In Which We Flee to Italy

That's mrpeenee, there on the left.

Eighteenth century rich Englishmen who had too much money and not enough culture would embark on what was called a Grand Tour in order to get rid of some of the first and maybe pick up some of the latter.  Diane and I have taken on a sort of abbreviated version of one and have left Paris for the damp embrace of Venice. 

You have to take a boat from the airport into town, because, duh, Venice. As soon as I stepped out of the airport doors and was met with the briney, fishy smell of the lagoon, I was transported back to my childhood in the swamps of the Texas Gulf Coast.  Muck, it has a Proustian effect on me.

I naively hoped the gangs of tourists would not be as dreadful as everyone said.  And they aren't.  They are, in fact, much worse.  Diane and I got lost trying to get to the Piazza San Marco, which is actually not far from our hotel, but the mobs of tourists, combined with Venice's incomprehensible layout was just more than we could master.  Plus my refusal to ask for directions didn't help.

God love her, Diane was such a trouper.  She never complained, even as we wandered, battered by the crowds, for 3 HOURS.  We finally just gave up and were headed back to the hotel when we accidentally stumbled on, drum roll, the Piazza.  We had a very nice tea there and then came back to collapse in the hotel. 

A dazed mrpeenee in the very charming Cafe Florian tea room on the Piazza San Marco

Here is a partial list of things that piss me off about the tourist rabble here.

• Bitches
• Bitches who smoke in my vicinity
• Bitches who are in my vicinity 
• Bitches posing for their influencer TikTok
• Bitches who stop in front of me, oblivious to all the people crammed in behind them 
• Bitches who crowd up right on my heels when some other bitch has stopped in front of me and I can't go anywhere.  Bitch.
• Teutonic lesbians

We have a perfectly lovely hotel:

I am up in the attics, in a large, but odd room, with ceilings that are occasionally higher than I am tall.  Occasionally.

I have to go into the bathroom to put on or take off a t-shirt because I can't raise my arms above my head anyplace else.  I really am charmed by the room, although that's possibly a result of a concussion from blamming into the beams.

R Man and I came to Venice more than 30 years ago and loved it.  And I still love it.  Even as my last good nerve is being frayed by the busloads of vaping, vapid teenagers shipped off here on their own Grand Tours, I keep bumping into some quiet corner that reminds me how enchanting this place is.

Italianos I wish were crowding up on me:

Gianluigi Volti with all of his big meaty bigness, smooth. . . 

. . . and hairy. You decide.

Paride Spaziano and his big lemons. 

Mateo Lanzi with considerably more overhead clearance than my current room has. 

 I'm not wild about bad ink, but I will make an exception just this once for Italian soccer bitch Giorgio Torelli

Alessandro Cavagnola, who refuses to show his bits even though that is clearly what the universe demands.

A pair of Marin Barba Rosie's buttchops.

Giorgio Ramondetta, with what has to be the world's most discreet tattoo.

Alex Palmieri, big,beefy, and beautiful and who also, as Mitzi from Clutter from the Gutter so charmingly phrases it, "takes it fudgeways."