To my young and naive self, Venice epitomised romance. Gondoliers singing romantic songs in the sunset, candlelit dinners at the side of the sparkling canals, bohemian artists, musicians and writers, pretty little streets; so much to delight the senses. I could barely contain my excitement when my husband announced that we were off to Venice.The day finally dawned, visions of the romantic time ahead of us swimming around my head, my newly practised Italian rolling off my tongue – well I could ask for a table for two, order a drink and say please and thank you at least. We crammed on to the vaporetto (Venetian water bus), the cool air of the water providing a welcome breeze in the hot sun, and headed straight for St Marks Square. Venice suddenly just hit me. No other way to describe it. My senses, instantly aroused with the hustle and bustle, street musicians, throngs of people, heat and most of all the smell. This wasn’t the romantic notion I had nurtured all these years. In my romantic dreams the canals were sparkling blue and not at all smelly, there weren’t hordes of tourists, there weren't pigeons everywhere and the associated mess that goes ...

The summer I turned 16, I spent three weeks studying English in the south coast of England. Of course studying was really just an excuse for the other activities like finding a summer romance. Mine was Italian, and incidentally, he was from from Venice. After the course finished, I returned to my native Finland and to the normal life of a small town teenager. Summer generated boredom with long, jobless days, broken by the embarrassingly romantic texts my Italian boy was sending me. The boys I was used to hanging out with wouldn’t be caught dead saying the things he said. Ultimately what he says is: Why don’t you come to Venice for a holiday? I decided to go with a friend, because while I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to see this boy, I knew that I wanted to see Venice. Upon our arrival in Milan we caught a night train to Venice and slept in a small cabin until morning. When it turned light but foggy outside, we arrived in Venice. Stepping out of the railway station at 6am is nothing short of breathtaking. Just seconds earlier, I was inside a railway station. And then… well then I’m inside a ...

I was 15 when I travelled to Venice by a hydrofoil from Umago in Istria, where I was on a seaside holiday from my native Serbia. It was a day trip, and the ticket was pre-paid, but it was still a fantastic feeling of freedom. Previously, I’d only been to a few countries with my parents, but I had not been allowed to travel abroad alone before.So I felt privileged to make this first foreign trip ‘on my own’ in the old way (almost like Argonauts!) aboard a ship (even though mine was much faster than theirs!) and to reach one of the world's most unique cities, once the ‘Queen of the Seas’, by water, and not overland. Venice is a miracle. Few other cities remotely resemble it, but none outshine its uniqueness in the beauty of its palaces, the richness of its paintings and sculptures, and the most ornate, bizarre cathedral in four different styles. Equally unique, and bizarre, is the manner of navigating (literally) its locales. Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Bangkok also have an aquatic abundance, but they also have either many more bridges or are not completely built at roughly the same time around the banks of canals. So whilst ...

I would return to Venice because it's like nowhere else in the world, and it may soon be gone. While the rest of the world has changed and modernized, Venice has remained the same. Sure, now people have computers and cell phones, but the true Venetian lifestyle lives on. Old Italian women hang their clothes on lines over narrow alleys and canals. Kids cautiously play soccer next to these canals, making sure not to kick the ball into the water. While wandering down alleys in perfect silence (there are no vehicles), you can almost imagine that it's long ago, when Venice was not a part of Italy, but a powerful city state. It's like something out of a fairytale when you see a gondolier drifting down a canal or hear a busker playing an accordion at dusk. My trip“It looks like a map!” I remark of what I can see of Germany in the early morning light. We're starting to descend, almost at the Frankfurt Airport. I'm so excited, I can barely sit still. I'm thirteen, and it's my first time in Europe.I get on our connecting flight to Venice, and as we fly over Switzerland I catch a glimpse of the ...