Venice, Italy

La Bottega dei Mascareri is at the northern (market) end of the Rialto Bridge, on the right as you come down. In this tiny studio/shop brothers Sergio and Massimo Boldrin are two of the few authentic maskmakers left in Venice. Their papier-mache masks depict characters from the Commedia del' Arte, suns, moons and other wonderful faces. Their range of prices includes the very affordable, and they will ship purchases home for you in a timely manner. Their work has appeared in galleries around the world, films, and theatre.

Venice is synonymous with art, history and high culture - treasures held in museums, galleries and ancient buildings. But what about daily life? Is there anywhere in Europe where the pageant of everyday life can be so absorbing, so ingenious, so enchanting as to make Canaletto and Titian and Monet pale in comparison?

To walk out of the station and onto the quayside of the Grand Canal is to walk straight into an old master painting -- an assault of rich color, an impasto of stone textures and the illusion of streets turned to water.

In a city with no wheeled vehicle traffic everything happens on the pathways - calli - and canals. From garbage collection and retail deliveries to ambulance service and day-to-day grocery shopping, life in Venice is made unique by the water coursing through its arteries.

The sounds are footsteps and laughter, rich voices, and the low throb of the marine diesel engines. With the exception of the throaty engines, this must be what it was like to walk through a city in the middle ages. The sounds of talking and walking, the gentle splash of oars, the burble of pigeons and the peal of church bells.

Across thousand-year-old streets buildings stoop toward each other. Each wears a mantle of rich umber, mocha, burgundy, green or gold that glows in the evening light. Even in autumn red geraniums still punctuate the window boxes and ivy trails through the air above, crisp curtains with cutwork patterns fall between the varnished wood frames that surround each window. In the few gardens persistent persimmons cling to bare trees and fig leaves are gradually turning yellow.

Late in the day is the time to take the waterbus, or vaporetto, down the Grand Canal. The evening dusk exposes the rooms of some of the world's greatest houses to the curious gaze of the tourist. Between two story lace curtains shines ten feet of chandelier, and in another palazzo a flickering fire burns in a hearth the size of a small car. Deep dark ebony beams frame the top of a room, and further along embossed metal creates a sparkling silvery ceiling. A foursome of elderly women play bridge regularly in the early evening - sitting night after night in their Tuscan red living room lit by lamps with Murano glass shades.

The Venetians have lived in a fish bowl for over a thousand years. Venice has always been a tourist destination. From the beginning, built on pilings driven into mud of a lagoon, it rose up over water, a shimmering strange confection, captivating all who encountered this other-worldly city.

Now, though, the water frequently rises up over Venice during the acqua alta - a high tide that floods the city 40 to 60 times a year between October and April. About a dozen times a season the tide is high enough to cause a disruption to daily life. The forlorn wail of a civic siren warns of a severe flood that will flow over the barriers slotted into the front doors of shops and houses and send a foot of water coursing through the calli and over the canal walls. The vaporetto routes are curtailed as landing docks disappear beneath the gentle waves until the tide recedes for the day.

Sweeping away the floating oranges and lemons in the produce market, and donning knee-high rubber boots, the greengrocer confronted with acqua alta continues his business at the Rialto herberia. Unloading crates at 5 a.m. from the delivery boats and pulling them across the market on hand carts, life continues in much the way it has for centuries.

Content to shop daily in the markets pulling their purchases in wheeled baskets and to live upstairs away from the creeping damp of the lower floors, the Venetians conduct their daily lives with stoicism and elegance. Whether conversing about stocks on a telefonino (every Italian seems to have a cell phone) while standing on the unsteady gondola ferry across the Grand Canal, or pacing down the calli in high heels and leather, the Venetians have a sense of civic pride and a gracious patience with the tourists that outnumber them much of the year.

"La vida della strada" the Italians call it - the life of the streets. Greeting friends, walking dogs, shopping, standing for a quick espresso (only the tourists pay extra to sit at a cafe table to rest weary feet), or singing snatches of opera while working - the Venetians relish their community. Even in the November rain, surrounded by eight inches of salty clear tidewater they remain charming and cheerful. And always, the water is the bloodstream of their lives.

Many of Venice's work boats are barges that sit low in the water. They might be loaded high with shoeboxes marked "Timberland", or sport a little white refrigerated superstructure for deliveries of frozen gelato, milk and cheese. Some are floating produce markets brightly ringed with radicchio, persimmons, bananas, fennel, eggplant, cabbages and onions. Painted green and trimmed in yellow and red they are picture postcard perfect and surprisingly practical.

Even the less than quaint tasks of construction are somehow beautiful in Venice where contractors run wheelbarrows piled with sacks of grout and terra cotta blocks ashore down single planks from the barges to the quaysides.

Green garbage boats wait at the quayside for the arrival of the garbage haulers and their perforated metal carts. The boat's small crane lifts the cart over and opening in the deck and a lever mechanism opens the base of each to dump the contents into the barge. They're set back on the canal-side again and the hauler continues on the route picking up miniscule bags of garbage hung out on door handles and gate hooks.

La vida della strada -- the life of the street is what Canaletto collected on canvas. The colors of sky and water Turner dashed on canvas. But in Venice, walking the streets, riding the waters, talking, laughing, teasing, wading, life as art supplants the art of the past.

CAMPO SANTA MARGHERITA (photo): This open piazza in Dorsoduro is a great place to sit on a bench or at an outdoor cafe and watch the street life. Music, children, university students and great food are part of the daily life here. There's a supermarket (Punto Supermercado) a few steps from the southeast corner (toward Rio Terra Canal), a gelateria right across from it, and several good restaurants. Sit back and watch the children playing, people meeting to talk, and the activity at the fish stall on the south side.

CAMPO SAN BARNABA: There's a canal boat serving as a vegetable market tied up here on a permanent basis. Several small cafes and shops line this small campo in Dorsoduro. A couple of gondolas are usually available here as well.

CAMPO FRANCESCO MOROSINI O SAN STEFANO: Another great place to relax at an outdoor cafe -- or inside the ones with picture windows if it's cold -- and watch the activity. This campo in San Marco has an internet "cafe," several nice cafes and restaurants, and a florist.

PIAZZA SAN MARCO: This is good for watching tourists and pigeons -- often an entertaining combination. Cafe Florian is on the south side -- it's been here since 1720 and is a beautiful cafe but be prepared for luxury prices!