New York Minute

It’s 8pm and I’m in Campo S. Lio in Venezia. Outside a bar on a quiet square, a few minutes away from the hotel. The hotel is more like a pensione. There is not lobby, kettle or lounge. But it is spitting distance from San Marco Piazza. It’s literally around the corner. On the first night I got my folks a room which had the roof terrace. You could see the domes of the Basilica 50 metres away, though it is partly under construction right now. This is my third time to Venezia. First when I was 19 on my own, second time was with a friend Louis to shoot some shots for the short film Death in Weston. I love it here. It’s like being in the 14th century. Some buildings go back 1000 years and many at least 500 and few under 100. Although there are many refurbished modern interiors of establishments, on the whole, the exteriors remain as they were. There are no roads so no cars. There are no visible overhead telephone lines. There are no planes soaring overhead. There is virtually no homeless people, there is no business district. And WiFi seems to be in short supply.

It takes a while to get here. If you fly into Treviso which, by the way, is a new building which right next to the original, which was the size of a large house. You went in on end and came out 30 metres away on the other. You take a bus which takes an hour and then you take a Vaporetti (into San Marco, at 40 mins). The plane ride was 1hr 40mins from London. You can’t get a cab to your hotel so you see many lost tourists pulling their luggage around looking for their hotel. And you do get lost which for which, is actually fun to do here. Forget the map. You’ll walk into a narrow lane and at the end you’ll find a courtyard with no other road or occasionally, the Grand Canal. There’s many places to eat outdoors and must be amazing in the summer.

However, the food is often not great and is expensive. With Central London prices for coffee, pizza or pasta ranging from an average of £10-15 a head. When you’re doing lunch and dinner everyday, it can work ut quite a bit. In the renowned 300 year old Florian, an Espresso is £3.50, a Capaccino £6 and an Irish Coffee is £11. Maybe it’s been brewing for that long too. Service in most places is not great either. Brusque, is how it normally is. After all, the tourists outnumber the locals 200 to 1. I can’t blame people who come here though. It is, a magnificent place with it’s (almost) unique more or less untouched, architectural geography. I went through a lane today that can only be passed in a single file.

Spending the whole day yesterday and the whole day today with my folks walking around, the day was seemed fairly long. If you do and see different things and often this you tend to experience when you travel, the day stretches on. Seemingly a day seems like 3.










- J