Venice is built on a swamp. Those ingenious Italians decided to ram wooden piles into the swamp, and construct ornate buildings on top of them. Unsurprisingly, some of them fell over after a thousand years of leaning. They’re doing cunning things now to stop the rest of the buildings collapsing too, but Venice still retains the swampy character of old. Not just in the camp gondoliers with their straw hats, waggling their curved boats through green slime. Today’s swamp is more about the mushy romantic air that hangs in the piazzas. A thick fog of hormonal soup hanging over an inescapable bog of pheromones. Couples sucking each others’ faces left and right – in front of ice creameries, against statues of long dead people, on the steps of the holiest churches. Quite sickening really. Just like a big glass of Campari without the soda that the bemused bar tender will try to insist you mix with it. Bleurgh. Phut.