Hi there. *shy wave* It's been a ridiculously long time since I posted anything. I really fell into a writing pit and spent the better part of a year digging myself out of it. I want to write about writing Strange the Dreamer, but I feel like I have to work up to it. Not to mention that I never posted pics of our summer trip to Italy, so I'm going to do that first, while I gather my wits.
Starting with Venice, because: Venice.
We stayed in the Castello district, which I highly recommend. Venice is such a mob in the main tourist thoroughfares, but get just a little outside of it and that totally falls away, revealing a real city where people live and work. Above is our neighborhood, only a 5 minute walk to San Marco, but very few tourists to be seen--and in the afternoon when it got hot and we'd had enough trudging, we'd take the vaporetto a few stops and be on the beach island, Lido! Below is the apartment we rented on airbnb. It was the office of a pair of French boatbuilders at one time.
From the outside:
It's directly on the fondamente; below pic is just in front of the house.
That spire above Clementine is St Mark's.
Here's the nighttime view:
Look at these colors. Doesn't it look like a postcard from the 70s or something?
Venice is...unreal. Even as you're seeing it, your brain is denying it, a little. Mine does, anyway. Cruising down the Grand Canal on a vaporetto, I look around and it's all SO RIDICULOUSLY MAGNIFICENT that my brain kind of slips into this weird mode like it's seeing something fake and refuses to be impressed. I have to keep going: no, it's real. Believe it. The only other place I've had that reaction is the Grand Canyon.
Jim and I got engaged in Venice seventeen years ago, on a gondola under the Bridge of Sighs. Here's a selfie Jim took of us *on* the Bridge of Sighs <3
And the Bridge of Sighs at night:
Next time: Tuscany!
