Loosely for an assignment. The prompt invited us to think about why we write about our travels, or something.

I had no idea how to picture Rome two weeks ago. Skyscrapers? Ruins? Both? Interacting how? More of the first world or the second? -- and so on. I asked myself how the trains worked, how the taxis and Vespas and tourists and natives were dispersed across the streets. How it all felt, because the best cities feel different, of course.

In the past week, I’ve learned a lot about that feel, and I’ve also gotten answers to my more mundane logistical questions. Skyscrapers? No – the Big Apple without the Big. Lots of ruins, but in ways that I never foresaw, old pushing up against new and vice versa. Populated with ancient entablature and stray cats. Wonderful. How do the taxis and the tour buses and the racially homogenous guided groups intermingle? Badly, but beautifully. Constant honking never sounded this good in the United States. Rome is a mess of people and culture and history and future. It feels like old money; entitled, and new money; excited.

Rome, in short, surprised me. Venice did not. Venice is exactly what I imagined it would be. It’s a famous cliché; it is miles and miles of alleys, canals and hawking vendors. In some ways it is the Old World in a microcosm. For that simple reason, it is much harder to write about. What to say, in my own journal? I’m not writing this to anyone, and I already know all of it. I am teaching myself nothing about Venice by putting my thoughts in pixels.

But there are little details and emotions about Venice that I am already starting to forget – the ones that won’t show up in my sunny pictorial vistas of the Grand Canal. I can write to preserve them as best I can. Details like walking vaguely in the direction of your hotel at night, noting grimly that none of the paths that you choose go in the direction you would prefer them to. And that some are much, much darker than others.

Feelings like the noise and impression an alit flying toy helicopter makes as it reaches rooftop level, hovering over the bustling main thoroughfares of Venice. The sudden comprehension after several hours that you’ve never, ever spent this long around people without hearing a motor, and that you never will again. Coming to the understanding that Venice is, in fact, a museum of humanity: interactive and open 24/7.

Tonight I’m going to sleep with my window open onto the Via Spagna, let the sounds of Venice slip in – and I know my dreams will be more vibrant because of it.