In Venice tourists can be more plentiful than pigeons in San Marco piazza so insiders know that the place to be is on Giudecca Island looking back over at the delights of San Marco form a quiet and refined bolt-hole, if we may use that term about as elegant a hotel as this. For what could be more refined, or famous, than Hotel Cipriani? The Luxury Travel Bible recommends checking in to the Vendramin a 15th century waterfront palazzo linked to the main hotel across a courtyard. The crème de la crème stay here, often in Dogaressa Suite. All the rooms have butler service and a certain faded glamour. The favoured are given a lagoon view with a vista like a Canaletto painting and water dappled shadows playing on the ceiling. Don't consider yourself one of the FF (favoured few return guests)? Never mind it is worth a request anyway. We can't all stay as often as the debonair Mr Clooney (George to Hollywood fan mags) or the hotel's host of other fabulously famous guests. Looking across at the Doges palace it is easy to imagine the power and the glory of the days when Venice ruled the seafaring world.