“Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,” Polo said.
“Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities,
I have already lost it, little by little.” ~ Italo Calvino
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above ~ stills from Don’t Look Now (Nicholas Roeg, 1974), The Comfort of Strangers (Paul Schrader, 1991),
Dangerous Beauty (Marshall Herskovitz, 1988) , Wings of the Dove (Iain Softly, 1997)
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9 days, 3 cities ~ one a memory of a threshold, a union, la bellissima of la serenissima;
the other, a memory of a way of being and thinking, an author whose words have penetrated
my worlds in fashion, in film and in food
and a final destination somewhere completely unknown ~ medieval, urban, a mystery.
below ~ images of what we ate, what we saw, how we experienced, together… a union that started 15 years before
at sunrise, on the dogana, in venezia…
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VENICE / VENEZIA
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“Getting lost is the only place worth going to.” ~ Tiziano Scarpa
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La Biennale di Venezia
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Itinerary ~ EAT / Do Mori, Gli Schiavi, Aciugheta; Torrefazione Cannaregio, Enoteca Al Volto, Cafe Tonolo, Taverna al Remer, Osteria L’Orto dei Mori, Nuovo Galeon, Pizzeria da Silvio. DO / Palazzo Mora, Biennale, Palazzo Ducale. STAY ~ Palazzo Abadessa, Palazzo Giovanelli
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IN TRANSIT
“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.
At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves – that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestice setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are.
If we find poetry in the service station and motel, if we are drawn to the airport or train carriage, it is perhaps because, in spite of their architectural compromises and discomforts, in spite of their garish colours and harsh lighting, we implicitly feel that these isolated places offer us a material setting for an alternative to the selfish ease, the habits and confinement of the ordinary, rooted world.” ~ Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel
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TURIN / TORINO
Torino Itinerary ~ EAT / Tre Galli, Perino Vesco, L’Acino, Defilippis. DO / Museo Nazionale dell’automobile, Museo Nazionale del Cinema.
STAY / Palazzo Scaglia Di Verrua.
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GENOA / GENOVA
“It is a place that ‘grows upon you’ every day. There seems to be always something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle!) twenty times a day, if you like; and turn up again, under the most unexpected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn.” ~ Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy
Genova Itinerary ~ EAT / Cambi Cafe, San Matteo Osteria, Ai Troeggi, Taggiou Vino e Cucina. DO / Cimitero Monumentale di Staglieno, Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, Royal Palace, Salvatore Ferragamo exhibit. SLEEP / Le Nuvole Residenza d’epoca.
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Photo credits ~ cover image / by Lana Bernberg, Sept. 14th 2000. Last image and image taken of me outside Palazzo Giovanelli/Venezia, and inside Palazzo Reale/Genova, by Lloyd Bernberg. All other images taken by me on my iPhone. And a HUGE thank you to Lloyd ~ for planning so many of the beautiful details of the trip and my in-laws Janet and Bruce Bernberg, for making it possible.
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“I cannot write about Venice; I can only write about me,
and the sleeping parts of myself that Venice has shocked into wakefulness.”
~ Jessica Zafra
