After breakfast we took the hotel's sleek motorboat (skippered by friendly staff for a change) to Piazza San Marco across the lagoon. We first passed the baby island of San Giorgio Maggiore, pictured from the air and also from Piazza San Marco through the thicket of gondolas. It's been occupied by a monastery since the ninth century, and the church, which is probably the most photographed building in Venice since it dominates the view from Piazza San Marco, is from the sixteenth. The monastery is supposedly one of Venice's architectural treasures, but it's never open. The vast majority of tourists, including me, think the whole ensemble is pretty and that the view from Venice would be pretty boring without it. But one famous architectural critic disagreed: "It is impossible to conceive a design more gross, more barbarous, more childish in conception, more servile in plagiarism, more insipid in result, more contemptible under every point of rational regard". I think he needs to lay off the caffeine.



Five minutes later, we docked at the hotel's pier in front of Piazza San Marco and joined the tourist throngs.