A gondolier plies for trade along the Venice lagoon waterfront. Some of the striped-shirt operators even provide operatic accompaniments for their passengers.[Photo by Mark Graham/China Daily]

Venice is a feast for the faculties–especially on a sunny day. Mark Graham discovers.

Arrive in Venice on a rainy day and the much-touted canals and houses are cast in a muted, enigmatic light. Turn up when the sun is shining and the sensory blitz is almost too much to behold—a heady cultural concoction of singing gondoliers, vivid pink mansions and tantalizing cooking smells.

Rain or shine, people arriving by rail are invariably astonished by the instant impact of the city. The train clanks its way across a long causeway, allowing fabulous window glimpses of the city beyond, before hitting the end-of-the-line buffers. At first blush, Venice station is just like any other urban terminal: bustling with touts, a little on the scruffy side, seriously lacking character.

But on the steps outside, within a few meters of leaving the jangling chaos of the forecourt, the famed city displays itself at full-on strength. Arrayed immediately beyond the station steps is the Venice of legend and imagination, with its chaotic canals, striped-shirt gondoliers and refined waterside houses.

The impact of that first glimpse of the Adriatic seaport cannot be surpassed, but it is matched, time and time again, during a short stay in the rightly renowned city of romance. Granted some elements are hokey and commercialized—gondolier rides are a particularly pricey way of getting around—but in essence the city has stayed the same for the best part of two or three centuries.