VALENTINE’S DAY COUNTDOWN
With only a week to go, we asked ourselves (i.e. the ER Editorial Team) how could we inspire our readers? What would we like to receive for a Valentine’s Day present? Or, more altruistically, what would we like to give our beloved? As usual Kate Copstick, our Editor At Large, isn’t doing anything by halves:
“As this is a fantasy, arrival into Venice is by private jet. Nothing kills a romantic frisson quite like queuing at an airport and haggling for one extra kg in your hold baggage. It is evening on the 13th, dusk is settling on the lagoon as the water taxi skips across it. Pre-dinner drinks are taken standing in a tiny bar on the Fondamenta Fruili round the corner from the Academia – a uniquely welcoming experience. I dare not reveal its name for fear too many people find out about it. There is great conversation, loud laughter and endless good, cheap red wine from the bottiglione. Darkness now wraps itself around the city which makes the walk along canalsides and through tiny calle to the Trattoria da Arturo for their unsurpassable Braciola alla Veneziana: a theatrically thrilling experience. As midnight strikes on Valentines Day, taking in the view over the Grand Canal from the window of a palazzo is a little love affair all of its own. Valentine’s Day itself – after enjoying the visceral thrust of a caffè corretto for breakfast – is spent wandering the tiny alleyways of Venice, getting lost, finding new bridges on which to stand and sigh, visiting the Angelo Raffaele, drinking fat red wines from little glasses and nibbling cicchetti at the Diavolo e l’Aqua Santa and the Cantina Do Mori, and meandering around the lesser canals in a private water taxi. A fishy dinner at the Antica Trattoria la Furatola, finished with Luigi’s own recipe ‘scroppino‘ – a digestivo of alcoholic coffee and liquorice – a last meander across a favourite piazza and then tears because it is time to part.. And what of my Valentine I hear you ask ? My Valentine is Venice herself. Eternally, headily, sexy. And I will love her forever.”
Picture: The Grand Canal from under the Academia Bridge (detail) by Dave Morris
