Three photographs of the same place at three different times. At the top, Saint Mark's Square about six am. Almost completely empty except for a few photographers and the guys who sweep up from the previous night. Breathtakingly beautiful. Napoleon called it "The Most Beautiful Drawing Room in the World." If you're claustrophobic, however, you don't want to be anywhere near this place in the middle of the day, say from ten am to four pm. It's impossible to walk in a straight line to get where you're going. By about eight, you can walk through it on your way to dinner without ramming into people. By ten, it's wonderful again with modest crowds paying exhorbitant prices to sit and listen to one of the three or four rotating orchestras play the classics with violin the lead instrument in each case. Many people simply walk a few steps to hear the different groups play and stand behind the seats occupied by the high rollers and get their evening's entertainment for free. A photographer acquaintance scoffed openly when I told him we were going to Venice in the summer. I'll take it when I can get it. One day, after being out most of the afternoon, my wife talked me into sitting down at a table in the square and having a drink before we went back to the hotel. A gin and tonic and a vodka tonic later, we were less thirty-two euros, minus the tip. Yikes!
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