Venice is intoxicating and habit forming. I sit here now longing for my next fix.

The city is a wonderful confusion. It lives between the water labyrinth of the canals and the land maze of the alleyways. It lies between East and West, amid land and open sea. Houses have two doors, one on the land and one on the water.

There is no normal life in Venice. Here everything and everyone floats. Not only the gondolas and vaporettos but also the buildings and the people float.

To walk in Venice without a map is to soon loose your way in a glorious maze of left and right turnings. I've had the pleasure of getting lost a hundred times walking through the emptying streets in late evening. Stone bridges leading into dark, twisting alleyways always fill me with anticipation - what is around that next corner, and then the next? Even if you brought a map, has the street you are lost in got a name written on a corner house wall? Probably not.

In quiet back alleyways beside still canals you can loose all sense of time; you feel you might slip between the centuries and come out in some other age. You pass windows thrown open to take in the summer air. I look up at these rooms illuminated by enormous chandeliers probably made hundreds of years ago in this very city. I pass these homes and palaces curious, unsatisfied, always longing to enter.

Exploring the mysteries of this veiled city built on water - and in dreams.