First impressions of Venice

Von nzvr4poker, 09.05.2009, 4571 Aufrufe, 46 Kommentare | Kommentar hinzufügen

Buongiorno a Venezia,

I am now well and truly settled in Venice and already have some good memories. After nearly 22 hours of flying from Sydney to Dubai in the first part and then from Dubai onto Venice, I had my first adventure in the eastern part of Italy. My taxi driver could speak no English so I just started speaking broken French and she understood. This prompted me to speak better French and after she still understood I was able to communicate somewhat with her.

However the nuances of Venice soon caught up with me as I was dropped off near the train station after paying a hefty taxi cab charge. I was naive to think that I could be dropped off at my hotel as Venice is based around canals and no cars can get through past the western part of the island. I felt ripped off and had to venture by myself through Venice town to my hotel with no idea of where to start. I gambled and traversed a few bridges and asked a few shopkeepers for help but to no avail. Finally I found a shopkeeper who understood English and she said I was going in the right direction and I found my way back to my hotel ok. Here are some images of Venice so far:

Venice’s Grand Canal.

A gondola sitting in the Grand Canal ready for action.

The breathtaking Grand Canal around dusk.

After freshening up for the opening party I made my way across town to the Casino di Venezia. The only difference from normal was that this time I found myself amongst the poker mediaof Europe attending a pre-party briefing of the week. I made friends with some of the French and Italian media and then we were given a grand tour of the casino which was built in 1480. The casino was home to several famous Venetians like composer Richard Wagner and features amazing artwork from the renaissance era. 

A painting on the ceiling in Casino di Venezia.

It was now time for the players’ portion of the party to begin and I mingled with the few familiar faces I knew including Shaun "Goldensbush" Goldsbury, Neil "The Visionary" Mcfayden and Neil "Puggy82" Stewart who were flatmates in my home town of Tauranga, New Zealand last year. We had lots of laughs talking about poker hands, strategy and our first impressions of Venice.

The attention quickly shifted to the Champions League football (soccer for Antipodeans) semi-final between Manchester United and Arsenal that was showing on a screen in the casino. Being the degenerate gamblers that we are, a suggestion was made that we would each put ten Euros on the player to score the first goal of the game. An order of picks was established and I was fourth in line and chose Cristiano Ronaldo. As it turned out the first goal scorer was Park Ji-Sung. No one had picked him and when Ronaldo scored the second goal of the game promptly thereafter, I scooped the prize pool of 60 Euros. This way please!

I ended up having a few after party drinks with the three French media staff down the road and we swapped details and proceeded to retire back to our respective hotel rooms. That was just the beginning of my drama. As some of you may be aware Venice is an intricate network of bridges and tight streets and passageways. It is very easy to get lost especially when one has a few drinks. After finding a bakery where I got a snack to take back to my room I lost my bearings. After dealing with a few unsavoury locals who although spoke little English attempted to help me unsuccessfully and witnessing the back end of a pub brawl, I finally found my hotel room and was able to get some much needed rest.

During the week I hope to get out and see some of the sights of Venice before I settle down to the task of calling the final table of the WPT (World Poker Tour) event here on Sunday. Fortunately plenty of my friends have made the trip to Venice and I can use their expert opinions and invite them to commentate with me which will make my job a lot easier. I look forward to updating you all as the week goes by.

Special thanks to the other poker sites for the use of the photos of Venice.