Ciao, Venice! Arrivederci, Venice!

Our day and a night and a day whirlwind tour of Venice started with our studly taxi-boat driver taking us up the Grand Canal.



Who's a big lug? You are! Yes, you are!



These holiday snaps don't really capture the experience.

VENICE SELF PORTRAIT


This was the view from the roof deck of our B&B.



Venice offers absurdly quaint streets full of absurdly hot men, like the rest of Italy.



The streets are also full of lost tourists peering at maps.



San Marco Square is every bit as picturesque as the movies promise. For me the movie is Moonraker. I know it's nerdy and kitsch and Roger Moore is not among our more beloved Bond actors. I don't care. Drax was an awesome villain and the 007 gondola/hovercraft chase rocked!



Sadly this place is positively overrun. I'm told lovely photos and a little peace may be had at dawn. I wasn't motivated enough to make it then. Really, it's worse than Times Square. We could only take it for about twenty minutes before we had to flee.



I got an unexpected nerd fix late at night. This street bar has joysticks permanently built into the wood bar. They're connected to a game console with graphics so old I didn't recognize them. Drunk boys playing Street Fighter, bashing and slashing each other with virtual sticks and swords, are pretty amusing.



Overall I had a lovely time. I was a bit tired the first day from an early train, and overwhelmingly frustrated the second day when the crappy tourist map absolutely every news stand sells got me hopelessly and repeatedly lost for over two hours. I felt like I was in a really beautiful version of the Blair Witch Project. "Dear God, no! I've seen this lovely fountain before!" (If you go, be sure to get a Streetwise brand map before you leave.)

But I'm so grateful to have been. Mostly I just walked around and soaked it in. Venice defies visual documentation. It simply must be experienced.