100. Venice

The following morning we took a short flight from Rome's dumpy airport to the more modern, but inconvenient, Venice airport. Of course, being an airport to a city without roads was bound to be inconvenient, like life in Venice generally. You have to take a bus from the airport on the mainland to a water taxi terminal, then catch a water taxi from there, with lots of walking in between, so heavy travelers have lots of luggage lugging to do. We were staying at the Hotel Cipriani, Venice's most famous and glamorous hotel. We were met by their airport representative at the taxi terminal who got us into our taxi and off we sped through the canals of Venice.

I put the aerial view of the city here because I was going to explain the layout a bit, but now realize this will be very confusing. The airport is off the photo to the northeast, and you can see the train station and port lumped together on the left edge of the city. The giant reverse "S" that runs through the city is the Grand Canal, with the city's thousands of smaller canals running through the city clustered on either side of the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal starts at the train station, and ends by opening into the sea just before Piazza San Marco, which you can see just beyond this point. (There's a big square field and, to the right, a bright white square that really stands out.) 90 percent of visitors to Venice are day trippers and never leave that square. Directly south of that square is the Hotel Cipriani, occupying most of the tip of the squiggly island underneath the rest of Venice.