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MY FATHER AND I weren’t due aboard our ship until the next afternoon, so we settled in at a table on our Venice hotel’s terrace, overlooking the Grand Canal, to watch the pageant of waterborne traffic: the commuter vaporetti, the gondolas and the water taxis with young Italian cowboys at the helm. Then, from behind Santa Maria della Salute, the bow of a mega-cruise ship pierced the painterly scene and slowly cast its enormous shadow over the lagoon.
In the great ports, such rude arrivals surprise no one anymore. More…