sometimes Venice looks as if it is being seen through a grimy glass window, at others it's reflected in ancient, peeling mirrors;  in between it shimmers and trembles as if it has just been washed with mountain water.

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone. ~ Erica Jong

Famous Horses at San Marco

Yesterday I went with Pamela from school to the Museo di Storia Naturale, at Ca' Rezzonico, after twists and turns and dead ends in the back lanes, washing flapping above us, cane caca beneath our feet. I don't normally like being cooped up in museums, but I bought a Museo Card for E18 which entitles me to dieci museo per ses mese - a euro and a bit for entry into fabulous palaces with fabulous collections - priceless.  What a museum. Outside, the grace and splendour of a truly grand villa, while inside it's a statement of everything that is wonderful in Italian contemporary design, a brilliant counterpoint to creepy things and crawly things, and bottled things and fossilised things.  There are no English translations of any of the exhibits, but to our delight, both P and I understood EVERYTHING.  

A jaunt around another corner led us to the exhibition of Alexxandre Vassiliev - a Russian designer - of clothes and textiles from 1900 - 1920, from Paris, Bulgaria, Venice, and Russia.    They were made of exquisite silks and beadwork, and looking around at the plethora of ugly clothing we now wear, you'd have to lament that elegant time lost. 

Several times, but always on the way to somewhere else, I'd chugged past the astonishing artwork of Oksana Mas, who created gigantic panels of wooden eggs into " Wooden Egg Mosiacs called ‘Post-vs-Proto-Renaissance’, (that) features 12 separate pieces, measures a total of 92 by 134 meters and numbers an astonishing 3,640,000 wooden eggs hand-painted by people in 42 different countries.

This city is a living, breathing art gallery, and the longer I'm here the more I find there is to see. I haven't yet seen a Tintoretto!

I've been wanting to see "Venice behind the Mask" ever since I saw it advertised on a billboard way back in July. I'm leaving for Sydney in a few days, there to meet Dawn and do the Pacific cruise that I won while I was in Nepal, before I return here. Yet I'm voracious for more and more, as everything is much more fun, and accessible, now that I have a leetle beet of Italian; enough to get around, get fed, get out of trouble and eavesdrop. We bought tickets for the show at Teatro Gallo  - ate at a little trattoria in a piazza - where Pamela asked for Sambucco instead of Oso Buco - note to selves, why bother with meat here - it's always terrible.  Front row seats and the show was a riot, a wonderful multi media production covering five hundred years of ribaldry, rivalry, plague, fame, fortune, decadence, death and divine intervention.

Venice from Lido, with fishing nets

Today - a trip to the Lido to ride a bike. Or rather, three of us riding one bike - three seats next to each other, with one dud steering wheel, a mismatched set of pedals, seats that couldn't by any stretch of the imagination comfortably seat three bums.  We mounted pavements, we created traffic jams of buses and cars (eeuw, yes, those macchina are noxious, stinky belching pests) we pushed and heaved up hills and let loose down hills, we squeezed between barriers over ponti, all the while looking across the gorgeous Venice shrouded in a delicate, delicious autumn haze, the water flat as a mirror.  

Not Sydney! Phew!  Lido, Venice. Hideous.

Most definitely the most fun I have had for 4Euro for a long time. I wasn't allowed to ride in the main streets because I'd turn the wrong way, but the residents of the Lido were very accommodating, apart from a grumpy woman sitting on a park bench watching the traffic, who cursed to her husband about the lunatic foreign infidels who dared to have a good time. We stopped pedalling to ask a man directions to the light house - which we called Casa la luce, which resulted in him giving us a history lesson on the lighthouse, a linguistic lesson on the correct use of the word, and the various types of lighthouses, so that by the time he was finished it was too late to go to the lighthouse, but, very well informed, we stopped briefly at the Lido, a beach ruined by the platoons of change booths that resemble a detention centre.  

Map reading, Lido.

Worse, you have to pay to visit it, but we chained the three seater bike to the gate and went in over the sticky brown sand to watch a coiffed poodle retrieve a ball. I suppose when you're enclosed by buildings, this beach seems remarkable. It reminded me of Brighton, England, except the light, of course, was infinitely better here.

I've tried never to make this blog a "I woke up, I did this, I went and ate there", but every moment and every meal in Venice has cause to be celebrated. We ate at a very ordinary restaurant at the Lido, but staring over us was the Excelsior hotel, it's facade completely covered with exquisite Belle Epoque tiles. 

