Travelling Bead 2: Arrivederci La Serenissima freddo!

And so it comes to pass.

My last days in this most spectacular of cities have almost ended. Many of the exhibitions I kept for later viewing have moved on, and the city is almost deserted. The facades are pulled down.

The Venetians are as rude as they can be, as their need to be marginally ingratiating to the money throwing tourists has come to a close. I love it like this. The city belongs to me. I walk with a look in my eye that tells everyone I belong here. I jump on and off the vaporettos with seconds to spare; I don't need to count the stops. I give directions in Italian to other Italians. I think in Euros, I think in Italian, I am not aware of translating from one language to another. Facile. Or Fa chee le. I don't really want to go home - for where is home now - but my intuition about not being here through the long winter was correct - I would probably be the only person left in the city.

Every day the trees are more naked; the light more blue grey. Venice seems larger, and much more fragile. For the first time, I can smell a bit of the stink, but it's like the old dowager's shoes, when she's slipped them off under the antique table, and, rubbing one arthritic toe against the other, hopes no one notices. I notice, but I don't mind. For when that fog rolls in over the water and the sky drops to the horizon, and everything has a cast of icy moisture, and even the gondolas seem to huddle together for protection, Venice is a Turner and a Tintoretto and a Dali rolled into one. A Vivaldi Quattro Staglione and a Carnevale. Who cares about smells enough to make THAT the one thing they can't abide about Venice. Get a life, you idiots, I mutter.

But let me rewind 10 days. For something quite interesting is going on in the wings.

I was on my way to Sydney International Airport, returning to Venice after a mad dash home to see my daughter after she told me she was to marry, and that the date would be mid carnevale 2012, just when I had planned to be there and do everything that Carnevale decided for me. I was steaming and boiling and angry and upset that I had to walk away from Carnevale in Venice, but at that stage thought my return would just be delayed.

With a 36 hour journey via Dubai to Venice looming, I decided to stop for a bite in Northbridge, a trendy cafe strip in Sydney. Walking from my hire car to an Italian coffee shop, I caught the eye of a man driving past. He waved at me, I waved back. My heart stopped. No, it didn't. It revved up. I got goosebumps. No I didn't, I was covered in a hot rash. My blood froze. No it didn't, it pulsed through a canal after a sudden storm. Hmmm, gorgeous face, I thought. Hmm, I thought, as my mouth went dry and my pulse raced: I am Alive. He followed me into the cafe. You waved at me, he said. Nope, I said, I waved back, checking out his good suit and sexy tie. Later, he told me that I had an aura he just had to follow. That he saw a goddess walking in a cloud, and had to follow her.

He bought me a cup of tea. He bought me brunch. I told him I was on my way back to Venice. I'm Italian, he said. My name is Mr RR. Have you been to the Guggenheim in Venice yet? We talked and talked. I wished he'd shut up, just for a moment, uno momento, because I was desperate to kiss him. I was desperate to touch his hands. He reached out and held mine, warm and strong. I told him I had to go or I'd miss my plane. He said when I returned he wanted to take me to the Picasso exhibition at the AGNSW. So I gave him my phone number - who wouldn't give out a phone number to a very handsome, very eligible, very hot Italian-speaking stranger in a coffee shop? Who smells like Calvin Klein? Nice ass too, I thought, as he paid the bill.

I texted Luda and told her I'd met the man I was going to marry.

At the car hire place, he called me. Dove sei? Where are you? I'm at International waiting to check you in and take you to dinner, he said. He did, and he did.

As a seasoned traveller, there are two items essential to the contents of my handbag. My passport, and clean underwear. In the passport queue, unsettled by the energy and life of this man who'd followed me down a street, into a cafe, and then into the airport, I whipped out my passport in a flourish, and out flew the red lace panties I'd bought in Venice, tucked in the passport in case of hijacking, crashes or unexpected misadventures.

This man caught them in mid flight. Are these yours? he laughed with a twinkle in his lovely brown eyes. You have good taste in underwear.

We sat curled around each other in the airport lounge, talking non stop, or just looking at each other, until the last calls called me back to Venice. Then he kissed me like that famous French postcard, and a lot of heads turned, including five nuns in blue robes.

