My latest novella, The Venice Bucket List, is almost a week old and as always, it’s been stupid exciting to see people downloading it from Amazon. Real people! Actually reading my words! Elation slash terror. I thought I would write a little bit about why I chose Venice as the location for the second in my Bucket List series. Of course, asking ‘why Venice?’ is a little like asking ‘why Paris?’, since it’s one of the most romantic cities in the world, but the truth is that I haven’t always had the most romantic experiences of Venice myself. The first time I went, I was about 20, and visiting Italy with my parents for the first time. We were staying with cousins near Treviso, and did a daytrip to Venice (first mistake – it’s definitely a city to stay over in!). Maybe it was all the family dynamics, or the fact that my kid cousin was desperate for a Happy Meal (yep, lunch in McDonalds while in actual Venice – sacrilege), but I was suitably underwhelmed.
A few years later, when I was living in Milan, I went with my then-boyfriend for a weekend. It was pretty romantic, but we stayed in Padova, and he refused to buy me a gondola ride because it was too expensive. I mean, sure, gondolas are cheesy, but it’s VENICE. And then, for some reason, while we were in St Mark’s Square and the bells began to ring, I got this weird feeling of premonition that things between us were not going to work out. Bloody bells. They were right too.
I went back again years later with a different boyfriend. This time we had all the ingredients right – we stayed in a little hotel looking over the Grand Canal, I brought a suitcase full of pretty spring dresses, and we were in lurve. Allegedly. This boyfriend, unfortunately, was the grumpiest of the lot. Forget a gondola ride, he fought with me the whole time we were there. He didn’t like the Basilica (“it’s so… gaudy”). He didn’t like the food (“meh”). He didn’t like the waiters. He didn’t like the narrow streets. He didn’t like the hotel (which, by the way, had taken me hours and hours of research to find. About the only thing he did like was the spritzes, so at least the evenings were bearable. No surprise, the bells tolled for us not too long afterward that trip also.
The thing is, despite all that, I still remember Venice as being wonderful. Maybe it’s partly a construct from films and movies, or maybe it’s just the sheer romance of a city where the roads are water and everything is just a little bit mysterious and over the top. But I still couldn’t think of a better place for my heroine, Tess, to fall in love on Valentine’s – especially when I found out that Carnival fell over V-Day weekend this year. I’ve always been to Venice in the summer, but the idea of it all misty and frosty, with masks and balls and beautiful gowns, totally enchanted me. A sense of place is really important to me in my writing, since it’s something I love as a reader, so I hope that I’ve managed to bring this incredible city alive.
In the end though, what makes a city romantic isn’t its bridges and cobbled streets and candlelit restaurants – it’s who you go with. If I ever go back to Venice with a partner, I’ll be sure that I take someone who’ll let themselves fall in love with the place as much as I did. And who at least offers to buy me a gondola ride!
