#TravelTuesday with Elizabeth Keysian

Venice the Menace

Image- Venice gondolas

“Let’s go to Venice,” my partner said. “I’ll pay.” He’d just received a lump sum from a pension fund and was keen to revisit the city he’d last seen as a teenager.

Then a whole lot of nothing happened. So, realising we’d end up having to wait another year if I didn’t do something, I did the research, booked the flights, the hotel, the car parking and the travel cards. Basically, I like everything planned, so it runs smoothly.

Well, it didn’t. The car kept breaking down on the way to the airport. We just made our flight, but I was in tatters and soon found myself battling an imminent migraine. On arrival in Venice, we struggled to find our coach, then endured a complete free-for-all as everyone fought to get their luggage stowed away and bag their seats on board.

It was dark when we reached the coach station in Venice itself, and had to work out what direction to take to find our water bus stop. It was, of course, the very last one along the embankment, and when we got there our travel passes wouldn’t work.

Image- Venice sunset

Anyway, when I awoke in the small hours, on our first night at our splendid hotel, I found a message on my phone to say my very elderly mother had fallen out of bed at her care home back in England and was now in hospital with a suspected broken arm. So, I spent much of the first day of the holiday on the ‘phone, trying to establish whether or not I needed to dash back home again, and most of the second day of the holiday trying to get rid of the ensuing migraine. Which only left three days in which to enjoy the city.

We had a damn good try. Venice just staggered me. It is a place of art and artifice, majestic, exhausting, mysterious and decidedly eccentric. I didn’t want to go home. Although part of the reason for that was that I didn’t know if the car would be working once we arrived back in England…

So, aside from me crashing down on one knee onto a stone pavement, catching out a wine waiter who tried to cheat us, sustaining numerous mosquito bites, and having to cope with the fact here was a water taxi strike the day we had to get back to the airport, it was the holiday of a lifetime.

Images- Venetian costumes and masks

Some of the most popular Venetian souvenirs are masks. As I perused these in shop windows, and gazed at the Eighteenth Century-style costumes available for sale or hire, I thought about my Regency romance, UNMASKING THE EARL. In that story, the high point of the action takes place at a masked ball, where rather more than just masks are removed by the hero and heroine.

This book will be on sale at just 99 cents from October 17^th.

About the book

Oxfordshire, England, 1821
Devastated by the disappearance of his sister, the Earl of Stranraer has gone to extraordinary lengths to find the notorious rake responsible, and enters his household incognito to wreak his vengeance. But his enemy has an unexpected protector–the innocent but headstrong Miss Cassandra Blythe.
Cassie is determined to learn the art of seduction. But she is blindsided by her body’s thrilling response to the wrong man–a mysterious servant who shows up at the most inauspicious moments to spoil her lessons in love with warnings of her imminent ruin. When she learns the handsome servant’s identity and the reason for his deception, she resolves to help Stranraer, but only if he abandons his vow to destroy his enemy.
The earl is sorely tempted give the meddlesome beauty a lesson in seduction she’ll never forget. But she turns the tables, and he gets his own lesson in forgiveness…and love.

About the author

I adore history and archaeology, and write romances that give the reader an experience of travelling back in time.
I feel very British-despite my Viking ancestry-and love creating rich backdrops for my stories based on real places and actual experiences. Confession time- I used to be a re-enactor, so I’ve sampled the living conditions, clothing, and smells of the past.
My characters battle their problems with both tears and laughter, but I always guarantee them a Happily Ever After, no matter what I’ve put them through.