Venice is a very romantic city. It is also expensive.
What I take from it is simple. If I really want to build something in life, I need some way to make money outside my salary, even a small one.
I kept a light cost list. Not a complaint. A real pass, in order, in case it helps someone else.
Hotel, three nights: €280 (this was cheap but it was more like an aribnb with shared toilett).
First lunch: €100. Quite simple. A focaccia, a Caesar salad, spaghetti frutti di mare, two glasses of white wine, still water.
Dinner later: €160. A bit more elegant, terrace over a canal. Osteria del Lovo. The meal was very similar to lunch. Nothing very special.
In general, eating in a restaurant for Marian and me sat around €160.
We also ate at A'll grill. I let the waiter carry me and I did not follow my instinct for meat cooked well. They charge €90 for 1 kg. Of that, maybe 300 g is bone and another 200 g is fat. Optimistically you get about 500 g of meat.
Gondola: very short. Thirty minutes that felt like twenty. Maybe they were twenty. We did not track the time. €90.
We tried a private water taxi for the sunset before dinner. Phones and stands around Rialto. Peak Friday. Failed. No ride. No fare paid.
The main boats, the ones everyone uses, are €9.50 per person for 75 minutes. There are other ticket types. None of that is my style. I do not care what the line is called.
For Marian the city felt the same everywhere. Nothing surprised her much. We did not walk the Grand Canal. Her way of living the experience was a bit strange to me. Everything looked old to her. I do not really know what she expected.
On every corner there is a restaurant, a place for food, or water. Everything costs a lot. Money leaves your hands the way water does when you try to hold it. There is a surcharge on almost everything.
The price itself does not worry me that much. The experience does. And more than once it was not an experience I feel was worth that.
The problem is not really the city. It is my economy. It resonates that I have to align my initiatives so they put a few cents in the pocket, enough to match the speed at which we spend.
I do not like staring at prices or worrying a lot when we eat. Behaviors like that feel like they attract poverty. I also do not want this trip to become a complaint, or a speech about watching where we spend more carefully.
I only want to evaluate how and from where more cash can flow toward us, by offering the most value we can, or by finding simple things that solve a small but important problem. Thirst. A coffee. Somewhere everyone is thirsty or wants a coffee. Without depending too much on humans. On systems.
On every corner I saw a system.