Venice - My Eyes Can Only Record So Much

There are places that are beautiful, and then there are places that seem to overwhelm your ability to take them in.

Venice was the latter. We arrived after quite a journey from Rome, and I remember that first feeling of standing beside the water and looking across at those extraordinary old buildings. I had seen Venice countless times in photographs, of course, but photographs don't quite prepare you for the strangeness of a city where the roads have simply been replaced by water. Everything felt slightly impossible.

We had deliberately chosen to stay in B&Bs during this trip rather than conventional hotels. We wanted something that felt more authentic — to feel, even briefly, as though we were living inside the places we were visiting rather than simply passing through them. In Venice, that decision paid off spectacularly.

Our B&B was breathtaking. Right on the water, intimate and full of character, it became part of the experience rather than simply somewhere we returned to at night.

Some of the places we stayed on this trip were so beautiful that they changed my perception of what travelling could be. Luxury didn't necessarily mean a grand hotel. Sometimes it meant opening a window and finding Venice outside it.

My Eyes Can Only Record So Much

Over bridges, alongside canals and through narrow passages, we walked. We had absolutely no idea where we were going.

But Venice is perhaps one of the few places where getting lost feels like exactly what you should be doing. There was always something else around the corner. A gondola slipping beneath a bridge. Laundry and plants hanging from windows. Crumbling plaster exposing centuries-old brick beneath it. Fresh pasta piled into nests. Enormous tomatoes at the markets. Truffles in jars. Beautiful old doors. Water reflecting buildings that seemed to grow directly from the canal.

And then there were the masks.

I became completely fascinated by them.

Some were so intricate that I would stop simply to study them through the shop windows. Faces emerged from layers of gold scrollwork, tiny jewels and painted detail; others became miniature canvases, incorporating Venetian bridges, Renaissance faces and fragments of artwork.

Look closely at them and you realise that you're not really looking at a mask anymore.

You're looking at a piece of art.

Traditional Venetian mask-making is itself an ancient craft. The city's mask-makers, known as mascareri, were recognised as a profession in Venice centuries ago.

The traditional process often began with papier-mâché, shaped over a mould and allowed to dry before the real transformation began. Masks could then be painted and embellished by hand with gilding, fabric, feathers, pearls and other ornamentation. Leather also became important, particularly in masks associated with Italian theatre.

But the masks weren't simply decorative.

Historically, a mask allowed its wearer to conceal identity and, for a while, step outside the boundaries of ordinary Venetian society. Wealth and social position became harder to distinguish when the face disappeared. Masks became intertwined with Carnival, performance and the characters.

There is something wonderfully contradictory about that idea.

You could hide your identity by becoming someone else.

Perhaps that's why they seemed so completely at home here - theatrical, extravagant, mysterious and almost obsessively beautiful.

And somewhere amongst all of this, I found a sentence written across a peeling Venetian wall: MY EYES CAN ONLY RECORD SO MUCH

I photographed it immediately because someone had somehow written exactly what I was feeling. Venice was an extrasensory experience. There was too much to absorb at once. Not simply too much to see, but too much to experience. Your eyes moved constantly because everywhere you looked there was another detail you didn't want to miss. Eventually you realise that you can't possibly record all of it. So just, be.

The Romance of Doing Very Little

Venice remains one of the most romantic places I have ever been, but strangely, it wasn't because we were constantly doing romantic things. It was the city itself.

Nico and I would sit on the edge of a canal and watch the water. We'd wander without much purpose. Stop somewhere because it looked interesting. Cross another bridge simply to see what was on the other side.

Some of my favourite photographs aren't of monuments at all. They're of the two of us sitting beside the canals doing absolutely nothing.

Of course, we had to take a gondola ride.

Yes, it's touristy.

No, I don't care.

From the water you see Venice differently. You slip underneath tiny bridges and alongside buildings whose walls disappear directly into the canal. The city suddenly feels even stranger when you realise that this isn't some novelty created for tourists. Water is simply part of how Venice functions. It was ridiculously romantic.

Although, as it turned out, Nico would later become considerably more intimately acquainted with one of those canals than either of us had planned. More on that shortly.

A Lesson in Italian Fashion

Phew! The shopping! Venice only has the best and latest of everything. At some point we found ourselves in a spectacularly fancy shopping centre, T Fondaco dei Tedeschi - a luxury department store beside the Rialto Bridge in Venice, where I decided I wanted to find Moschino. There was just one small problem. I apparently had absolutely no idea how to pronounce Moschino. Trying to ask an Italian where you can find a particular Italian fashion house becomes considerably more difficult when nobody can work out which designer you're trying to name.

After several increasingly painful attempts - and what felt like a firm reprimand from the Italian fashion police - I was educated.

Mos-KEE-no. Lesson learnt.

I have never pronounced it incorrectly again.

And because apparently one humiliation wasn't enough, we stopped for coffee.

Two cappuccinos.

€12.

Six euros each.

In 2019. They remain the most ridiculously expensive cappuccinos we had ever had, and I was sufficiently offended by this that I photographed the receipt.

Nico Versus the Birds

One afternoon, after a spot of shopping, Nico and I sat down on the edge of a canal with an ice cream. The local birds discovered Nico's ice cream and descended... Beside him. Around him. On him. Eventually, on his head. He was laughing so hard while simultaneously trying to eat his ice cream and defend himself that the entire situation became hopeless.

And apparently the Venetian pigeons had expensive taste.

At one point they abandoned Nico long enough to begin investigating our Louis Vuitton shopping bag.

There is something I love about memories like this. We travelled all the way to Venice, surrounded ourselves with centuries of history, extraordinary architecture and some of the most recognisable sights in the world... And one of the things I still remember so clearly is Nico almost crying with laughter while birds sat on his head and tried to steal his ice cream.

But even that was not Nico's finest Venetian moment.

Nico's epic fall

The greatest memory of Venice requires very little embellishment. Nico was trying to capture a great photograph of me beside one of the canals. He was concentrating on getting the shot. Presumably trying to find the perfect angle. Slightly more forward. More forward still.

And then...

Nico slips into the canal! Anyone who has been to Venice will understand the gravity of this situation. You admire the canals. You photograph the canals. You sit beside the canals.

ou take romantic gondola rides through the canals. You do NOT get into the canals.

Nico did. The photograph was an epic fail.

The memory was not.

Suffice it to say, Nico survived Venice and is still with us today. 😂

More Than I Could Record

When I look back at Venice now, I don't remember it as a collection of famous landmarks. I remember the water. The old façades. The little bridges. The breathtaking masks. Getting lost. Our beautiful B&B on the water. Sitting beside a canal with Nico. A wildly overpriced cappuccino. Learning, rather publicly, how to pronounce Moschino.

Birds fighting Nico for his ice cream.

And, naturally, watching the man I love fall into a Venetian canal while trying to take a photograph of me.

Perhaps that's why those words scratched onto the wall stayed with me. My eyes can only record so much. Because eventually you stop trying to capture a place like Venice. Some of it ends up in photographs.

Some of it becomes stories you still laugh about years later.

And some of it exists only as that extraordinary feeling of having once been there - together - in a place that somehow felt like too much for the eyes to hold.