Giggles at the Hotel Danieli

On our last day in Venice, my best friend, Anth, flew in from London to spend the day (and our final evening) with us. 

During my first stay in Venice (when I was working as a student intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection), Anth literally sent me a big, fat, newsy letter every day for the entire two years that I was away.  He was my constant link to home, and I've still got every one of those letters that he sent me.  So after all these years of friendship, it was incredibly special to finally get to share Venice with Anth on this trip. 

We met him in the middle of the Calatrava bridge on a wet Saturday morning, and then caught a vaporetto to his hotel, the Danieli.  When he checked in, he was told that his room wasn't quite ready but that it would be worth the wait - with views of the lagoon and located in the Palazzo Dandolo, the oldest part of the hotel.  So we left his bag at the hotel and toddled off for coffee followed by tramezzini and glasses of prosecco at Da Gino's and then to the Guggenheim Collection before returning a few hours later.

This was the view looking down into the hotel from the hallway of his room.

I enjoyed the outline of the gothic windows behind the shutters:

This was the view looking out to the left:

and this was the view looking to the right:

It was pouring with rain by then, so we opened a bottle of wine and giggled a lot as we caught up on each other's news, listened to the gondoliers below and watched the scenery outside.