Hotel Ca' Nigra

We stayed in the same hotel I was in last year. It's a beautiful, small hotel located across the Grand Canal from the Ferrovia (train station) where the Rio Marin reaches the Grand Canal at the Campo S. Simion. I think it's technically considered the Rialto district but it's not especially close to the Rialto Bridge. As we learned topology and geography in Venice are highly relative and, as far as we could tell, subject to interpretation and possibly transient. We found two speciality paper shops on our ramblings which, despite extensive searching, we never saw again.

The hotel itself is lovely and quaint, and served a wonderful breakfast with the best coffee I've ever had.

The room itself was large and luxurious, especially by European standards, but not particularly well-appointed. The jacuzzi tub was a treat, but the lack of a standing shower fixture seemed more awkward that decadent.

Some of the other rooms, presumably for meetings, or perhaps just decorative, were more spectacular.

The main entrance to the hotel was as nondescript as you could wish, but the back of the hotel (the front?) facing the Grand Canal was charming and wonderfully framed by a well-kept rose garden. The roses could be smelled from inside the hotel; in the garden itself the fragrance was sweet and strong.

And of course, there was a stairway leading down directly into the water from the hotel foyer.