Venice...life on the Canal Grande

Va bene! Ciao, ciao, ciao! Prego, prego! Grazie, grazie! The Italians don't seem to just say things once; it's once more for emphasis! We heard these words constantly from the minute we stepped onto the Alilaguna waterbus from the aeroporto to Venice. After the casual, subdued cool of the Parisiens, the loud exuberance of the Italians was great fun.

The waterbus ride took about 50 minutes and delivered us to Sant Angelo vaporetto stop on San Marco. Alain's instructions on how to find the apartment were faultless and Marianna, Alain and Karen's housekeeper, met us at the gate. Unfortunately we didn't get to meet
Alain and Karen because they left for Paris the day before we arrived. In brief, and this probably does them an injustice, Alain is a visual poet and artist who is still exhibiting and Karen is an author and designer. They both founded their careers and way of life in the counter-culture era of the 60s and we learnt a little about them from Karen's books that were in the apartment.

The apartment is a small studio on the ground floor of a gloriously ancient palazzo. We pushed our way through heavy wrought-iron gates and doors into a stone-floored passageway, through a foyer crowded with comfy chairs and cushions and an internal courtyard, into the apartment. The foyer opens onto a landing dock on the Canal Grande and the two apartment windows look out onto the canal just six feet above the water level!

I don't have words to describe how special the apartment is. We fell asleep at night to the sound of waves (small ones!) lapping on the apartment walls; we woke to the chugging of the water traffic and the splashing of the traghetto oars; we spent late evening with wine and beer on the landing dock just watching the lights shimmer on the water; we even sang Volare with passing gondoliers! Bellissimo!

The palazzo is the three-storey building in the photo below; our apartment windows are the two on the ground (water??) floor right. The photo on the right is the street leading to the apartment, the apartment located through the gate at the end of the street.



The apartment entrance doors and stone hallway are below.

The comfy foyer.

The landing dock on the canal.

Inside the apartment (taken another day while Brent was sleeping off risotto and tiramisu!)

Looking across the canal from the apartment. Brent has included below a video of life as we saw it from the landing dock.