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Pete;
Nice try ot politicize the issue, but the problem with Venice is that it is sinking. It was built on a sand bar, with piles driven into the ground. Not holding up.
not to mention what global warming, rising sea levels are doing to it.
Vencie is close to being a dead city, meaning that its population is rapidly dwindling, and its commerce is now almost exclusively centered around tourism.
Such is the fate of a city that cast its lot completely with “historic” preservation. Take note.
You can just go far upstate and visit Rome and Amsterdam and Rotterdam and Geneva. A long weekend would be sufficient and much cheaper ( no euros involved).
I visited Rome on the Internet. Why would I need to go in person?
I visited Venice during the winter when I was a college student (many years ago). It was magical. I think it must be different in the summer when it’s crowded with tourists and the sun is bright overhead.
Too late to be useful, I assume, but on rome- I spent a week (and 3700 photographs) there staying with a friend at the American Academy. It’s a great town, though completely infested with tourists (my subject, so good for me). There’s a week or two during the summer where all the museums are free; if you can time it right, that’s a nice bonus.
Very walkable, excellent if repetitive street food, and some of the great architectural monuments of all time. Vatican hotspots are a must-see, and the pantheon is equally overwhelming/awe-inspiring, despite its status as a cliche. There’s a day during the summer where they throw rosepetals out of the oculus of the Pantheon, which is fairly amazing (gives you the sense of the incredible size of the building).
Venice is too cheezy. I didn’t care for it. The duomo in Florence is amazing, and they have a great tour that goes up into the dome, where you can see the restored paintings close up. The Baptistry also amazing, and the history of the Campanile is fascinating, with each subsequent vertical section being done by a different architect, and exhibiting correspondingly different historical traits, from the opaque flatness of Talenti at the base to the radical openness of Giotto at the top.
I felt (perhaps because of schedule- I was only a day or two in venice/florence, vs. a week+ in Rome) that Rome was head and shoulders above the others as far as a complex and varied experience; venice and florence sort of seemed like one-note symphonies.
time to drink beer and shoot pool… have a good weekend everyone
I just have fond, tho vague, memories of the tv show…