{"id":3557,"date":"2016-02-18T22:01:48","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T03:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svetanyc.com\/?p=3557"},"modified":"2017-06-03T10:59:28","modified_gmt":"2017-06-03T14:59:28","slug":"venice2016-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/192.168.2.119:1984\/svetanyc\/2016\/02\/venice2016-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Venice, Italy. Part I. February 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen I went to Venice, my dream became my life.\u201d – Marcel Proust<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cVenice <\/b>opens her arms to all whom others shun. She lifts up all whom others abase. She welcomes those whom others persecute. She cheers the mourner in his grief and defends the disposed and the destitute with charity and love. And so I bow to Venice with good reason. She is a living reproach to [papal] Rome.\u201d –\u00a0<\/span><\/em>Pietro Aretino in his address to Doge Andrea Gritti, 1527<\/em><\/p>\n

If you have never been to Venice<\/a>, you haven\u2019t seen the most beautiful city in the World. When people ask me about my favorite place, I always tell the truth \u2013 Beirut \u2013 \u00a0because this is where my heart is. However,\u00a0I can\u2019t deny the uniqueness and charms of Venice, it is a perfect place to fall in love with and it absolutely deserves all the fuss! A truly Byzantine city built by refugees on mud banks amid the marshy lagoons of the Adriatic in the 5th century, it rose to acquire a rightful title of the Empire and to rule the seas for over a thousand\u00a0years! Successful leadership and trade brought immense wealth and\u00a0with that wealth the Venetians built a magnificent city, a stunning composition of stone and waves that still evokes wonder today, and called her \u2013 La Serenissima!<\/p>\n

Strangely, I have never had an urgent desire to visit Venice, maybe because so many people have already been there and I always preferred the \u201croads less traveled\u201d. However, to mark my first anniversary of successfully completing a chemotherapy, my husband and I decided to attend a Carnevale di Venezia (Venetian Carnival<\/a>), perhaps one of the World\u2019s most famous affairs. So, in February 2016, we flew to Venice and spent 10 days there, half of which fell on a very hectic and colorful end of the Carnival and half, on a quiet and very local post-Carnival time.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take long to figure out what makes Venice so special and unique \u2013 it is a fact that since the 12th-14th centuries, when the success\u00a0of the Venetian Empire was celebrated in art and architecture throughout the city, very little of the essential fabric of Venice has been altered. The city\u2019s sounds are still those of footsteps and the cries of boatmen. The same streets, without any sight of modern traffic lights, are still trodden. It is, as if living in those times! So come and succumb to the magic of this improbable place whose streets are full of water and where the glories of the past are evident and alive at every turn.<\/p>\n

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Literature.<\/strong><\/p>\n