Blessed twice today. A most exquisite, glittering, sun-shiny morning as I rode the vaporetto one last time along the Grand Canal to the train station in Venice. All the boats in Venice were out on the water, drying out, being run free like horses in a field after being cooped up in the barn.  Venice is a paradise for boy-men who love to tinker with and feel free in a boat. I think if I were a man of any nationality and loved boats, I would have to live there and make this my exclusive mode of transportation. Never a car. Today the drivers were all smiles again, such as the Venetians do smile, you must look carefully. . . 
 Then: Firenze. And it wasn't raining here either, the second blessing.  I arrived at my most favorite train station: Santa Maria Novella, so simple in design and function, the train stops and you are there, outside on the platform and exactly in the middle of everything.

 Took a walk right away and saw some of my favorite spots, stopped for a glass of wine, and fell right in  with the feeling: Oh, so this is what life can be, when dreams and reality collide. From afar, I sometimes wonder about, and fear, losing the feeling of magic, from too much familiarity, but I am back just moments when I realize that time may never come, so contented am I here.