Today I want to talk about vacation apartments,  in particular the ones where we stayed while in Venice stst May.

I think I’ve mentioned at least in passing that our Plan G travel has often involved renting a vacation apartments. (This is separate from staying with relatives – thanks, Stan and Judie! and house sitting – thanks Jean and Chattie!  A vacation apartment means contracting with either a private person or a property manager to rent a furnished place that has basic kitchen appliances like a stove/cooktop and refrigerator, plus a place to sleep. In addition, it may have one or more — or none — of the following:

• dishwasher
• washing machine
• iron
• microwave
• hair dryer
• TV
• DVD
• WiFi (Internet)
• land-line telephone

Of all those “extras” the one I would trade everything except the WiFi  for is a washing machine, hands down. I’m a pro (if I do say so myself) of washing stuff out in a bathroom sink in a hotel, and can figure out ways to hang stuff up over a tub to drip-dry.

Hangers. It’s all about the hangers.

But when you have a washing machine right there in your apartment, with its spin-cycle – well, that cuts your washing time down substantially. Glorious. There’s no need for a dryer, IMHO, as long as there are hangers.

Again, doing laundry is all about the hangers.

Anyway, it’s been interesting to note that in places in our price range in Europe, a washing machine seems to be standard. However, here in the U.S., the vacation rentals that I’ve scoped out online have at best a coin-operated washing machine (and dryer) in a room somewhere in the building.  Not must you have quarters, you need to get there when no one else is doing their laundry.  Not nearly as convenient. I find that I’m still washing out a few things on and off here in the apartment, so I don’t have to rely as much on the availability of the washers.

And yes, I have lots of hangers. I bought a 10-pack at a store soon after we arrived, just to supplement anything provided in the apartments here. It really is all about the hangers.

But I digress – sort of.  Because I really didn’t want to get bogged down talking about laundry today. The main theme today is really that  vacation apartments are great if you’re staying in a place for longer than a few days.  They really let you get into a different rhythm, that isn’t quite being at home, but isn’t quite being on vacation, either. In Venice, we tended to eat a regular meal at lunch when we could, and then go out for an aperitivo (an alcoholic or not drink, usually served with small munchies) in the late afternoon, and then head back for a simple meal in the apartment of cheese, bread and wine that we would have picked up at a local deli earlier in the day. Nice.   On other occasions I could even make our main meal (fish or pasta, for example) right in the apartment. You can’t do that kind of thing in a hotel.

Venice is one of the places on our Plan G wanderings in Italy where we had a chance to stay in a vacation apartment. Actually, in Venice we stayed in two different ones, owing to some last-minute changes to our travel plans.  The two apartments weren’t that far away from each other, so they were both in great locations to allow us to just go out for a gelato and catch a great sunset on the nights when it wasn’t raining.

The first one, called “Venice Castello Studio” (VCS) was a studio-sized apartment – small, but  more than big enough for us and our (at that time) very small set of stuff.  Here’s a photo from the Trip Advisor listing for this place (click on the photo to go to the Trip Advisor website to see more views):

The location of the VCS to other things in Venice really attracted me to this place: not only was it not far from the Lagoon, it was also near the big art exhibition that we wanted to visit in Venice. We discovered when we got there that it was a converted butcher shop, so the bathroom was in the converted meat locker.  Funky does not begin to describe it. However, the main quirky aspect to the VCS was that it was right on a canal and on the ground floor of the building to boot. If you look carefully through the middle window you should be able to spot the steps of that bridge from yesterday’s photo, so you can see how close the street was.

At times, that was either good, funny, or bad.

– Good for views of the canal from the windows – and since it was on the corner of the building, there were a lot of windows.

– Funny for the fact that the windows were tinted as one-way mirrors so people couldn’t see into the apartment.  Since the windows were mirrors, though, people walking down the street would stop and fix their hair, clothing, check for things between their teeth, take selfies of themselves with that bridge, never knowing anyone  could see them as they did it.  Truly funny at times.

– Bad because ground floor apartments in Venice can flood in the winter. It didn’t rain enough to  flood while we were there in May, but it was kind of damp and musty the entire time. That dampness really got old after a few days. Staying there just a couple of days would have been OK, but after 7 days we were more than ready to leave the VCS.

Then we switched to a place called  the Casa Serena, which was a completely different experience.

It was really new,  on the second floor of the building by Italian terms, (which in the U.S. would be called the 3rd floor). To get to it you had to walk  down a really, really narrow alley away from the canal, so it had no water view.  However,  it did offer a nice vantage point of the hail (!) storm pounding on the rooftops across the way on the day we moved in there.

The lack of the regular water view aside, the Casa Serena was really an otherwise pretty-perfect place: kitchen, bedroom, large bathroom, living room/dining area, WiFi.  And, of course, a washing machine.  It was so big, in fact, that I think it was bigger than some of the regular apartments Chris and I have rented to live in over the years.  I definitely could have stayed at the Casa Serena a lot longer.  Ah well — maybe next time we’re on vacation in Venice.