Around the corner lies the main piazza, one of the world's most elegant public spaces. At one end is the basilica, while the other three sides are framed by a uniform, collonaded row of buildings. The buildings originally housed the offices of the Procurate, nine people who ranked just below the Doge and responsible for much of the day to day management of government. The ground level was always leased to cafes and shops to earn money for the republic, a tradition that continues to this day. Around 1800, when Napoleon added Venice to his empire, he decided to convert the place to a palace. The palace is now home to the Correr Museum, which few people visit but is quite interesting if you have the time. It also connects to the library, which is stunning. The museum itself is a mix of paintings and artefacts from Venice's golden age. The highlight is a pair of shoes worn by society women in the sixteenth century. They had eighteen inch platform heels on them, and the ladies would walk around with servants on either side stabilizing them.



The huge brick tower in the piazza is the campanile. It was built in the tenth century as a combination belltower and lighthouse, but was also used to shame sinners, who were hoisted in a cage and dangled above the piazza for days or months depending on the severity of the sin. In 1902, the tower collapsed, which must have shocked the tourists. Amazingly, the tower collapsed in such an orderly manner that it left the surrounding buildings unscathed. The current tower, employing much of the original material, was rebuilt as an exact model of its predecessor.

The Piazza San Marco is L-Shaped, with the smaller part fronting the lagoon, in front of the Palazzo Ducale, called the Piazetta. This was the center of public life in Venice, and also where all public executions took place, between the two pillars. The pillars were stolen from Egypt in the eleventh century, and executions have taken place there since then. For this reason, superstitious people avoid walking between them, although given their prime position on the tourism map and the millions of tourists milling about, it's hard to avoid. The state library is on the other side of the piazetta. Built in the sixteenth century, the roof collapsed almost immediately after the building's completion, landing the architect in the Doge's prison.

Europe's greatest painters vied with one another to paint the walls of the many public rooms in the palace, which are quite amazing. The paintings generally either highlight famous points in the city's history, or are complicated allegories showing the benefits of good government and the perils of bad. There are about twenty rooms open to the public, which housed many of the government councils and bureaucratic bodies. We then crossed the Bridge of Sighs (see picture), which connects the main palace with the prison, and got its name because prisoners would supposedly sigh as they crossed the bridge as they viewed their beautiful city for the last time. It also deserves that name for the many tourists who cross the bridge, then regret it as they're trapped in a one-way tour of hundreds of prison cells, which can get monotonous for even the most tenacious tourist.

Venice was one of the world's wealthiest cities, due partly to its favorable geographic position. But its unique political system allowed it to prosper relatively peacefully, while its Italian rivals were engulfed in civil wars among the various powerful families struggling for control. Rather than build guard towers and maintain personal armies to rip each other apart, the Venetians built an elaborate political system to neutralize the power struggles and allow everyone to focus on making money instead. The first step in this stability was to list the city's leading families in the famous Golden Book, and only these families and their descendants could participate in government. Utterly unfair to the 99 percent of people not in the book, but at least everyone knew where they stood. Of course the guys in the book could still be killing one another for the top prize, so they took the additional step of making the top prize pretty unattractive.



The families in the Golden Book were all part of the City Council, whose only real function was to elect members to a series of more important councils, which in turn selected the Doge. He was always elderly, with an average age of 72, and served until he died. He got to wear elaborate clothes and live in a great place, as you can see in the photos. But in return, he lost all privacy, with chaperones with him for all meetings and reading all his correspondence, even with his wife, to ensure he couldn't engage in the usual plotting. He also had to pay for the running of the government himself and received no salary, and despite his advanced age, had to lead the Venetian military into battle for every campaign. He also risked exile if Venice suffered a defeat, so these last two rules tended to make Venice less battlecrazed than its neighbors. All in all, it was a prestigious way to end your days, but was hardly lucrative and overall pretty unappealing.

Piazza San Marco is the insanely popular epicenter of Venice tourism, and justifiably so. Back when Venice mattered, it was the center of political and religious power, so the main tourist honeypots are the Doge's Palace and San Marco's basilica, but there are plenty of other great things to see as well. One of the benefits of staying in Venice is the city is empty in the morning, before the daytrippers invade, so we took advantage of the quiet for some relatively undisturbed phototaking.


We then visited the Palazzo Ducale, or Doge's Palace. Venice made its fortune by having a monopoly on trade between Europe and Asia, and as a result its architecture is a real East-West hybrid. The Doge's Palace is a prime example of this, with Byzantine arches and points all over the place.

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.

Venice has a very strong reputation in Italy as having the country's worst food. That's partly due to the fact that ninety percent of the restaurants serve crap to tourists, but Italians speak disparagingly about the local cusine served in real restaurants as well. So we were less restaurant-obsessed than usual, but we did hit a good selection of places during our stay, enough to come to the conclusion that the Italians are probably right. The food is actually fine, mostly seafood based and very fresh, but it's lacking in spark, and doesn't really use such Italian basics as pasta.

For our first evening we at at the highly regarded hotel restaurant. This is a very old-school, formal place, with everyone extremely dressy, like a scene from Murder on the Orient Express. This is a bit odd, because the restaurant is outdoors, and looks relatively casual. The staff was very professional, very old, and spoke about twenty languages. I would say about two thirds of the guests were regulars at the hotel, and the staff has clearly known them for decades. (I have a friend who's grandmother has been spending a month at the hotel every year for thirty years, which is not uncommon here.) One fun pastime is to watch the waiters when they weren't serving guests, as they were constantly fighting with each other. I got the sense these arguments had been running since around the second world war, and there was no resolution in sight. Food was actually quite good, conservative Italian standards prepared expertly, and of course great views. (Food-14, Decor-16, Service-12).

