In some ways Venice is hard to get to. It’s islands and water water everywhere. Canals and lagoons. There’s one way into town by land when not by sea, a bridge-built railroad over the water into the city. That’s how we got there.

We got off the train into a magic city. I seem to be still overwhelmed because at the moment I don’t remember where we stayed. That seems not to have been important, but the city itself certainly was.

It was like another world. It was outside and beyond time, and we had crossed over from the mainland into a land of enchantment. The air was different. The ground beneath our feet was different, a solid instability floating in a surrounding sea.

The great Piazza San Marco drew us as a center. All excursions radiated outward, emanated from it. The heart of the city surrounded it, the Doge’s Palace, the Basilica di San Marco. The pigeons shared the square with us as we walked around each other. The Great Clock looked down to give us time, and above it, the Winged Lion of Saint Mark, in triumph of empire towering into the sky and master over the waters.

Venice clutched its history, cherished it, loved it, flaunted it. We gave ourselves to its spell and wandered where we could, almost in a daze of delight.

The Basilica, one of the Great Churches, drew us. Unfortunately for me, I was not allowed to enter. I was wearing shorts, the way you dress in summer in Southern California, but that was not “church appropriate attire” and I was stopped at the door. Shirley, in a dress, was allowed in to see the wonders and splendors and told me about it, but second hand just isn’t the same.

We loved the bridges and canals, and the way this is a walking city. Walk we did. Narrow streets led to hidden courtyards, the inner city where real people live, fronted by walls with doors and churches, smaller neighborhood versions of accessible religion where no one is more than a block away from an altar.

We loved the Grand Canal. Yes, truly grand, with a constant traffic of gondolas, vaporettos, water taxis, a liquid freeway. Little private docks all along, like the driveways and garages back home, so we could relate, but different enough to be exotic.

The Grand Canal is broad enough for races and processions, and we imagined them passing before our eyes. We thought of Rossini’s wonderful four song La regatta Veneziana, and our treasured recording of Jennie Tourel’s performance which we listened to again and again back home, and then saw and heard her perform it live at Royce Hall at UCLA. Shirley and I sang some of the lines together as we watched the water flow by.

There are wonderful restaurants everywhere, and guidebooks to help you find them. We were walking along one of the avenues, passing the glass window of a restaurant. There were shelves visibly displaying the offerings, and near the top, a large red lobster on a platter looking out toward the passing public. It attracted Shirley’s attention, and she came closer to see it better. She startled the lobster which backed away and fell off the shelf onto the floor. I said, “You scared it!”

A waiter in an apron appeared in the doorway and invited us in. He chuckled that we apparently had made our dinner choice, we felt responsible, entered, sat at a comfortable table, and “our lobster” was brought to us, to acknowledge it before cooking, we gave it our greeting, and then shortly after it was brought to us steaming. It was delicious.

Venice is gondolas. They are synonymous and mandatory. A pleasant evening, well fed, we hired a ride, just the two of us, snuggled down in the boat, the expert gondolier above and behind, his long sweeping oar propelling us over the gently rocking water.

We passed under the Bridge of Sighs. We sighed. It was dark, and every light glowed across the water. The gondolier began to sing.

He had a full rich lovely baritone voice that rang out through the air and the songs of Venice filled the night.

We saw other gondolas passing through intersecting canals, their hanging lanterns like headlights, their gondoliers singing to their passengers, but in a choreographed sharing of the city so no one interfered with any other and the drifting distant voices blended in a background choir.

It was a magic endless moment as Shirley and I held and kissed each other in the dark and gentle night.

The next day I clutched and counted my frugal money as I measured it against the days our itinerary allowed, and we signed up for a tour of the lagoon. A standard three-island tour.

A vaporetto took us first to Murano, the island of hand-blown glass. Our tour group was led to a studio where we marveled at the glassblowers, glowing in the furnace light, turning the long tubes as they breathed the breath of creation into the blob of molten possibility and we saw the breath take shape, fanciful forms curated expertly, then freed to cool, and eager tourists offered money, received their prize, carefully packed, and hoped it would not crush or break before they got it home to their own other country.

Our tour gave about 45 minutes per island, and next was Burano. This is the island of lace. Rows of seated women, their fingers busy knotting, showed us how they made the table cloths and napkins and collars and fanciful array. We saw the traditions of centuries in the hands of these mostly old women who refused to let go of the past. Shirley and I bought a lace tablecloth for her parents, and a matching set of six napkins. We could fit it in our luggage and were willing to carry it across the rest of Europe.

The vaporetto took us to Torcelli, the island of the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta. We walked the narrow garden paths to the beautiful outlier Cathedral where religion was peripherally available to the faithful everywhere and anywhere.

This little three island tour made us tourists.

I think of intersecting Venice thoughts.

I think of our own little Venice in Southern California, adjacent to Santa Monica, with its own series of canals and intersecting bridges, and houses with their own little boat docks, as if Europe came over to kiss the local ground.

I think of every Venice reference. History has favored Venice with dominance, attracted Shakespeare’s attention, drove Thomas Mann to replay levels of awareness, leading to a movie that gave us Dirk Bogard again and the Adagietto of Mahler’s Fifth where the camera unfolds and understands the patient mesmerizing flow of a boat over the waters of the lagoon.

How Venice is comfortable with itself, lets the world in to celebrate its joy of sanctioned madness and excess.

How movies keep finding Venice. How James Bond, as all his movies are travelogues, finds in the Floating City, built upon and sinking into a wetland beyond the attempts to shove substance under the foundation, a palazzo plunges into tragic oblivion.

How the earth itself decides. The Leaning Tower may get a temporary propped up reprieve. In Venice as the first floor follows the sinking foundation and the second floor becomes the first. The city Potentates try every any which way, study Holland and the dikes to hold back the sea so meadows and fields can be planted below sea level, and they try to develop huge metal swinging doors, like the locks of the Panama Canal, which fill or lower with water to match sea level, but Venice is on such a grand larger scale, they experiment to block the rising tides before the city sinks forever, because the earth doesn’t know pity, humans have overplayed their hand, there are too many of us and the glaciers are flooding and Venice struggles against sinking into memory…

But that’s not how I want to think of Venice and how I want to remember it.

I am by choice again with Shirley in the gondola in the dark and endless magic night, holding each other and kissing forever.