Visiting Venice right now is the opportunity of a lifetime. The city, which invented quarantine -- quaranta giorni, or "40 days," referred to the wait-time for disembarking travelers from distant lands during the Great Plague -- would not have been on my list at any other time.

The throngs of humanity -- pre-Covid -- had just about destroyed the exhilaration of visiting one of the world's most spectacular cities. But the throngs are no longer here, and the city, with its palazzos seemingly floating on rippling waves of what looks like melted Murano glass, their majestic doors lapped by the ever-rising water, can again be admired in all its glory.