"I'd like to make a reservation for Sunday dinner," I said and paused, expecting my Italian to not be understood. Instead the restaurant owner asked what time I'd like to come, how many people we'd have and if I knew the way. I answered his questions, we chatted, and I hung up.

"Everyone understands me this time," I said to my traveling companion, another student of Italian. I'd just called three restaurants and no one had paused to ponder the possible meanings of my incorrectly cadenced words.

"Me too," she said. "But no one has complimented us, either." My chest fell. The awkward breaks in conversation had disappeared, but the beloved compliments had vanished as well.

I remembered back to my first words of praise. Not long after I'd started studying Italian, I arrived at Malpensa airport in Milan and rushed to buy tickets for the train into the city. The ticket-seller handed me not only my tickets, but my very first "Lei parla molto bene italiano ("You speak Italian really well")." I became greedy for the next compliment.

Now, five years later in Venice, I still was.

I returned to the phone store where I'd bought my SIM card - not to buy more phone service, but to hunt for compliments.

"Buon giorno, what programs do you have for global calls?" I said in Italian.

"Do you want to call France, Germany, Moldova?" the clerk asked.

"All of them," I answered. The man painfully detailed plans with incoming calls for free, outgoing calls for 28 cents (in euros) and complicated options. I dogged him with more questions, but he didn't ask me to repeat myself, he didn't question my pronunciation - and he never said "Lei parla molto bene italiano."

Discouraged, I thanked him and left. I still had the subjunctive, the tense required after "to think," "to wish" and "to hope" whose use almost guaranteed a compliment.

"Do you think that it would rain later today?" I asked my landlady back at my apartment.

"No, the clouds mean nothing," she said. "Remember to take out your garbage on Monday." No compliment, no praise.

But I wasn't giving up.

I combed the neighborhood near my apartment searching for speaking opportunities. A handwritten sign over a stone doorway caught my eye. For 5 euro, I toured a palace and delighted in an unexpected collection of frescoes by Renaissance painter Tintoretto. On my way out, I passed an improvised ticket counter and overheard an Irish couple attempting to buy tickets for an opera there that evening. I stopped and translated between the English-only Irish and the Italian-only ticket seller. On a whim, I bought a ticket to "La Traviata" for myself.

I returned that night and took a seat below the frescoed ceiling where the story of the apocalypse played out, angels scattering to the far corners like the pigeons in nearby Piazza San Marco. I reviewed the opera synopsis in Italian.

My love of opera goes back to my standing-room days in San Francisco when I discovered that the best sound was on the top floor of the opera house. I'd run up the four flights of stairs to snag a spot to sit along the back wall. I'd never watch the action; instead, I'd close my eyes and let myself soar with the music. It was as close to hang gliding as I'd ever have the nerve to reach.

And so, in Venice, seated beneath the swirl of disturbed angels overhead, I closed my eyes as the opera began. The soprano's first trilling note lifted me and sent me soaring in loops on the wings of her big voice. I flew on the updrafts of the tenor and the thermals of the baritone. Then, as if the air had gone out of my hang gliding sail, my stomach dropped in mid-aria.

"What are you doing?" the courtesan trilled.

"Nothing," her suitor Alfredo responded.

I opened my eyes. I'd understood their everyday words and they'd punctured my dream. The music slowly filled in again but I couldn't regain the rapture. I didn't want to understand what they were saying, I didn't want to follow the story.

Then it truly sank in. After years of studying and struggling to speak Italian, my journey had come to an end - and I felt liked I'd arrived at an empty train station. Never again would I experience the thrill of understanding a tiny fraction of the Italian spoken by the man who'd picked me up hitchhiking after I'd missed the last bus to Ravello. Never again would I feel the excitement of talking politics with a bartender when I barely possessed the language skills to order spaghetti. Never again would I receive compliments on my tourist Italian.

My last day in Venice, I arrived early at the restaurant for dinner with friends. As I waited, the hosts offered me a glass of prosecco and a seat at the bar overlooking the kitchen. I watched the couple prepare a sweet paprika sauce and drizzle it over bronzino. I teased them about their reputation for secret spices and they chuckled at my attempt to get them to break their culinary code. As we joked back and forth, I finally realized that no compliment was actually the best praise of all.

E-mail Bonnie Smetts at travel@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page G - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle