Jules Heartly | Summer 2025

Travel Bits

I stopped at Venice, “a city of love”, where the Vaporetto waited like an old friend who never tires of returning—its rhythm as eternal as the tides, greeting passengers like me as it has for over a century.
Its waters, ever-shifting mirrors, guard secrets beneath their rippling skin—whispers of trade, echoes of battles, shadows of French and then Austrian rules and the quiet breath of resurgence.

Bridges arch like stone ribbons across the canals, and slender alleys unfold suddenly into sunlit piazzas—like a stage pulling back its velvet curtain to reveal flowers, cafés, and quiet art galleries waiting to be discovered.

Murano glass sparkles in nearly every window, a frozen fire of craftsmanship telling stories in color and light.

Restaurant terraces spill over with blooms and life, watching the parade of footsteps below as they’ve done a thousand times—silent spectators to the eternal human dance.

The boat glided under the Rialto Bridge, shoulder to shoulder with gondolas that sliced the waters like ink pens writing verses on Venice’s shimmering diary. Palaces and markets unfurled on either side, and balconies leaned out as if listening to the past. Churches stood like patient saints, forgiving every sorrow sealed in this land and these canals.

A bridal group approached and gently got in Gondolas, allured by the love songs, like hummingbirds to the flowers nectar. It reminded me of the 600 couples that get married in Venice each year.

Tourists raised phones and cameras like modern relic-hunters, trying to capture the uncapturable, the haunting, timeless magic of Venice.

A city born in 421 AD from the hands of refugees fleeing the collapse of the Roman Empire, carving sanctuary from salt and tide.

It’s language, Venetian, a clear tapice of history of words spoken throughout its life by the parade of inhabitants and rulers, Arabs, Turks, Greeks, French, Germans, Spanish and Jewish.

It’s people always absorbing cultures and following dreams, either of freedom or of better fortunes like that of Alexander, a current waiter at one of the restaurants I visited. Philippines born, who descended once in Venice from the cruise ship he used to work at, with curiosity about his country diaspora and who ended up staying for good, captured for that Venetian spirit that draw us all.

Without planning it Alexander expanded the diaspora and as he says, He is doing it with his endless gratitude for their hospitality at a time when he arrived with only $100 euros on his pockets, jobless and with a heart full of illusions. Now 20 years later with his many hours of work (in two jobs), he has been able to put his son through college and feeling like another Venetian, Alexander has no plans to return to the Philippines.

“ Venice is unique. A Romance in itself. I walks its quiet mornings and observed its crowded afternoons and all and all I get to do something I love: To hear and share stories from people from all around the world”.. Almost like Venetians used to do when it was a major trading city all the way up to the time of Cristobal Colon.

Alex’s story could be the story of any of the thousands of immigrants that have been in touch with Venice one way or another, on a manner not captured in words or pictures but perhaps reflected in its art, its traditions and culture.

Navigating tips:

Buy the Vaporetto one-day, three-day or week pass. It will save you time and money. As one way pass is $9.50 euros and it last only 75 min.

The Gondola ride prices are always negotiable.

The restaurants facing the water are great to have a drink or dine but you find authentic delicious food in the inner streets or smaller piazzas .

Best to arrive by train but if you arrive by car or plane you could always take the vaporetto to reach the hotels,many times after walking through its many narrow and Non-Cartesians coordinated streets.

There are also water taxis. Duh!

For me, as for many other visitors, each time I come to Venice I find the same different historic flavor of a city reinventing itself to stay. Either fighting the pirates as it did a couple of centuries ago or limiting the daily amount of tourists as it is doing now .

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Thank you for reading my blog. It would be great to here your thoughts on Venice or any other traveling stories, feel free to send me a note.

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