Maggie in Venice

Schiphol Airport's 150-euro "pet tax"

ABOVE: Maggie would rather risk a blizzard in Paris than pay 150 euros to change planes in Amsterdam.
 

Maggie is heading back to Venice later in the week, with a change of planes at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

When we fly without her, we normally take a transatlantic flight to Amsterdam, then catch a KLM Cityhopper flight from Schiphol Airport to Venice's Marco Polo Airport. This isn't practical when we're traveling with Maggie in the winter, because KLM doesn't carry pets on the AMS-VCE route from November to March. (The baggage compartments on its Fokker Cityhopper jets aren't warm enough for animals in winter.)

At first we were disappointed that we couldn't fly with Maggie through Amsterdam, but recently we discovered that we may be better off skipping Schiphol with a dog in tow:

At Schiphol Airport, KLM charges a mandatory "animal care" fee of 150 euros, 200 U.S. dollars, or 200 Canadian dollars for pets traveling as checked baggage that lay over at Schiphol for more than two hours. This fee (which other writers have described as a "pet tax") is more than twice the price of a four-hour stay at Schiphol's Yotel for human travelers.

Schiphol Airport has always been as much about commerce as about flying (it has so many shops that it often feels like a mall with airplanes), but charging 150 euros for a plane change that runs longer than two hours strikes us as being outrageous--no matter how nice Schiphol's animal facilities might be.

Maggie's new home in the Campiello Albrizzi

ABOVE: An Austrian shell fragment from 1849 decorates a wall in the Campiello Albrizzi.

In the winter of 2010-2011, Maggie will be living in a new rental apartment in Venice (that is, if you can apply the word "new" to a flat in a palazzo that has been owned by the same family since the 18th Century).

The apartment is in the Campiello Albrizzi, near the Campo San Polo, and we booked it through Homeaway.com. The owners claim to love dogs, and Maggie is easy to love, so we anticipate a happy relationship with our landlord and landlady.

The Campiello Albrizzi is notable for an unusual landmark: a shell from the Austrian siege of Venice during the Revolution of 1848-1849, which set fire to the Palazzo Albrizzi and subsequently was mounted on a wall with an inscription by Gabriele d'Annunzio. (See top photo.)

D'Annunzio's text proclaims eternal enmity toward the Austrians, but today's Venetians--and Austrians--seem to have moved beyond their 19th Century antipathies.

Looking for lodgings in 2011

ABOVE: Maggie--and we--won't be living in this corte next winter, so it's Venice apartment-hunting time for the Imbodens.

Last winter, we rented an apartment in Dorsoduro that met our needs--and Maggie's--almost perfectly: The landlady and landlord were both delightful and dog-friendly, our comfortable flat was just a minute from Italian-language classes at the Istituto Venezia in the Campo Santa Margherita, we had high-speed Internet access, and our corte was unaffected by the frequent spells of acqua alta, or tidal flooding, that plagued many other areas of the city last winter. We were so happy with the apartment that we planned to go back in January.

Unfortunately, the best-laid plans of mice, men, and Bearded Collies often go awry. A few days ago, we learned that our Venetian home away from home wouldn't be available in 2011, so now we--and Maggie--must find a new apartment that allows dogs, has high-speed Internet, and is in a convenient area of the city (preferably within a 15- or 20-minute walk of the Campo Santa Margherita, and ideally in the sestiere of Dorsoduro, San Polo, or Santa Croce).

Maggie will no longer be able to hear her former neighbors Pepita and Lolita dashing around upstairs, and she probably won't have daily encounters with Pongo (whose owner, shown in the photo above, enjoys passing out dog biscotti like Halloween candy whenever she and Pongo meet other pooches).

Still, Venice is a small town, and it's likely that we'll cross paths with Pepita, Lolita, and Pongo at some point--assuming that we find a place to live in 2011. Stay tuned for updates!