[OldFriend]

My dear, your telling has me sitting here freezing!!!!

My aunt and I decided to explore on our own early evening and walked out of the hotel and wandered unexpectedly into St. Marks Square....there was a small orchestra playing, everything was lit up....it was so amazing. During the day the pigeons were everywhere....everything about Venice enchanted me. At one point the tide made it necessary to walk on boards in the square as the water was above the courtyards. No other place I have ever visited made such a lasting visual impression.

[Romulus]

Shall I describe my first morning in Venice? It was a brilliant mid-October Sunday, 24 years ago. With little clue of why we were there or what we meant to see, my friends and I wandered into the Piazza S. Marco ("the finest drawing-room in Europe"), under the MASSIVE flags in front of the basilica, which a stiff and cold Adriatic breeze was waving with serene and terrible majesty. I looked at the winged Lion over the clock ("Pax tibi Marce, evangelista Mea"), and knew that I'd entered a new way of seeing and feeling the world.