“‘Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.’”

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

The sun has set by the time I arrive into Venice, along with a handful of other passengers on the late afternoon train from Rome. The air is brisk and cool in stark contrast to the balmy spring-like weather we’d left behind us in the south of the country. It smells faintly like the sea and, in spite of the cold, the clarity to the air is something of a welcome change.

I cross the river and chart my way through the maze of streets to my hotel. It’s not far, if you were to look at a map, but it still involves winding back and forth a handful of times to reach the entrance. A boat would be quicker but it isn’t quite worth it for the short distance.

I am determined to speak Italian as much as I can this weekend. I start with the front desk, responding to their surprise that I speak the language with a gentle plea to speak, lentamente, per favore. Slowly.

My slow Italian gets me to my room and then off back out in search of something to eat. I don’t quite have a destination in mind: there is a small street near me with a handful of restaurants but none of them really appeal, or are too full of students drinking pitchers of Aperol and Select spritz to bother.

I’m struck with just how dark it is. In Rome, even at the dead of night, there are lights everywhere – people, everywhere. But here, as soon as I take one tight turn from a busier street, I am cast into pitch darkness, my footsteps the only sound tinkering on the worn cobblestones.

If I look up, I can even see the stars. It is peaceful here. Which seems an odd thing to say about one of the most over-touristed cities in the world. But the silence of this night says otherwise.

I cross another part of the canal, a narrowing winding section. On the corner, there is a small restaurant, the lights warm and welcoming in contrast to the dark street. There are a myriad of handwritten signs tacked to the front door – all in English.

This is a restaurant, not just a bar!
No pizza. Sorry.

A little further down: It’s a sliding door.

I slide the door open and step inside, closing it quickly behind me to keep the cool air out. I smile and ask in Italian for a table for one and am quickly seated. I don’t hear a word of English around me; everyone appears to be local. The menu is mostly fish; whatever is fresh that day. Despite the slightly defensive signage on the door, it is exactly the kind of place I look for when travelling. I order grilled fish and a glass of wine and unfold the paper map of Venice the hotel gave me to try and see I can figure out where I actually am.

I largely give up on maps over the course of the weekend. Google is out of the question: the handful of times I open it, in desperation, it insists steadfast that I am in the middle of the canal and first need to get onto dry land. No hope there. The paper map is useful when I’m somewhere near a main street or piazza but in the tangle of side streets, they are printed too small for me to have any hope of navigating corners.

Instead, I rely almost entirely on the sets of signs on the walls of the city: the ones that point to Rialto and San Marco directing me into town, and the ones directing me to Piazzale Roma leading me back towards my hotel. Somehow, I still end up taking a different route almost every time but that doesn’t really matter.

In the early hours of the dawn, the mist still thick across the water, I walk to Piazza San Marco by means of one of these winding paths. It has been over 20 years since I was last in Venice, a city I strongly associate with my mum. In part because it’s a city in which I have some of my earliest and clearest memories of exploring with her, as we did often during my childhood while travelling for my dad’s work. In part because I’ve always known it as a city that she very much likes.

Half of the Basilica is under repair but that which I have been most looking forward to seeing are not: the bronze horses. These are only replicas; the real ones are inside. My memory around why I cared so much for these horses as a child is foggy – I wasn’t particularly into horses in general and, in fact, am still a little scared of them to this day. But I distinctly remember standing right here with my mum, gazing up at them amidst the bustle of the piazza.

It feels odd to be here without her. It doesn’t seem to me that Venice has changed much in the years I have been away, especially at this time of the day when the tourists have yet to emerge and the piazza is dotted only with a few other early-risers, and a handful of Carnevale-goers in ornate costumes.

I go back to Piazza San Marco once more during the weekend – late that night when it is, once again, deserted, with only paper confetti dancing over the ground as a souvenir of the day’s Carnevale festivities.

In fact, I see little of the crowds that Venice is known for over the course of the weekend, although I know they exist. I encounter them once or twice trying to cross the Rialto bridge, and hear of them from a young woman I speak with who works at a small wine bar.

“The first week of January, after the new year,” she tells me with an expression that seems, if not irritated, resolute to the reality. “That is the only week there are no tourists.”

As a visitor, I can escape them. I can take one, two streets away from the main thoroughfares and find quiet restaurants and cosy bars. I also have the privilege of speaking enough Italian to be treated, I must admit, far better than anyone I see speaking English with the local staff.

I can’t imagine what it must be to live here. I joke with the woman at the bar that the locals need their own bridge, in order to get to and from their business without needing to cross the Rialto. She smiles and hums in agreement, but I know it would take a lot more than that.

But returning to Venice reminds me of the unique kind of magic this city holds. It is like no other place in Italy; different, really, to anywhere else I have been. Carnevale suits it, too: there seems nothing out of the ordinary here to see couples dressed as though they should be at French court sipping coffee on the side streets.

If anything, my vow to return includes a vow to return in costume and fully entrenched into the Carnevale programming.

For now, however, the weekend has come to a close and I return to Rome where the sun is still shining and I immediately have to shrug off my winter coat. A few hours on the train, and yet it is like returning to a different world entirely after the magic island of Venice.

Canals and Carnevale: A Weekend in Venezia