Venice for the Well-Off Traveller

This city was made for getting lost in.
Tiff and I spent a couple of hours out and about, taking in the sights and riding the public transportation to pretend they’re gondolas. A day pass for the waterbus lines is 10.50 Euro and worth the price only if you’re dragging along luggage or plan on going to visit some of the islands. It took us the better part of an hour to get from the train station to our new hotel by St. Marks.
That’s right, our new hotel. Mary’s been poking into various hotels scouting them out for her new travel agent job and this one, the Metropole, made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. As you can see by my pictures, this place is plush. I mean fully stocked-mini-fridge-antique-everything-and-a-view plush. A big Venetian glass chandelier hangs in our room along with antique wooden furniture. It’s all reds and golds, very regal.
A little after we checked in the hotel paid a water taxi to take us around the canals then up to one of the islands where they make Venetian glass. I hadn’t realized how quick the master glassblowers work. He made a gorgeous horse in front of us in just a few quick motions. They gave us a tour of the entire place, including a beautiful collection that (like so many other things I’ve seen here) I wasn’t allowed to photograph. They put us on what I think was their company boat and took us back to our hotel. They offered to take us to the lace-makers, but we were running low on time and still hadn’t seen the Duge’s Palace.
A Duge is similar to a Duke, as best I can tell. Venice’s aristocracy is more than complex. They have had a council of three, of 17, plus Duge’s and judges and moral advisors and all these other positions working together in this one big palace. They’re all registered in the Gold and Silver Books, which are also stored there. We spent two hours at a hurried pace, seeing something like 50 rooms full of frescos, paintings, weapons, and the famous Bridge of Sighs (where prisoners get a glimpse of the beautiful bay before being locked away). It was a little steep for a museum (7 Euro Student Discount, 11 Euro regular rate), but we’ve gotten spoiled with cheap tours anyway. Once again, no photos are allowed, but I’d already taken about a dozen by the time they told me that.
Like I mentioned earlier, Tiff and I spent last night riding around water buses pretending they were gondolas. We stood in the front of the hundred-or-so person boat with twice as many tourists and snapped what pictures we could. I glimpsed over the shoulder of a fellow writer, a 23-year old with his little leather journal and handwriting nearly as bad as mine. I have to admit, he chose a good spot. The biggest problem with my attachment to writing on a laptop is that I really don’t get the opportunity to sit around places like that and write as I see things. Retrospection is always clearer, but there’s something to be said for writing the moment. With my new laptop, which actually has a decent battery, I’ll have to try it some time.
Tiff and Mary are sitting around now putting on their bits of makeup, and we were originally planning on being out of here in an hour, so I’m going to start urging them toward breakfast now.