our Venetian apartment

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Alas, I took fewer pics of our lovely apartment than I wish I had taken.

This is one corner of the living room.

Same pic, focused on outside rather than inside -- our across-the-canal view.

This is a closer crop, lightened considerably, of the first image in this post.  I really thought I'd taken a shot of our ceilings.  Brand new ceilings, much older beams.....

The other corner of our living room, with a lot of realities of our trip.  Netbook, on couch, iPhone in hands....  The iPhone was our phone, was our GPS (when we had a car), was our way of looking up train schedules, etc, when we were out and about (and away from the netbook).

You can't really tell, in the pic above, but this is what's in the corner.  A really old radio.

Closeup.  (You can see this in the middle of the radio, near the top.)  Love it......

This apartment was filled with interesting stuff.  Old stuff, like the radio, and lots of original art (mostly paintings).  There was a bookcase in the living room, full of books in many languages.  There was a collection of decanters on a piece of furniture in the hallway.  It was a very comfortable space.



I knew this was on our coffee table, but didn't stop to actually look at it until our very last morning.  That's a lot of different kinds of help available, and I have no idea what some of them are!

Ambience emergency?  Like when your neighbors let their lawn get too long, or are being too noisy?  Nah, I bet it's for toxic spills.....

The bedroom we used had the same sort of windows as the living room.  It, too, was light and airy.  There were big close/cupboards at one end, with extra blankets and pillows, and plenty of room for our suitcases and stuff.

I wish I had a pic of the green marble that was on all the floors......



Like everything else, the bathroom was newly renovated.  It had very pale green marble on the walls (this pic makes it look way too yellow).  There was plenty of hot water, and plenty of heat.

My sister-in-law is a soap-maker.  When my daughter picked up a bar of soap to bring with us, of course it was my sister-in-law's.  A touch of home, while in Italy.

Kitchen.

I took this pic to show the interesting wall surfaces they preserved when renovating.  We are standing right where you'd stand if you'd taken a step or two into the kitchen and a bit closer to the wall.

I'm glad it (almost) shows the steps down from the kitchen to the rest of the apartment.  That very bright shape, center right, is glare off a shiny wooden step -- the steps spiraled to the right, as you left the kitchen.  I'm also glad the pic shows my French 1 euro nylon shopping bag, which I used a lot in Italy.

Here's a closeup of the stone above -- do we think every single mark is the result of a strike by the tools and hands of someone who made building blocks out of bigger pieces of rock?  (Pausing a moment to contemplate that!)

Now turning around and looking at the other end of the kitchen.

Against the wall to our left, looking at the prev., a shelving unit with a microwave and toaster.  These were the only microwave and toaster we had.

I don't know if all Italian toasters (or European toasters?) work this way, but this was different from any American toaster I've ever seen.

The toaster had pull-out racks, which held the bread while toasting (the handles of the racks are seen on top of the toaster, at right, in the above).

You pinch the black plastic handles, and the rack opens up to accept your bread.

Here's the rack, with beautifully completed toast.  Pinch again to release.

This system worked very well -- no digging around in the toaster to retrieve a small slice of toast.  I wonder why our toasters are different from this................

Good old Lipton, in a very different sort of teabag.  I never did figure out how this was supposed to work.  Any time I tried to get both of those half-tags loose, I managed to rip one off.....

Donald, in the dish cupboard.  We had a lot of espresso cups -- a full set of green ones, as well as a full set of the ones with the flowers.

I wish I'd taken more pics of this very nice apartment.

Luckily, its listing on airbnb.com (which we used for booking our apartments) has much better pics than I took.  If you click on the tiny thumbnails, under the main pic, you'll get a very good idea what this was like.  Some things were different when we were there -- the other bedroom has a much bigger bed now, and some of the art and decorative objects were rearranged or changed, but the airbnb pics give a good idea.   I'm surprised that they don't show the views out the windows....  Maybe trying to obscure the location?  I don't know.

It was a great place to stay.  Very comfortable.  Someone actually thought about living there.  We had a place to set a drink down in the living room, lights by the bedsides, a dish-drying rack in the kitchen, and a towel rack in the bathroom, enough pans in the kitchen to do simple cooking, as well as decent olive oil and some balsamic vinegar....

Not to mention it was very close to the vaporetto and Alilaguna (boat from the airport) stops, and also close to a fruit/veg market, grocery, bank, and post office, and, in the other direction, San Marco........

I would definitely stay there again.


In order to facilitate chronological traversal of these posts, here is a link to the next post.

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