The next morning we started with breakfast at the hotel (that's Somchai at the breakfast table). The food was pretty standard and generally tired, there's a different serving crew for breakfast, all old women. Unlike the old men working the dinner shift, these women seemed angry at the guests as well as each other.

I think these were photos of Venice taken while we were walking around Giudecca, but they're the same as the view from our room.

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)

The fun started to fade when our water taxi pulled up to the not immediately appealing hotel. We were greeted by the hotel's doorman, who appeared to have been working there for about seventy years (a problem with the staff generally at this hotel). He was nice enough until he told me to pay for the taxi. I told him I was on some package which included the taxi fare, and he showed me a list of guests, and only the guests that he had put a red tick next to were on this package according to him. Still very politely, I told him that his colleague at the airport had us on the list for that package, and then I showed him a fax from the hotel confirming that the doorman at the hotel will pay the taxi fare. He then went insane, started screaming something like "I'm a poor working man, you're a big hotshot staying at expensive hotel, you make the poor man pay your taxi fare. OK, I pay out of my own pocket, you just go in and have a good time rich guy" and this went on in this manner very loudly for a few minutes, as a dozen other guests stared at us. The taxi driver chipped in to confirm that the hotel guy at the airport confirmed the hotel would pay the fare, and he got abused by the doorman in turn. (The fare was about $60 and I couldn't care less about it, I just hated this guy so much that I wouldn't back down, plus I had a pretty good set of evidence backing me up.





So we went into the somewhat frumpy reception area, and were very warmly greeted by the manager. I mentioned the issue about the stupid taxi fare, and he confirmed yet again that of course the hotel should pay and he'd straighten out the doorman. The straightening out was in some ways even more mortifying, since when we finished checking in, the doorman was there, and proceeded to beg for our forgiveness, practically in tears, and started to go down on his knees! I don't think I've ever been more embarassed than standing in the busy hotel lobby while a seventy year old man was about to kneel to me. I begged him to stop and confirmed to everyone that mistakes happen, no problem at all, please don't give it another thought, etc. (But actually I still think he's a total jerk.)

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.

Our last dinner was in the weirdest part of Rome, Testaccio. This is the eighth of Rome's famous hills, but unlike the other seven, this one is entirely manmade. Ancient Rome used to import massive amounts of wine from their Spanish provinces, and the cheap jugs used to transport the wine were thrown out here. Over time, the fragments of all these jugs created a very large hill, and Testaccio was born. The pots have been covered over with urban life, so it looks no different from the rest of the city, except a number of bars and nightclubs have burrowed into the pots to take advantage of the neighborhood's odd underpinning.



Pictured here is Ketumbar, a pan-Asian restaurant housed among the pots, and using them as part of their design. The ancient pots outside the restaurant walls are complemented by pretty cool zen interior touches. Staff is coolly aloof, and the food was a nice break from the usual Italian. Food-12, Decor-16, Service-13.

We spent our last Roman afternoon wandering around Campo Marzio, whose medieval winding streets makes for great walking. The church of Maria Sopra Minerva, with the sky blue interior, is a popular stop, its gothic interior a rarity, as Rome's sights tend to be either ancient or renaissance, with a thousand year gap in between while gothic flourished in the rest of Europe. Rome also has the coolest stock exchange in the world (also pictured), with the modern exchange decorated with seven huge pillars from an ancient temple.



We took in one last art museum as well, housed in the stunning palace of the Doria Pamphilj family (ornate hallway in the photo). The family had a terrible reputation, based on the way they amassed their fortune. The family made their money the usual way, by winning the papacy via pope Innocent X, who promptly outdid his predecessors in the amount of church wealth diverted for his family's benefit. Notwithstanding his unparalleled efforts to enrich his family, they were hardly loyal to their benefactor. As the pope lay dying, his extended family ransacked his palace, stripping everything from the place, not just the art and jewels, but all the furniture, dishes, clothes, everything. They left him in an empty palace, with just one bronze candlestick in his room for light, which his servants stole. The family then refused to pay for his burial, and his corpse was left in a toolshed behind the house. Nowadays, the family is firmly in the upper echelon of society, and they still own the palace and the art collection, which is probably the most attractive art museum in the city.

Nearby Piazza Navona is everyone's favorite square in Rome. In ancient Rome this was a stadium built to entertain Romans with non-bloody athletic events. Again, the Romans failed to understand the point of entertainment that didn't end in death, so the stadium was soon abandoned. The abandoned site was then transformed into a beautiful piazza in the sixteenth century as a cornerstone of a resurgent Rome. The old stadium outline is still clearly visible, but is nowadays lined with Renaissance palaces and wall to wall outdoor cafes. The centerpiece is an elaborate fountain by Bernini, and the rest of the area is filled in by hordes of tourists, locals hanging out, and "artists" offering to paint your portrait.



We had lunch at Tre Scalini, the most touristy of the many tourist traps in the piazza. We sat outdoors with a large German tour group, ate mediocre food delivered by stressed waiters, enjoyed the energy of the handsome square, and finished it off with some great ice cream. Food-10, Decor-14, Service-8.