We have booked most of our sabbatical accommodations through Airbnb.com, an online service allowing travelers to rent apartments and houses directly from owners. For the most part, it's worked out great. Only one place was marginal, but even that was workable for one night. Unfortunately, our streak of good luck ran out when we arrived in Venice for three nights. I made the error of renting a single room in an apartment, thinking it was the whole place (the low price should have tipped me off...) We decided to make the best of it, though, and were pleased with the central location beside a canal in Venice. The room was large and bright, though devoid of decorations and basically pretty shabby and not especially clean. We decided we could deal with that, too. When we were ready for sleep, however, we discovered that all the bedding, especially the pillows, was saturated with mildew. I guess it's hard to keep things dry in Venice, but it just wasn't going to work for us. We ended up sleeping on top of everything, using our clothing for pillows. We were awakened by a nearby church tower tolling 150 o'clock (I'm not kidding; the bell rang one hundred and fifty times at eight a.m. ) By then, the owner of the apartment had left for work, so we decided to check ourselves out of the apartment and into a nearby budget hotel with clean, fresh pillows. Our new place is classically Venetian, with red and gold fabric walls and baroque-style furnitire. We can see gondolas passing by if we stick our head pretty far out the window.
Venice is fantastic! It is exactly like I pictured: canals everywhere with narrow streets and ornate, colorful buildings. Houses and stores and even churches are coated in burnt sienna and raw umber and melon and other colors that were in my Crayola 64-pack. We arrived yesterday afternoon and spent the rest of the day climbing up and down over canal bridges and exploring places like St. Mark's Square and Rialto. Today, after getting settled in our new place, we had a late breakfast on one of the many cobblestone squares. A very small funeral procession (priest, coffin on wheels, and three mourners) passed by as we ate. This afternoon we took the "Vaporetta" (aka "Waterbus") from St. Mark's Square across the bay to the island of Lido. I went swimming at Lido beach while Leroy drank cappachino and read a book in a nearby park. I added the Adriatic Sea to the growing list of seas I have swum in while on sabbatical (it's number five, I think.)
We arrived here by the fast train from Rome to Venice via Florence. The scenery was beautiful as we passed through the heart of Italy and the regions of Umbria and Tuscany. When we leave here in two days, we will travel again by train to Florence for a few days before our final week in Italy spent in Tuscany.
We have booked most of our sabbatical accommodations through Airbnb.com, an online service allowing travelers to rent apartments and houses directly from owners. For the most part, it's worked out great. Only one place was marginal, but even that was workable for one night. Unfortunately, our streak of good luck ran out when we arrived in Venice for three nights. I made the error of renting a single room in an apartment, thinking it was the whole place (the low price should have tipped me off...) We decided to make the best of it, though, and were pleased with the central location beside a canal in Venice. The room was large and bright, though devoid of decorations and basically pretty shabby and not especially clean. We decided we could deal with that, too. When we were ready for sleep, however, we discovered that all the bedding, especially the pillows, was saturated with mildew. I guess it's hard to keep things dry in Venice, but it just wasn't going to work for us. We ended up sleeping on top of everything, using our clothing for pillows. We were awakened by a nearby church tower tolling 150 o'clock (I'm not kidding; the bell rang one hundred and fifty times at eight a.m. ) By then, the owner of the apartment had left for work, so we decided to check ourselves out of the apartment and into a nearby budget hotel with clean, fresh pillows. Our new place is classically Venetian, with red and gold fabric walls and baroque-style furnitire. We can see gondolas passing by if we stick our head pretty far out the window.
We arrived here by the fast train from Rome to Venice via Florence. The scenery was beautiful as we passed through the heart of Italy and the regions of Umbria and Tuscany. When we leave here in two days, we will travel again by train to Florence for a few days before our final week in Italy spent in Tuscany.