There is always something special about coming across a place that has a link to your family.
In the case of The Westin Europa & Regina Hotel in Venice it was where Dad stayed in the 1950s and this I know because we have the luggage label.
I say the label but it is one of a ten that he took away from Venice and never used along with a selection from other hotels across Europe.
Not that he ever stuck them on his suit case; he just brought them home which may have been an earlier version of the tourist habit of collecting the soap and shampoo from the bathroom.
He was at the luxury end of the motor holiday trade and his passengers would be whisked on a seven, nine or fifteen day tour of mainland Europe from the Benelux countries as far as the Swiss Alps and the Italian Lakes.
They would be fed and accommodated at good hotels, provided with a first class guide and had time off to wander as they wished.
And once, and possibly quite a few times the end route for one of those holiday tours was Venice and the Regina Hotel.
I can’t be sure when dad was there but I am fairly confident it will be the 1950s or early ‘60s.
We almost stayed there, but on a whim chose not to head into Venice and so missed the opportunity to pass through the hotel lobby that he would have occupied over a half century before.
The hotel has a long history and was once two palaces, one of which became first a theatre where Rossini’s first opera was performed and later still as a cinema shoed the first projection of the Lumière Brothers' films.
Now I have no idea how much of that history Dad knew but as a good tour guide, he and his courier would have done their homework.
So one day we will get to Venice, stand in the hotel lobby and give a nod to Dad as we gaze down at the Grand Canal which acts as a backdrop.
Location; The Westin Europa & Regina Hotel, Venice
Pictures; The Westin Europa & Regina Hotel, Venice, 2017 courtesy of the hotel and a luggage label circa 1950s from the collection of Andrew Simpson
I say the label but it is one of a ten that he took away from Venice and never used along with a selection from other hotels across Europe.
Not that he ever stuck them on his suit case; he just brought them home which may have been an earlier version of the tourist habit of collecting the soap and shampoo from the bathroom.
He was at the luxury end of the motor holiday trade and his passengers would be whisked on a seven, nine or fifteen day tour of mainland Europe from the Benelux countries as far as the Swiss Alps and the Italian Lakes.
And once, and possibly quite a few times the end route for one of those holiday tours was Venice and the Regina Hotel.
I can’t be sure when dad was there but I am fairly confident it will be the 1950s or early ‘60s.
We almost stayed there, but on a whim chose not to head into Venice and so missed the opportunity to pass through the hotel lobby that he would have occupied over a half century before.
The hotel has a long history and was once two palaces, one of which became first a theatre where Rossini’s first opera was performed and later still as a cinema shoed the first projection of the Lumière Brothers' films.
Now I have no idea how much of that history Dad knew but as a good tour guide, he and his courier would have done their homework.
So one day we will get to Venice, stand in the hotel lobby and give a nod to Dad as we gaze down at the Grand Canal which acts as a backdrop.
Location; The Westin Europa & Regina Hotel, Venice
Pictures; The Westin Europa & Regina Hotel, Venice, 2017 courtesy of the hotel and a luggage label circa 1950s from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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