Noilly Prattle: Sweet home Venice . .

Monday, September 1, 2014

Sweet home Venice . .

. . . for a little while 

on the lagoon
Piazza San Marco, the Campanile bell tower
    After 12 hectic days of driving around the western half of France and living out of a backpack in one or two night stands, it's wonderful to be able to relax in a beautiful apartment in the Castello Sestiere of Venice, Italy for three weeks. The area is said to be the last remaining “authentic” district in an otherwise highly touristic city. Venice is like a maze of narrow streets with twists and turns and little surprises everywhere. But it is also a relatively small and easily walkable city. Piazza San Marco, the main tourist attraction in Venice is only 10 minutes away on foot yet the ambience is totally different from our little neighborhood. Here it's pretty quiet with only a few pedestrians walking around.

on the vaporetto
       We arrived by vaporetto from Marco Polo Airport and were met by Enrico, the agent for the apartment rental company we used, at the Ospedale bus stop and walked to the apartment together. The vaporetto is a water bus. There is no vehicular traffic in Venice, you either walk or go by water. All the usual public service functions you usually think of as vehicular, such as fire trucks, police cars, taxis, buses delivery trucks and even ambulances, are boats.





our son Robin
       Our son arrived from Tokyo later in the evening of the same day. We met him at the Ospedale vaporetto stop and we all walked back to the apartment together, our little family once more temporarily intact.


water ambulance
       This morning I was startled by a load noise roaring down the canal under my bedroom window. I jumped up and grabbed my camera just in time to catch the tail end of a water ambulance speeding down the canal toward the bridge that we can see from our balcony windows. Here are a few photos of our temporary home away from home. 


our apartment (wrought iron
balconies above man in the red shirt)









typical laundry hanging on pulley lines














bedroom window over the canal







living room kitchen















restaurant deliveries, back door

smoke break













canal view from our balcony




early evening on the canal



















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