The Poor Wayfarer Abroad, Part II

Lido di Jesolo is a convenient location for day trips to Venice for those who don't want to pay exorbitant hotel fees. Our hotel was a 19th century villa that had been converted from an ancestral mansion and there was no ignoring the architectural quirks that indicated without apology that this building had once had another life. For instance, there was no sequential logic to the floor layout. My room was 212 but reaching that room was far more complicated than taking the elevator up to the second floor and then following the room numbers to my door. First of all the way floors are numbered in Italy are different: the bottom floor, the one where we checked in, was not considered the first floor - the the first floor was one level up; therefore, the level where room 212 would be found was two flights up.

Elevators are, obviously, added as afterthoughts in converted 19th century villas and, as such, they're unconvincing. You can rarely find them and, when you do, you realize they're smaller than American elevators, and more balky: like politicized union workers, they can quit on you in a huff at any time. But the stairs aren't much better - the grand staircase that was once used by the Titled Family of the villa did not necessarily lead to all the floors, just the rooms that the Family might have once used as their personal apartments within the villa itself. We went with luggage bumping behind us up the sweeping, carpeted stairs and found ourselves in a ballroom with a grand piano and a harp that looked as if it had died there and was forgotten. A small sign with vague arrows indicated we were to go through the ballroom and then down a quick flight of stairs to a landing that went suddenly up again and now we were on the first floor. Time to scan for another clue and there it was, pasted above an oil painting of the Rape of the Sabine Women - another arrow! Follow that around the corner and there was a dark, turning staircase perfect for a quick assignations by servants driven by passion and the restricted blood flow caused by tight 19th century clothing.

My room had been formed by subdividing older rooms with cheap false walls but at least I got a window and a balcony that looked out at the loggia and the formal gardens. Beyond the plane trees and umbrella pines and the fountain you could see the family chapel. The hotel restaurant spilled out in the rose garden. Statuary peered back at me from plinths set at regular intervals along the graveled trail. They seemed curious as to why I, an impoverished literature teacher from Chicken City, Georgia was standing on the balcony looking down while a steady breeze from the Ionian sea rushed into the room and agitated the white muslin curtains.

That night I fell asleep with the windows open to admit the sea breeze because air conditioning in Italy is built and installed by people who don't really have their heart in the whole idea - they've lived for thousands of years without it in that culture and they seem unconvinced by the need for it by tourists. The curtains moved in and out restlessly and I imagined breakers washing in and out on the beach a few miles away. When I fell asleep I dreamed a servant girl came briskly past the foot of my bed, pulled the curtains aside smartly and then closed the windows with a sudden, short motion. She glanced at me laying twisted in my sheets and her face was annoyed, and then she walked off the way she had come. When I woke up the next day the windows were shut.