Facade of Excelsior made of tiles

Down through the back streets were large, elegant, well maintained villas, looking across the lagoon to Venice.  The Lido is a very sedate place - at least it seemed so on this chilly day, but it was the haunt of decadents and partygoers in affluent times past. 

Venice across the water looks like all the paintings you see in gauzy, hazy, ethereal colours. Fishing nets seem to hold Venice at bay, or stop it from ascending to heaven. The paintings from the past show a city of centuries long decadence, but now it seems like a little frail old lady, trying to remember her courtesan days. 

We ferried back to San Marco where the handbag touts were out in full force - and so were the carabinieri.  These poor African souls tout their knock off uber brand Chinese fakes and the more desperate they are to sell, the less you'll need to pay for them -  if you can catch them when the carabinieri are running after them. I always thought it was a cat and mouse game - not very serious, but today the carabinieri meant business and didn't care who got in the way. Tourists were knocked off their feet, pigeons took to the air, gelatis fell to the ground, upside down maps took off like pelicans,  and the Africans ran like the wind, chased by panting, tubby men in uniform.  The carabinieri called for reinforcements, bags went flying, and a tall Cameroon man was pinned to the ancient stones by two fat uniforms under a mini mound of fake bags. It was easy to follow the drops of blood spilled in the chase ... but for the first time my heart went out to them, as I heard later that they were indentured to the traffickers who had brought them into Venice, paying a portion of the takings in fees or bribes every day.

Grand canal, just under Rialto

Ditto

Sunset, and a meal at Al Buco, under the Rialto. A heavenly place.  You can't beat the view. I've been there three times and come away sated and satisfied each time.  If you don't like the food, look at the view. It never fails. The waiters are out of Fawlty Towers and worth every cent. This is Italy after all. You want swank, pomp, and perfection? Go to Paris!

These photos are not modified .. this is the 6pm light under the Rialto at the beginning of Winter.  Priceless.

A boat ride home to San Toma .. and the strains of Vivaldi in the piazza .. a violinist and a cellist playing in the dark to the passers by. Heaven. If they play the adagio, I said to myself, as I leaned over the ancient stone well, and settled in for a big listen on the 4 centuries old step,  I'll give them five euros. They did. I did. I practically skipped home.

Tomorrow, my last day in my adopted city until I return, I move some of my stuff to my new apartment in Cannareggio.  What a big deal that's going to be - dragging cases up steps over bridges, into a traghetto, then a vaporetto, then more hauling. No transport? Here is easy! Yes. Well.  Whatever.  Then P, M and I are  taking a speedboat to the Lido for a helicopter ride around the islands of Torchello, Cimiteria, Burano, Murano and Venice. Then Vivaldi's Quattro Staglione in the church in which it was first performed, on the edge of the Grand Canal.   Then Sydney, and friends and the cruise and a birthday party and then pre-nuptial planning with figlia numero uno, and then return to La Serenissima for winter, for carnevale. And Christmas in Geneva, and friends from Holland and Verona in January.  And Drella Bella my bff, coming for Carnevale too, she who kept me going through long time travelled nights with tales of her own goings on. Oh, heaven. Oh, priceless.

There really is light at the end of the tunnel .. always. I had a new passport done in January and I look as if ghosts are inhabiting what was left of my heart and body then. It's a truly frightening photograph. It's said that when you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.  But my face now is unrecognisable from that haunted creature.  I have no intention of "going home", rather a temporary respite from this soulful journeying.   I was crawling over metaphorical glass, a shambles of a person, traumatised, compromised, betrayed, broken and humiliated beyond anything I have ever experienced.  The photo for my Venetian pass - the IMOB card, was copied from my passport, and I'm now unrecognisable from that person.  I'm unwillingly carrying my own ghost. But it helps to remind me that no matter how bad your life seems at the time, how utterly out of control and hideous and hopeless, it does get better. It gets best. 

And because you've been through the sewers of your life, everything after that can't be anything but wonderful. It's important to reflect at junctures ... and give thanks for how far we have come from the pits.


Indeed.

LAST RAYS OF SUMMER

Summer in Venice is a place of gold and magic. 

Light bounces off stones, slips through chinks of shutters, warms toes and melts gelatis.  The summer hasn't wanted to finish ... lingering and teasing and tantalising: even though the shopkeepers redid all their windows for suffocatingly thick winter clothes more than two weeks ago - decorated them with leaves and rocks and stones, furs and wool, brown leathers and scarves and stylish hats.  It doesn't seem possible we'll ever need to wear them.

