“Venice is sinking,” my mom told me.
“Well, then, I don’t really want to go,” I said. I
was six years old, and we were packing to spend the
summer in a place that was sinking.
“It’s sinking very slowly,” she said.
“Oh,” I replied. “Well, I still don’t want to go.”
That was 35 years ago, and Venice hasn’t sunk
yet, but it will, and each acqua alta is a reminder that
Venice is not forever. Someday the salt water will
rise past the limestone sidewalks and up to the piano
nobile. Someday the floodwaters will not recede, and
Venice will go the way of the lost city of Atlantis. And
that is why I try to go to Venice as often as possi-
ble, because I know that, like fireflies, ladybugs, and
black rhinoceros, Venice will soon be lost forever.
My mother brought me to Venice because she was
in love with a married man, an Italian who lived in
Giudecca and whose wife was a countess. We spent
long boring summers in an un-air-conditioned
palazzo with no other children in sight. Sometimes
we’d swim at the fancy hotel near our house, where I
would fraternize with the children of movie stars and
wealthy Europeans. They were lonely but elegant
summers filled with cameos by people like Gore
Vidal and Helmut Newton. Adults spoke in Italian,
stayed up all night drinking out of beautiful Murano
glass and smoking cigarettes. My mom was able to
escape her adult life. But there was a Gatsby-like
carelessness to the experience—more than once I
got heat stroke and threw up in the enormous pool
of the fancy hotel.
For the magazine debut of our Women Who
Travel brand, we asked mother-and-daughter
writers Erica Jong and Molly Jong-Fast to reflect
on their decades-long love affair with Venice
Against the Tides
San Giorgio Maggiore,
seen across the Grand
Canal through the arches
of the Ponte della Paglia
Glory Days
by Molly Jong-Fast
50 CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER APRIL 2020
why we travel^ ➤^ women who travel
PHOTOGRAPHS: MARCO BOTTIGELLI/GETTY IMAGES; ERICA JONG
