Venice Report 16th

London is like a pot of glue. It will lure you in with the promise of colourful and multicultural life full of opportunities and excitement, only to trap you in the fast paced expensive working life, where no one has the will and mood to hook up with friends when they finally finish at work and (drained and soulless) commute home an hour later ready to spend the rest of the evening starring on a laptop screen.

You know how it goes..everyone back home assume you must be a millionaire, because you live in the number one European City of Lights. They envy you having a trillion events to attend a week, concerts, parties, exhibitions, film premiers..But the more stuff is happening around,the less likely you choose anything and stay home instead, browsing facebook like any other given human being

Venice was built by setting wood pilings
on the 118 submerged islands in the Northern
end of the Adriatic Sea. It counts over 400
bridges, 170 boat canals and 15 thousands
houses, domes and churches, some of them
dating back to the 10th century.

Venice is a floating and confusing maze. They say the best way to experience it is to just give in and get lost in its narrow streets. But it's not like you have any other option.

We got lost in Venice once before..and of course I dismissed it as one-off incident and of course I didn’t bring the map this time around. I only knewour hostel was located close to San Marco square, which is just about the most difficult place to find when you arrive by train. Here you can see it basking in daylight and heaving with tourists, but trust me – empty and threatening just after midnight, after hours of aimless wandering through the Venice labyrinth – wasn’t fun at all.

We arrived to Italy about 11pm (remember we kept the budget down by taking Ryanair which equals to flying in a cardboard box which lands in the middle of nowhere far far away from actual city of Venice) with only a name of the street and a vague location of the hostel we were meant to stay in.

Hotel Casa Linger is about £100 for two nights in a little twin room, but to be able to claim this bargain in the very heart of historical part of Venice, you first have to climb neverending flights of stairs, which..
..bare with me..

are blody NEVERENDING..there is no end to it!

And there are stairs too, so you need to work your hamstrings and buttocks. And after that flight and a several hours wandering through the streets of Venice being lost (which I never admitted) we found ourselves taking a little nap on every landing.

I insisted on some serious holiday-like indulgance with the pizza and booze and sea and sunbathing to make up for our fist visit to Venice, when we had no idea you actually can catch the water bus 'Vaporetto' straight from San Marco square to a public beach 'Venice Lido' for €6 one way or (smarter option) €13 for a 24hrs ticket.

And 20mins later you're transported from the 16th century-like romantic floating museum of a city..

..to California.

On our way from the beach we wanted to honour a Czech community in London, particulary Klara Janeckova from Crystal Palace who established a 'Jagger Bomb' (Red Bull + Jaggermeister) as an ultimate immigrant drink of Czechs in London, but didn't quite expect the generosity of Italian bartenders, whos understanding of a 'single shot of Jagger' far exceeds what would be considered three shots in Britain. Put the heath and sun in the mix and you get a hazy lazy acid trip afternoon! Btw..the unexpcted generosity goes beyond boozing around..if you decide to have a sandwich for a breakfast, you basically get a loaf of bread filled with half of the pig thinnly sliced and a vagon of vegetables.

In that tipsy feverish state of mind, Adam rememberedit was his mum's b-day that day and tried to figure out just about the every single public paid-phone, until he reached her home, in Czech Republic, and in couple seconds before the line went dead screamed HAPPY BIRTHDAY into the reciever.

Meanwhile, over yet another margharita, I got
excited about witnessing a get-together of two
gorgeous Italian lionesses sharing a drink and
a book on that lazy afternoon. One of them may
as well have been Queen Elizabeth in disguise.
Where I go, she always follows!

Here you can see that whilst I was busy re-creating 'The Heart of the Ocean' painting scene from Titanic...

..Adam was rocking up more of a 'Brunhilde in her burial mound' from Song of the Nibelungs. I told him like zillion times to put the sunscreen on. Unfortunately in his little head he still somehow believes you need to get burned first to get a real nice tan. He spent the night wrapped in the cold wet sheets and towels, and...

As he admitted weeks later, he did not remember much of our romantic evening with pasta (I know I'm going to nutrition Hell for this) and red wine which followed the afternoon on the beach.

And that same night we stayed in a little canteen just outside our hotel and made friends with the manager, who introduced us to the number one favourite aperitif of venetian gondoliers called simply 'The Spritz'. Basically a mix of Campari, White Wine and sparkling mineral water.

A worse tasting thing to drink in Venice would probably only be the water from the canals.

Coffee in Venice on the other hand is exquisite. It comes as a proper 'piccolo' - a couple drops of very concentrated coffee in a tiny little doll size cup - just the way Adam loves it and can't get hold of anywhere in London. Here we had it with the speciality of the house pastry pouches filled with cheese sauce and mushrooms.

As you can see, I wasn't exactely thrilled about going back to Britain. From the pure summer, complex carbs and rafined sugar to the fogs and drizzels and dieting of London. Alas, we managed.

Didn't cost us an arm and leg to trick the brains into thinking we had a proper fun and laid back holiday with all that it entails, even though in fact we left Monday evening and came back Wednesday night. Things are gonna be different from now on! Maybe not work-wise, maybe not money-wise, but definitely in terms of putting a sense into the whole laboring reality of our London's existence.

Every month a little trip. This was the first one...