I’m Back From the Big V

That’s V for Venice. Humour me, if you will, while I post a laundry list of notes about the trip:

• I wrote a post disparaging Luxury Link’s–the travel site we used to book our Venice accomodation–auction system. I’m still not sure about the system, but I’ve got to credit Luxury Link with getting us a fantastic deal on an insanely posh hotel. The Boscolo Dei Dogi is an 18th century Venetian palace located on a quiet canal near the north edge of the city. Our room was larger than our apartment, with a 20-foot high ceiling, a chandelier, antique furniture and more marble than you can shake a stick at. This kind of thing wouldn’t usually be to my taste, but what better way to see Venice than from a room like this? I felt like a princess. Here are some photos of the room and hotel.
• Here are the 70-odd Venice photos I uploaded to Flickr. They’re also available in three sets–the aforementioned hotel, a general Venice set and a some photos from the city’s cemetery, Isola di San Michele.
• I wasn’t particularly crazy about my photos from this trip, but if I had to pick my three favourites, they would be: a chandelier from the floor, flowers at the cemetery and ballet shoes on Sergei Diaghilev’s grave. Diaghilev’s grave was quite touching, as there were several offerings that dancers had left. If you want to check out some great photos of Venice, ask Flickr’s interestingness algorithm. Hey, speaking of math, while in Edinburgh, I saw the grave of the guy who invented logarithms.
• Previously, I’d only spent one day in Venice as a 12-year-old, so the city was new to me. I’m not sure what I could possibly say about the city that hasn’t already been said. It lived up to its reputation as exotic, unique and unceasingly beautiful. I read Thomas Mann’s queer (in every sense of the term) novella “Death in Venice” while in the city. It didn’t necessarily float my boat, but it certainly offers a wonderful, atmosphere sense of the place.
• Once we got off the main tourist routes (around the Rialto and the Grand Canal), I was pleased by how few tourists there were about. You’re never going to see a city like Venice without them, but we could walk in less popular parts of the city for an hour and see only a handful.
• The story of the tiny Jewish ghetto in Venice is fascinating. I’m not sure who runs this site, but www.ghetto.it is a great URL.
• Four nights is an excellent length of time for a city break. There’s no urgency to be up and out at dawn each day to plow through all the sites, but there’s also no sense of lingering too long. This, of course, depends on the city, but I’d imagine it applies to any mid-size city of interest. Four nights, for example, was the also the right length of time for Havana.
• I didn’t ride in a gondola. It just seems like such a cliche, you know? On the other hand, the vaporetti provide brilliant public transport around the city. They’re heavily subsidized by us tourists, as they’re basically free for the locals.
• The city foiled a couple of my assumptions about Italians. Most significantly, the service we received was generally prompt and effective.