Having been a James/Jan Morris (the late bard of Llanystumdwy) completist, I read her definitive volume on Venice some thirty years plus ago, and now, at 54 years old, I have finally made it.
It was dusk on the 19th as we waited to board the Alilaguna Linea Blu water bus at Marco Polo airport, alighting in the shadow of the Basilica San Marco.
Having checked in - and being hungry - we wandered the streets in search of pizza, through the Piazza San Marco (just off of which was our hotel Torre dell'Orologio) and stumbling across the Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge quite by accident.
In the San Polo district, we came across a pizzeria 'Antico Forno' and had slices of 'pizzacaccia', pizza with a focaccia base. I had two huge slices of prosciutto and burrata, and then, on the way back to the hotel, a cannolo di pistacchio, after which I was suitably stuffed.
I am glad to have seen Venice first on a cold, dark November night, the moon reflected in the lagoon, its canals and the marble paving; the Venice of 'Don't Look Now' and 'Death in Venice': a damp, gothic, haunted, enshrouded place, or, as Jan Morris wrote, "a maze of alleys, secluded courtyards, bridges, archways, tortuous passages, dead ends, quaysides, dark overhung back streets and sudden squares."
This fatalistic side of Venice has always seemed to be all the more appealing than the brightly-lit, tourist-choked city of the summer.
The furst full day, 20th November, was a day for flâneuring, or 'peregrinazioni' as they'd say in these parts, around San Marco, and the Dorsoduro, visiting the Basilica Santa Maria della Salute, and passing Harry's Bar (at the Hotel Cipriani), La Fenice and the Guggenheim.
There were ghosts everywhere; of the Marchesa Casati walking her pet leopards on a leash along the Grand Canal, picking the gold leaf off a naked, gilded servant who had passed out; of Peggy Guggenheim (who bought the Marchesa's palazzo, turning it into the eponymous gallery), jumping beds from Beckett to Duchamp to Ernst; of Casanova's imprisonment at - and escape from - the Doge's Palace for "public outrages"; of Marco Polo returning from the Far East with  noodles, sparking Italy's love affair with pasta; of D'Annunzio, having returned to Venice after annexing Fiume, Yugoslavia, with his fetishistic love of uniform, bedecked with medals of dubious merit, influencing a young Mussolini; of Titian becoming jealous at his apprentice Tintoretto's talent and expelling him from his studio. I could go on.
We had brunch at Grancaffè Quadri on the piazza San Marco under the campanile: caffè lattes (as cappuccinos are frowned upon in Italy after 11am!), a club sandwich and a pistacchio cream croissant, while fighting off the pigeons and seagulls.
The evening saw Stuie going out for 'porta via' pizza, and we watched Nic Roeg's 'Don't Look Now', more for the Venetian locations.
Tuesday 21st was a day of 'dolce far niente' (aka bugger all) as it was raining lightly, taking advantage of the free (and distinctly average) breakfast at the hotel, and watching Netflix in our suite, finally leaving about 4pm for dinner at Ristorante la Piazza.
I had burrata to start, then tortelloni with porcini cream sauce, and then we walked to the Chiesa di San Vidal for a concert of the Interpreti Veneziani ensemble, in some Vivaldi (with a very animated cellist) and finishing with Giuseppe Tartini.
At a bookshop, I bought Tiziano Scarpa's volume 'Venice is a Fish', where in her review, Erica Jong describes Venice as "one of the strangest and most beautiful cities on Earth." And I have to agree; in every other major city, you could be interchangeably in many other cities, such is the monotony of modern global culture and infrastructure, but, in Venice, you simply could not be anywhere else.
On the last day we avoided the buffet breakfast and had brunch instead at Harry's Bar: a Bloody Mary and then a campari soda and a croque monsieur (Stuie having the gnocchi with ricotta and black butter), later regretting not having had a bellini and the carpaccio - both of which originated here - in those heady days when Hemingway, Capote, Orson Welles and Peggy Guggenheim were coming here.
Music: To start, it simply had to be Venice's most famous musical son, the 'Red Priest' himself, Antonio Vivaldi, in his D Major mandolin concerto KV 93, followed by Offenbach's Barcarolle (gondolier song) from Act 3 of 'Les Contes d'Hoffmann' (set in Venice on New Year's Eve) which coincidentally opens at La Fenice this week (unfortunately after we return home). And lastly, 'La Serenissima' (the nickname for Venice) by Rondò Veneziano, the Italian chamber ensemble, which was a European hit back in 1980.