VENICE is the most iconic of Italian cities. Captured in time, it doesn't need to change. To me, it is perfect.
Car free, the transport system is crazy. For a modest charge, you can enjoy sea water trips as often as you like, at the chugging pace of the vaporetto, or the Clooney and Amal-channelling Riva speedboat. The gondolas sleepily drift past, fishing boats drift along netting the most spectacular variety of fish and shellfish.
The markets, though smaller than in the past, still offer the best selection of seafood, fruit and vegetables, all within reach of a bicchieri of vino and a chicetti to take the edge off your appetite.
Music, culture, charm, I am a rose-tinted visitor. I can see no wrong.
One thing that shines is the stability and excellence created by successful generational family businesses. Those places we visited, now in third or even more family generations, were excellent, one of the reasons so many visitors enjoy returning.
Those businesses that had sold to new owners had lost the very heart and soul, the essence of what made them so successful in the first place.
The Venetian and Italian population rates are falling to unsustainable levels, as they are across all of Europe. Such a demographic puts pressure from both sides of the community.
Care for the elderly more reliant on the state, rising cost of living putting pressure on young people to delay and reduce their family size - this poses impossible budget challenges for governments.
Generational support is one of the most cost-effective ways in stabilising the future. Call it bank of mum and dad, or just simply a good family structure: the old support the young financially, the young support the old in their homes or nearby, rather than consign them to the state. Like Venice, stuck in the past, perhaps, but a time-honoured successful formula.
Government policies built to strip out inherited wealth are like a bad game of snakes and ladders. No one wins. Everyone ends up at the bottom of the pile.
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