Venice: First Light

In 2020, I was officially recognized as an Italian citizen. It felt like walking into a part of myself I had only known through stories and photographs. Four years later, I set out to see Italy for myself.

The months leading up to our 2024 trip were a blur of lists and logistics, nine days of travel crammed with expectation. I wanted to honor where I came from--or at least the people two generations back who did. But travel is always a balancing act between personal longing and shared experience. I reminded myself it wasn't all about me.

We spent time in four places--Venice, the Dolomites, Cinque Terre, and Rome. This part of the story belongs to Venice.

After a red-eye flight and too many airport coffees, we were met in Italy by a driver and a private water taxi. It carried us from Leonardo da Vinci Airport across the lagoon and into the soft light of San Marco. This was just before Venice began charging a daily entry fee for visitors. We had booked a third-floor Airbnb after giving up on hotels that cost too much and offered too little. From the apartment's windows we could see the rooftops blush in the sunrise. The city was quiet. The bells still sounded like they did in another century.

Venice, without cars, feels like a dream someone remembered perfectly. The air holds a kind of stillness. Even the working boats move deliberately, contained to the broader canals. For a few hours every morning before the crowds, before my wife woke, I walked. I watched caretakers sweep Piazza San Marco clean. I listened to footsteps echo in the alleys. I took photographs, not to document but to make sense of the peace I felt.

It reminded me of Mackinac Island in my home state of Michigan--another place that banned cars and kept a fragile peace because of it. By 10 a.m., Venice begins to hum with motion, but in those early hours, it was just me and the stones and the rising sun.

I found myself wondering what it meant to live in a place like this--a lived-in museum, beautiful but burdened. I'd read about how short-term rentals pushed locals out, how the city was hollowing into a kind of stage set. The guilt of being a tourist wasn't lost on me. Yet our budget was tight, and the apartment gave us what hotels could not. I understood why the city introduced its daily fee for visitors, though I doubted it would make much difference. Limiting the number of beds might do more than limiting wallets.

Even so, I felt unexpectedly at ease in Venice. I thought I'd feel like a cliché, one more visitor flattening an experience that deserved reverence. But it wasn't like that. The city opened up in quiet ways. I read about the old Venetian Republic, how it had kept itself separate from the powers of Rome and beyond. That independence stirred something in me--a small, irrational pride, as if some fragment of it might have traveled through my bloodline. Maybe that's what belonging feels like, when you don't have to prove it.

We ate constantly. My wife tried sardines with onions, a local specialty that smelled as sharp as it looked. I stuck with lasagna--probably not a regional dish but one of the best I've ever had. There was pizza, gnocchi, and gelato near the Palazzo Ducale. We walked until the day faded into gold, from the Rialto Bridge through narrow streets toward the park at Sant'Elena. Parco delle Rimembranze was one of the few broad green spaces we found--a real breathing space amid the density. Dogs ran free, kids played, and for a moment it felt like an ordinary neighborhood.

Posters for the Biennale hung along the paths. We didn't have time to go inside, but seeing the art spill into the city felt fitting. Venice has always blurred the line between living and exhibiting.

When it came time to leave, we packed up and took a water taxi to the Piazzale Roma, caught the people mover across to Mestre, and picked up a small rental car for the road north to the Dolomites. I remember watching the skyline fade behind us, thinking how much quieter my mind had grown in just a few days.

I knew then that Venice would not be my last stop in Italy. But it was the first that made me feel, in the simplest way, like I had finally arrived.

After a long travel day that included a red-eye flight, we were thankfully treated to pre-arranged transportation that included a private car and water taxi from Leonardo Da Vinci airport to our Air BnB in San Marco. This was just before Venice implemented the daily fee for tourist to enter the city.

Making our way up to our short-term rental.

The view from one of the upper floors of the Doge's Palace overlooking ‎⁨Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore⁩. One thing that I really enjoyed about the palace was that many of the windows were open. Unlike museums in the U.S. that feel sterile and hermetically sealed, this made the place feel alive as a part of the city.

Riva degli Schiavoni, one of the most iconic views of Venice.

An archivist doing restoration work in the Doge's Palace.

Touring Palazzo Ducale