When you arrive in Venice, he said, tell me where you are staying so I can google map you. Instead, when I returned from walking on the first day, he'd sent me a bucket of roses and a very romantic note (in Italian) that got the wrist wringing Catholic housekeepers in a flurry because they thought I had stolen one of theirs. He called in the mornings, when I was breakfasting with the stern matrons of the hotel. He sent me texts that cracked me up with their off beat humour, that elicited odd looks from the staff, unused to guests giggling into phones in dusty dining rooms. I went to the Gug, and I looked at the sculptures he'd told me about. We talked late at night. What he loved most about Europe, he told me, was it's art. I spent a day up the Campanile, and in the Doges palace, and looking at artworks in a way I hadn't thought to do. I managed to get a ticket to La Fenice, that most famous opera house, for a performance of Il Trovatore. Oh, I have that recording, he said. I can't believe you love opera too. And he sang me bits of arias. My sister's name is Carmen, he said, after the Opera. I cried during Il Trovatore, because I was sitting in a box at La Fenice, and I was in love with Italy, and I was so at peace with myself. I've been doing a lot of quite happy crying lately. Love felt as it was creeping out from under dry dusty leaves in all the soon to be abandoned piazzas of my favourite city in the world.

Send me a picture of your bum, he said, so I sent this one from the window of an art gallery. Send me a photo of your toes, he said, but I said I'd freeze if I did. Instead, I put my booted foot on the edge of ponte L'accademia and that made him happy.

I visited the Guggenheim, and, wrapped to the eyeballs in cashmere, crunched over brittle brown leaves in its sculpture garden. I peered at a Dali at close range and finally understood his genius. I leaned against Henry Moore. I sat on Peggy’s old white leather sofa. I stumbled into a 16th century church and saw an exhibition of string instruments from Medieval times. I visited Vivaldi's church, and I listened to his music in my favourite concert hall.

I stomped around in the fog, and, mittened to the gills, took the churning, empty of tourists vaporetto to Murano on the chase of chevrons, but alas everyone had flown south for the winter and the furnaces were all barred up. I lunched on a pontoon in deserted Murano, eating my scallops and calamari and sipping a frozen vino, pondering the meaning of this wintery Venetian journey, and decided then that I wanted to start my business again, and that I wanted to be home in Sydney, for a while. Venice is so much a part of me that I can't let it go ..... there has to be a reason I'm here, and a reason to bring me back.

RR called during lunch while I was making love to my scallops. I told him I had to bring Murano to Sydney. I walked around the island until I found a glass maker who was open and I bought my first batch of Murano glass. It will make my return fare. I said I was upset that I was going to miss Carnevale. Don't worry, cara, said RR, I will bring you back to Carnevale one day. I bought a glass rose from a tourist shop, just before the metal blinds came down for the winter, to give to my new Romeo.

I shopped till I’ve dropped. I stocked up with gorgeous underwear, (looking at red racy undies pre Christmas, and laughing with RR on the phone, he said buy them Cara - all italians wear red underwear this time of the year) (I did) and red leather gloves, boots, a dozen pairs of calzone (tights) and crazy coloured hats for each day of the week. I know my way around the back streets and the short cuts and my time is my own now because the upside down map reading tourists have flown the coop. Even the pooping dogs are warming their booties on velvet cushions inside their villas. It's dark at four, and light at nine. I don't know where everyone eats in winter: most of the restaurants are boarded up for the long haul, and those that do open close at sunset. I've been living on crackers and peppermint tea for my evening meal: the only sustenance available at the Hotel bel Arti besides breakfast of crackers and cheese.

And then, the final few days. I used up all my museum passes, and my Imob transport passes, and I braved the evening zero temperatures and arctic winds so that Venice would imprint itself on me even deeper. I rode those boats until the sun set and my nose froze, and I remember every bridge and every sigh and so many pebbles.

I bought beautiful winter knitwear. I found a courier to take my beads back to Sydney. S&G had disappeared for the winter and closed shop so I couldn't farewell them. The maids came in every day to water my flowers, and insisted on seeing a photo of Mr Meraviglioso: Mr Wonderful. A muscled man, in a pink t-shirt, whose face could be on a Roman coin. Bene, bene, was the general comment.

I cried when I left Venice. I cried while I waited outside the church at Zattere for the ferry. I cried on the Ali Laguna. I cried as my beloved ancient toppling buildings and gorgeous restorations and crumbling villas stood on the fondamente to wave me goodbye with their mildewed hankies. A dapper Italian man, returning to Murano, leaned forward to wipe my tears with his own lace hanky. "Bella donna, perche sei cosi triste? Guarda ci sono lacrime sulle guance!" I told him I was leaving my heart in Venice. That I didn't want to go home. "Ah, bella," he sighed, looking across the foggy waters. Then you shall return."

When I arrived in Sydney close to midnight after 36 hours flying, RR was waiting for me. He ran up to me and swooped me in his arms. "You bring out the Italian in me, Cara," he said. "And you'll probably put the Italian in me, Caro .... " I winked.

I've promised myself that I'm going to be fluent in two years. You can take the Australian out of Sydney, but you'll never get the Italian out of Savanna! After all, I do have my personal language assistant ....