Gentle Reader, we are back. Tired and lagged but ready for the sales on Presidents' Day. Not that we have anything left to spend.
Ah never mind. The pix that I promised in endless posts will begin appearing in said posts -- and some whimsical new ones, you know how I love whimsy -- the usual tripe of vineyards and happy peasants smashing grapes in their wellies. Plus endless pictures of quaint, mouldering buildings and the like.
When you travel to a place a lot, you find the usual beauty shots of famous sights so suspect and phoney, certainly incomplete and removed from any contemporary human context, that you want to go out and shoot photos of dumpster boats in Venetian canals and the sad and mysterious vu compra's that line every tourist strip in Italy, selling the same counterfeit purses and other down-market versions of luxury goods that they sell in New York, Paris and every other First World metropolis, I'm sure.
Before I sign off for now to eat and drink some cheap wine and watch a little TV in English, trying all the while to go to sleep at a normal hour, I have to say that, as so often in major Italian cities, the typical wines available in modest restaurants and bars in Venice are at best just drinkable and, at worst, pretty sad stuff. Vino sfuso that claims to be Montalcino, Chianti, Valpolicella and so on. Whatever.
On the other hand, none of it's over-oaked with a sweet finish and 16% alcohol. That's a blessing.
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