The City Sojourner #3: Venice at Gaucho – Summary: How do I save money in Venice? You don’t.

Impressions of Venice after seven days

by Matt Herron

Still astonishing for the engineering fete of persistence that keeps a city built on mud flats standing after 1500 years. Piazza San Marco floods with a rising tide every twelve hours but what’s a little water in the foyer? A true Venetian would never abandon his city to a fickle tide. —Read on »

‘… [L]ife just creeps along, with long spans where nothing much happens. The O.J. Simpson trial lasted months, and much of it was deadly dull. Stories solve this problem—as the critic Clive James once put it, “Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.” This is one reason why Friends is more interesting than your friends.’ The Pleasures of Imagination by Paul Bloom at the Chronicle Review

A scottish pub tour like no other

by Matt Herron

I’ve been on pub tours before, but never one that fired my imagination like this.

Twelve of us were led through the cobbled streets of the Old and New Town’s of Edinburgh on a Literary Pub Tour. It began at the Beehive Inn, a large pub with an appropriately aged appearance, just off the Royal Mile.

—Read on »