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View from the window – Cipriani Hotel Venice

The images below are taken from a bedroom window of Palazzo Vendramin

Palazzo Vendramin is a 15th-century residence linked to the Hotel Cipriani through an ancient courtyard and a passageway lined with flowers. It houses 16 suites and rooms with sweeping vistas over the gardens and across to St Mark’s Square.

These views have been represented in paint and photographs a billion times – they are common to generations of travelers and the walls in galleries around the world groan from the weight of their presence.

Piazza San Marco (in English = St Mark’s Square) is the main public square of Venice, where it is locally simply known as “the Piazza” and is the key part of the social, religious and political center of Venice

The Hotel Cipriani has just under 80 suites and rooms, having magnificent views over the open lagoon and the gardens.

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Innsbruck train station – Orient Express

More images of the Orient Express

Due to European regulations the Orient Express has to change engines in every country it enters, these regulations also prevent steam powered engines from being used.

From Innsbruck train station you can see the ski jump ramp used in the IX Olympic Winter Games (from January 29 to February 9, 1964). The games included 1091 athletes from 36 nations, and the Olympic Torch was carried by Joseph Rieder,  a former alpine skier who had participated in the 1956 Winter Olympics.

In 1969 I stood at the bottom of the ski jump ramp – it is huge!

Interior of Orient Express – image gallery

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is a private luxury train service that travels from London to Venice. Traveling on the Orient Express across Europe is a romantic, nostalgic and luxurious experience.

The craftsmanship that went into creating the original carriages would be very difficult to replicate – inlaid wood, frosted glass reliefs and chromed fittings. These wonderfully engineered pieces of railway rolling stock date back to the 1920s and 1930s. The whole ensemble oozes history.

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express

The original company was founded by James Sherwood of Kentucky, USA, in 1982; five years earlier, in 1977, he had bought two of the original carriages at auction when the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits withdrew from the Orient Express service, passing the service on to the national railways of France, Germany, and Austria. Over the next few years, Sherwood spent a total of $16 million purchasing 35 sleeper, restaurant and Pullman carriages. On 25 May 1982, the first London-Venice run was made.

It is currently owned by Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. The company owns 50 luxury hotels, restaurants, tourist trains and river cruises in 24 countries.

Easter Sunday in Venice – #cipriani

Wow what a hotel…

…and what an amazing Easter Sunday – the view from the bedroom window has got to be one of the best ever!

The church bells rang out from dawn and the smell of Spring followed the call, fresh, new and slightly cool.

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Art ?

There is so much art in Venice to see – I must admit I have neglected the galleries, except the Guggenheim, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, where Peggy Guggenheim lived and which has a couple of great Pollocks, my favorite being Two, 1943–45 and a typical Bacon (Study for Chimpanzee).

 

Orient Express #orientexpress

There has been no murder on the train but the ‘Agatha Christie Cocktail’ is a delicious poison mixed expertly by Walter.

Leaving Victoria Station on a Thursday morning in the beautiful, fully restored ‘Gwen” a Pullman Carriage, in a cream and maroon livery, just like the carriages I had in my Tri-ang railway set which was pulled by my favourite steam train ‘Princess Elizabeth’.

Clickety Clacking to the Euro Tunnel and then boarding the ‘Real Deal’ in Calais.

The 1929 sleeper compartments ooze history (Hitler had one as a mobile brothel – if you believe some stories). The history of Europe’s decadent and brutal past is etched into the bur oak veneer and Lalique reliefs. Traveling at speed through the countryside, the graffiti covered suburbs of Paris, then Lake Zurich and up into Austria.

There was a quick stop at Innsbruck and then a mad dash through Austria on into Italy. Disembarking at the train station – taking a water taxi to the Cipriani Hotel on the tip of Giudecca Island, opposite San Marco on the main island of Venice, it has unrivaled views of the lagoon and Doge’s Palace.