Venice encapsulates another way of being. That opening paragraph has itself probably been written many thousands of times. Or, at least, refer instead to something I wrote about Mexico City, in which I treated it as a piece of immersive theatre, one with an oversupply of extras.
Venice presents a similarly intricate and elaborate set, but for this performance the organisers have sold far too many tickets. Hercule Poirot himself. It was not my first visit to Venice. Some of the time I hung out in Campo Santa Margarita. As it happens, the excellent hotel I booked online this time turned out to be right in the square, which as Chiara remarked has quite a Spanish or, erm, Catalan feel to it. At least Venice is resistent to Uber, and Google Maps is not much use when the blue dot which supposedly represents you and your family keeps leaping around the jumble of tiny alleyways with the boundless energy of a nine-month-old baby overexcited by the rare privilege of cosleeping between two utterly exhausted parents.
Although the white sands and turquoise seas of Azumel on the Cancunian coast are some distance away, the huge tourists cruise ships and the tens of thousands they spill out every day have a similarly deleterious environmental impact.
Many seem to come not just in pursuit of the cultural capital which the Venice brand affords, but also on the hunt for Louis Vuitton handbags, Jimmy Choo sunglasses, and all the other high-grade symbols of post-modern Konsumterror.
Such devotion to the acquistion and spending of ostentatious social capital is in keeping with tradition. Writing about Venice at the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Pynchon described it as a site for European elite pleasures, principally spas and gambling.