I went with Pamela from school to a Renaissance concert, performed in masks, in a church in Campo Santa Margerhita.  Hundreds of students hung around bars, sat on the bridges, perched on the edges of wells, swung around glowing pink lampposts, smootched in corners.  By day this campo has a vibrant fish market, an itinerant clothes seller, a daily fruit vendor, demountable newspaper stands, flowers sold from buckets and hundreds of tables - facing into the square,  to have cornettos and coffee in the morning and watch the passing parade.  Going to school is an ever changing tableau.

Arriviamo a Murano per vaporetto

Two days ago, Sylvia and Giorgio called and said, quick, quick, the tide is low, come now, meet us at Rialto, we'll take a boat to Murano and look for old glass in the water at the beach near the glass furnace. I gobbled my salad, dumped my books and collected my camera, caught the vaporetto and met Sylvia who led me through lanes I haven't yet seen, onto a vaporetto, and to Murano.  

The weather was sublime:  like being immersed in a warm bath.  I've never seen such consistently blue skies - clouds don't like to clutter the summery heavens. We walked down lanes and along fondamente and underneath a rope barrier, to the back of a bead-making furnace that has been in existence for hundreds of years.  The beach was made of glass - a billion pieces of discarded, softly eroded glass, amongst which were, if we looked closely, old chevrons from the 17thc -19thc that had been discarded because they were imperfect.  I immediately wanted to take a batch home to make a mosaic ... but instead scratched through the 'sand' looking for the bright blue chevrons.  The tide was fairly high, and there was a lot of seaweed, but we took off our shoes and walked gingerly over the slippery rocks and amongst the glass.

Very old chevrons found on beach at Murano

Mi ha fatto molto piacere perché ho trovato abbastanza vecchio, chevron dolcemente eroso di farmi una bella collana come ricordo di questa giornata.


I didn't believe that these beads could really be found .. but here you are. I'm not going to polish them, either - I love their soft worn-ness.  Some are exquisitely tiny ... they would look fantastic with just a minute knot between each one.

Sylvia searching for Chevons in Murano

Sylvia and I scratched around until a gang of Indian tourists came along wanting to know what we were doing, and wanting to scratch in the sand too .. but couldn't understand the interest we'd have in "broken" beads.  We're going to return when the tide is lower, with less seaweed, to get more. 

Gondolier on Grand Canal, last day of Summer 2011

I have a notification on my phone that alerts me to weather changes here.  Late yesterday afternoon I saw that summer will end today. It wasn't a prediction.  It was a proclamation.  I was in the middle of my homework, but I looked at the fabulous blue sky and my watch which proclaimed that today would be cold, windy and raining.  I took my camera and the first vaporetto from San Tomo which luckily went to the Lido - the longest ride possible.  I sat at the back of the hard working, noisy vessel and stayed till the end - to the Lido and back.  

I passed Accademia and it's bridges, the Santa Maria Della Salute built as thanks by those who survived the rat plague, busy San Marco and the tourists who seldom venture further than it's edges.  At the Lido I saw that if I go there next week, I can hire a bicycle and cycle around.  I watched happily as the last day of summer blessed Venice from top to toe. My camera and I gave an homage to everything we've shared together here.  I've had a few lonely days, but every time I vaguely consider that this journey, here, is hard, I look around and give thanks.  How lucky I am.   Grazie, grazie. 

Indeed, this morning, the temperature has dropped 15 degrees and everyone is shivering and the skies are grey and the steps are wet.   It was my final day of school and I'm not terrified of the language - just intimidated;  I've learned a lot and got past the stage of believing it is all too hard -now I want to continue until I can parlo Italiano!  

Leaving school this last day, I walked through the enormous salons of Ca' Zenobia, the palace I pass on my way to the Institute. I followed the strains of someone playing Mozart that echoed and danced from a stone room along the cobbles and into my grateful ears. I followed the music up worn marble steps into a grand room with a domed frescoed ceiling.  Soft light played on the mosaic decorated marble floors, and outside, as an accompaniment to Mozart, the first rains of winter trickled down the old peeling walls, dripping into urns and down metal statues, pocked and plinked on the canal waters and softened the light to a pale grey.  A beautifully choreographed ending to my first month of Italian school.