The Secret Itinerary

I went to Venice with a plan. I had a concept, a title, a whole framework about temporal collapse and centuries of memory embedded in stone. I'd spent months thinking about what I wanted to capture.

It took about two days for all of that to fall apart.

I arrived during Carnevale, which is about as far from quiet observation as Venice gets. Elaborately costumed performers moved through the city in processions, stopping traffic, drawing crowds, posing endlessly for tourists. That's the point of Carnevale: to be seen, in a city where most people keep their heads down and their business to themselves.

We were staying at the Hotel Novecento, tucked away in a quiet corner near San Marco, and that distance from the main spectacle gave me something useful. I'd see the performers often enough, striking figures in masks and silk surrounded by a scrum of cameras, but always a bit out of their realm, passing through on their way to somewhere more photogenic. Around them, Venice just kept going. Figures crossing a piazza without looking up. The city's quiet, ordinary rhythm continuing underneath the performance.

That contrast is what shifted everything. I stopped trying to photograph what Venice means and began watching what Venice does: people walking home in the rain, a figure disappearing under a sottoportego, the warm amber light of the calli at night, the cool lavender of a wet alley in the afternoon. The same quiet rhythm that has been happening here for centuries.

I came home with a collection of images that I think holds together. They move from the lagoon at dawn through the piazzas and into the narrow calli, deeper and warmer, until the light turns everything to gold. They’re the Venice that exists whether or not anyone comes to see it.

The other thing I came home with was something I hadn't planned for at all… a reminder that travel is better with the right people.

Renee and I have known each other for thirty years. The last time we traveled together was Venice, decades ago, with partners and friends and a packed itinerary. This was nothing like that trip. We've both changed a lot since then, and there's something about returning to a familiar place with an old friend, both of you different now, that lets you see each other clearly again. We found a version of us that had been sitting there waiting.

And then there was An, a friend of Renee’s who met up with us at the tail end. Sometimes you meet someone and they just fit. She brought an energy and a style that changed the whole experience, a spontaneity that made us say yes to things we might have walked past, like the Gucci shoes I never would’ve looked at twice on my own. She showed me a way of being in a place that reminded me why I travel.

Like Renee and me, An recently retired and is building her next chapter from scratch. She's done it beautifully, transforming a property in Spain into a gorgeous B&B and expanding her small empire from there. Watching someone take that leap and land so well is both inspiring and a little envy-making. She's already living the version of the thing I'm still planning, a new life in Europe built on her own terms. When I move to Portugal this summer she’ll be just next door by European standards, and we've already started making plans. Some friendships take thirty years to deepen. This one took about three days.

So Venice gave me what I came for, just not in the way I expected. The images are different than what I'd planned, the experience was richer, and the company, old friend and new friend, made it all matter more than it would have alone.