As you no doubt remember from the first Venice post, the hotel is on a long, squiggly island across the water from the rest of the city, called Giudecca. When Venice first started accumulating wealth from its Asian trade activities, the wealthy families built summer palaces along the waterfront, including the Vendramin, where we're staying. But in later years, Venice expanded on the mainland, occupying a big chunk of northeast Italy, and the upper classes went giddy with excitement that they could build proper palaces on real estates there. Giudecca languished at that point, and became Venice's version of the Island of Misfit Toys. The Jews were put here for a while, then it became Venice's industrial hub. Venice has long since stopped trying to be an industrial powerhouse, and the long abandoned brick factories are being renovated into some sort of art and living space, Venice's version of Soho. In the meantime, the walk along the waterfront is quite pretty and the best place to get killer views of Venice. There's also one famous church here, built by the city in the 1530's when the plague killed 40 percent of the city's population. Like so many plague-decimated cities, they then built a huge church in thanks to god for sparing the survivors. Of course, he also wiped out almost half the city, so it would seem odd to give him a big hug for that.