Hotel Splendido And Ace Location, Venice.
Bert & Andrew will be twitching gently in Amsterdam for this evening, so good wishes fly to them, G-J & the team around them. Here in Venice, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, and we have a lobby call for water taxi to the Crimbus at noon.
15.18 CafÈ Modesto, Ferrara.
This modest corner cafÈ is 100 yards from Hotel Modesto. It has an in-house noise pollution system set to techno. Loud enough to be intrusive, too quiet to invite participation or engagement. So, just an irritant. There is an advantage to being here: I am not in my room-on-three-levels at Hotel Strange-And-It-Should-Be-Something-More.
Shortly after checking in around 15.00 I met Trey in the lobby changing his room - the air conditioning had failed. But his (ex) room had two bathrooms and a bath. I have only a shower in a sad little toilet area on the bottom level. Then Ade joined us, looking pitiful - he wanted lunch but everywhere was closed. It is siesta time in Ferrara. He begged the hotelier to let him have something in the hotel restaurant, but they were dealing with two weddings & in any case the cook had gone home.
In an optimistic attempt to send off diary postings I am editing some about-to-be-becoming diary entries. Spelling & punctuation corrections are needed (the price to pay for high-speed finger-snapping and a bumping bus). The spirit of my room is not enough to support that venture. Although, as I sometimes say of rooms such as this that greet the Happy Gigster, it's a good room to have an enema.
15.38 My choice of corner cafÈ/bar was mainly predicated upon it being empty. There is now a customer shouting loudly at the owner & his wife. This is not an argument: he is conducting a conversation in Italian.
"If we can define our aim, we are halfway to achieving it."
