Everything about Mario's apartment was perfect from the moment we arrived, despite the fact that we (me, wife, pre-teen daughter, surly teenage son) boarded the wrong vaporetto at St. Lucia station and ended up circumnavigating the entire city transiting 15 stops instead of 3 (when you board the correct vaporetto) and ended up meeting Mario at the Ospedale stop an hour after our agreed meet time. Despite this, Mario was gracious, and even helped us carry our luggage, and showed us where the grocery store was, and recommended cafes and restaurants on the short walk to his flat. Which was exactly as described: small, cozy with huge windows opening directly onto the canal. And a world away from the mayhem that is the Venice that most tourists experience when they come to the city. This is a little pocket neighborhood far removed from the mobs, the thousands freshly disembarked from the monstrous cruise ships hell-bent on consuming Venice--shooting cell phone selfies on gondolas, the Rialto, San Marco, eating overpriced pasta at a restaurant where all the conversations are in English, buying a t-shirt and postcard, then boarding the ship to ravage the next port of call--here, it's quiet, with a little square with a water spigot where local life unfolds; parents with toddling children, a funeral parlor where mourners laugh instead of cry, a cafe with Italian coffee and fresh bread, a restaurant where English is not spoken, a wine merchant who will recommend a favorite bottle of local red for 7 Euros. And in the apartment, everything you need to feel at home, from the stovetop espresso maker to wine glasses. Open a bottle and slice some bread and pour some olive oil and basalmic vinegar (provided in one of the cupboards), and spend your siesta time on the sill of one of the windows, legs dangling over the canal water, and watch as life goes by--barges ferrying everything from jugs of wine and laundry and even a pram with a baby, ambulances from the hospital around the corner, and water taxis with tourists, who will aim their long lenses in your direction and snap photos of you and your idyllic authentic Venetian home.