Five nights in Venice for Carnevale, drinking bottles of wine passed back-and-forth as we make our way across this city filled with magic (as much so as my belly is filled with pizza and cappucino), among the costumed crowd emerging from and fading into the fog rolling in from the sea. One must choose carefully which cliches one will live out. The twenty-hour train ride from Warsaw last Wednesday was well worth it. The Venetians all are beautiful–from the twenty-something janitor at the train station to the old woman selling us oranges at the market. To lose oneself among the narrow streets and alleys and bridges over canals crammed with gondolas, to drink in the sea, the atmosphere, the Bellini and Peroni, to mix with a people who can appreciate as well as produce beauty and love–I fully embrace these cliches as I face tomorrow’s return trip.