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.

The Venice hotel decision process was very difficult for me. I knew the Cipriani was world famous and the preferred hotel for the jet set. I also knew it had a great location, lots of elbow room (for Venice) and a great pool, again unique for Venice. But the other high end hotels in Venice were all former palaces, whereas this hotel was built as a hotel in the 1950's, which sounded about as glamorous as an airport terminal. The deciding factor for me was the hotel's acquisition of an adjoining palace, the Palazzo Vendramin, which was incorporated into the hotel complex as a boutique, high end hotel within the hotel. Figuring I could get the best of both worlds, I booked a room here, which also promised "the best view in Venice".



As the bellboy took us through the main building into a nice garden, I knew I had at least made the right decision in avoiding the main building, which was frankly dreary. We then got to the palazzo entrance, and he took us up to our room, which reminded me of a hospital room. It was tiny, only room for a bed, and even had a TV stuck on a pole jutting out from the wall, just like a hospital. It also came with a view of a brick wall, which I doubted was the best view in Venice. We then sat in our little dungeon, and, to cheer ourselves up, decided to open the complimentary bottle of champagne, which came with a welcome card which Somchai read with great excitement: "Welcome back Mrs. Robinson". Thank god we weren't Mrs. Robinson, although we did feel sorry for her, and had opened her champagne to add insult to injury. So we called back to reception, who of course apologized profusely (they're very good at apologies here) and we were transferred to our room next door. Our room did in fact have the best view in Venice, a bull's eye view over the lagoon to Piazza San Marco, with all of Venice's famous landmarks within view. The suite was roughly five times larger than Mrs. Robinson's, although unfortunately it shared the fairly pedestrian decor. The other Venice palace hotels really do up the whole palace trappings thing in the decor and public spaces, whereas the Palazzo Vendramin has no public spaces and I guess the Cipriani opted to remodel the rooms to conform to the crummy '50's decor of the main hotel. Bad decision.



Hotel Cipriani-4 (Room: 5, Facilities:7, Service:1, Wow factor: a fantastic view)