May 21, 1928

I was awoken by more bells. It seems there are an awful lot of churches in this city. Nobody is allowed to sleep late! I went to the window and opened the shutters Aunt H. had insisted on keeping closed against mosquitos. The sky was a perfect pale blue, and the sound of bells echoed over the whole city. Swallows darted and swooped across the sky like tiny Maltese crosses, while seagulls screeched and below, in the courtyard, pigeons strutted.

“A city of bells and birds,” I said with satisfaction. At that moment a motor barge went by, its pop-popping echoing from the narrow walls. Bells and birds and boats, I corrected.

A breakfast of warm fresh rolls, cheese and fruit, and coffee instead of tea was served to us under an umbrella in the garden, before we went out to explore the city, armed with my aunt’s trusty Baedeker and map. Luckily, Aunt H. had visited several times before and knew her way, or I should have become hopelessly lost in minutes. Venice is a complete maze of alleys, canals, bridges. The first thing I noticed was that there are no real streets—at least no streets like we knew them at home—only cobbled walkways with bridges over canals. It seems the canals are actually the streets—everything is delivered by water, from goods to people to rubbish, the latter of which we watched being dropped into an open barge.

And the houses go right into the water. I thought they’d be on platforms, safely out of reach of the tides, but no—they disappear into the canals themselves, with water lapping at the downstairs windows and the lower bricks, which are all stained with seaweed. Sometimes half a door is underwater. How do they not just get washed away and crumble apart? Aunt Hortensia doesn’t know either.

Anyway, it appears you can’t get anywhere by walking in a straight line. Some streets end at canals with no way across. To go right, one must first go left. But Aunt H. led us unerringly to St Mark’s Square. Gosh. I think for the first time in my eighteen years, my breath was taken away. I had never seen anything so magnificent as that great open space with the colonnade around it, the huge church at one end, crowned with a series of domes and statues so it looks more like a palace from an oriental fantasy. To the right of the square, the bell tower rises impossibly tall and straight, in contrast to the ornate and curvy basilica. There are outdoor café s, and a small orchestra was playing under the colonnade, but Aunt H. declared we had too much to see to waste time with pastries.

She strode out, crossing the entire length of the square to the basilica, where she hired a guide to show us around every inch of the interior. We even went down to the crypt, which I found horribly creepy with its tombs. After this, we went for a tour of the Doge’s Palace. It was full of magnificent rooms and walls hung with famous paintings.