I sat in Hotel Caneva’s small reception area, chatting to Stephano, the night time receptionist. Water, displaced by passing boats, lapped up against a rudimentary wooden barricade, erected to keep guests from the slimed over steps leading down to a small canal. Gondoliers, standing stiff above tourists, shouted echoing “Hoys!” as they twisted blind past the building’s dark exterior.

Stephano had worked in London, which he explained his easy, if imperfect, use of English. “I remember,” he told me, “when I arrive, I tell the owner of the hotel that I will be staying two years. He did not believe me,” he laughed, “but I stay two years. Exactly!” (Read on …)