It is after dark when our train pulls into Stazione di Venezia Santa Lucia. We step off the railcar in Venice, onto a platform that is empty, except for a few singing crickets and railway employees on smoke break.

We made a few friends from Nebraska on the train. They are mid-seventies. Just a few Americans, helping each other through a foreign land.

We all descend the terminal steps. Our backpacks sit heavy upon our backs, akin to carrying 3-year-olds across Europe. Our bodies are cramped and sore. We have been hopping trains all day like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Dorks.

But we all soon forget our misery. Because as we exit the station, we are greeted by incredible streetlights.

“Wow,” say our friends from Nebraska.

“Wow,” say we Alabamians.

The street lights in Venice are not like American lights. In the US, outdoor public spaces largely adhere to a strict design style that could be loosely defined as Adult Correctional Facility. The buzzing fluorescent lights found in, say, a Walmart parking lot, glow harshly white, bringing to mind your last appendectomy.

Whereas the streetlights in Venice are the color or flickering torches. Orange light is reflected in the mirrored water, Van Gogh-like, rippling beneath city sidewalks.

Then, a gondola passes beneath us. The gondolier is a young man, scrawny, working the stern of his flat-bottomed boat, singing for the tourists. The song he sings, a capella, is “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meatloaf.

Not exactly what you’d expect from your typical Venetian, but hey.

We all walk around the city. There are ornate archway bridges everywhere—435 bridges to be exact. Venice is a town made up of 118 islands, so there are lots of bridges. Each bridge has a name. And most bridges predate the Boston Tea Party.

The bridge we are standing on, for example, is Ponte de Rialto, built in 1173.

And all this history makes you feel silly, as an American. Because before today, the oldest attraction you and the Nebraskans have ever seen was Dollywood.

We make our way to our hotel via motorboat. The captain tells us it’s 70 Euros to get there.

Seventy Euros for a 15-minute boat ride? We know it’s highway robbery, but it’s late and there is no other way to our hotel.

We troll gently through the canals, and we see even more street lights.

The 800-year-old buildings surrounding the canals are strong, and well-built. And it makes you wonder about the construction of the modern American world.

Will our American suburban neighborhoods, for example, still be standing in 800 years? What about shopping malls? How about Pizza Huts? Do we build anything that will last that long? And if not, why?

We tow our luggage along the cobblestone streets.

We pass a string quartet, playing in a chapel. We stop to listen. They are college-age musicians, playing Chopin, in G minor, before an audience of a few hundred folks who wear black formalwear.

The young musicians, we learn, are from the poorest parts of South America. The kids have struggled their entire lives to fund their own musical educations. They have scrimped, worked, and suffered. They have come from nothing. Lived in squalor. And now they are performing in Venice. You can’t help but taste their dreams coming true.

Meantime, across the street are a few dozen American college kids. They wear UCLA sweatshirts, playing on phones, vaping, clearly drunk, shouting and harassing passersby.

The polizia are called. The UCLA kids tell the cops to “[Bleep] off!” The cops do not bleep off. They end up asking the American kids to keep moving along.

This all happened directly in front of our hotel. Which is why our hotelier has been watching the ordeal in mock disbelief.

Then the hotelier notices us. His face lights up.

“Welcome to Venice!” says the hotelier.

He looks like Santa Claus, and he is so friendly he makes Zorba the Greek look like a jerk.

I’m actually surprised by his greeting. Because in my country, many of my people are standoffish, and cold, and if you didn’t know any better you’d think some of people were rude.

“Prego, prego!” the hotelier says, shaking my hand with both of his. “Where are you all from again?”

We all smile.

The lady from Nebraska speaks for the group.

“We’re from Canada,”’she says.