Breakfast was great at our hotel. It’s so seductive when there is a buffet. In our room I resolved to have just fruit and yoghurt. As my eyes range over the spread, the scrambled eggs and bacon draw me magnetically. Logic and resolve fly way and greed takes over. Of course I have the healthy option as well. Johnny had the healthy option first then went back for a plate full of pas-tries. He justified it on the grounds that we would need fuel as we would be walking all day.
Out on the streets we found sheets of water covering the small piazza over the bridge in front of the church nearest to our hotel. The tide had come in and washed over the edge of the canal. The city has a fabulous solution. it has stationed a series of portable walkways around Venice and these are quickly placed on the roads in case of flooding. Believe it or not, it works.
We had heard that the Musicani Veneziani society was putting on a performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at Scuola Grande diSan Teodoro and we thought it would be a really nice thing to attend in the evening. The program was advertised but not the address and it took some considerable re-search to track it down. We planned to walk to it to buy the tickets at the door. It was quite a twisty route and Johnny deserves a medal for getting us there. No oldies discount this time and it’s unallocated seating so we will have to get there promptly at 8pm when the doors open. Just opposite the teodoro was of course another lovely crumbly old church and we popped in there for a look around.
We were headed for the D’ Or gallery with its famed painting by Mantegna and its collection of small statues by Bernini, but we needed a coffee. We thought we had found a good place in a cafe slightly off the tourist trail. It was in a square with a small hardware shop and a few locals lounging around either shopping or chatting under a tree. The coffee was ok but the woman saw tourists and ramped up the prices. The most we paid for coffee even in the tourist drag was two E but she charged us 7! next time I will ask the price before we order.
We walked on to the Rialto Bridge. I remembered the Rialto from the play The Merchant of Venice. Maybe that woman in the coffee shop was trying to follow the example of the usurer Shylock. The Jewish quarter did not really betray its Jewish heritage visually. The houses looked just like all the others, clustered cheek by jowl along dusty and darkened laneways. The area must take on a different feel in the evening when people return home and go about their domestic and community lives. In Italy there is a real love of speciality shops. We were amazed at how these tiny enterprises can deliver a living wage year round. One such place was a shop specialising in truffles of all sorts. They are presented like precious jewels. Back in the more commercial area we found a nice local cafe to get lunch. We were both re-ally ready for the aranci and the open ham panini topped with a kind of pickled mushroom.
On we went to the d’Or gallery which was tucked up a dark little lane and at first appeared very small but it came highly recommended and it didn’t disappoint. It ranged over several levels and contained some beautiful works. It was wonderful to see the development over the years, in the artists’ skill in use of perspective. For me the most amazing worlds were by the 17th century Dutch artists who were able to suggests an internal life to the people they painted through a kind of hyper realism.
Leaving the D’Or gallery we chanced upon the Diaspora exhibition put on by the British Arts Council. The works reflected the journeys and circumstances that have forced people to be wrenched from their homes and scattered across the world. My favourite exhibit was a series of water craft suspended in mid air, laden with all the portable wealth and loved possessions that people have taken with them. Towards the end of the exhibition there was an experimental film about alienation. Sitting there in the dark and the warm, trying to follow the storyline through a sequence of disparate eccentric and seemingly unrelated events, Johnny and I almost started to nod off. It was interesting but we were tired.
As we emerged from that warm, dark cocoon we found the low, weak autumn sun had bathed the streets in a mantle of gold. We were heading for the church of miracles but the only miracle was that we found it. I wandered off as Johnny caught sight of an aircraft passing overhead and stopped to track it with his app on the iPad. This is one of John’s all time favourite activities and who am I to deny him such simple pleasure. In my wandering I found an enormous hospital that had been converted into a museum of the medical developments employed over the years. There was a wide-ranging exhibition on the effect of the First World War on Venice, which apparently had thousands of bombs rain down on it. We walked through the old hospital to the state of the art new premises that had been built behind it. I’d never considered how the ambulance system must operate in a city veined by canals but at the back of the hospital we discovered a full fleet of water ambulances and a heliport.
Water craft abound in this city but today we say so many craft that are working boats. they are the trucks of Venice, making sure everything is supplied and moved efficiently. We even saw a coffin being carried to a burial on the back of a vaporetto, a dedicated DHL delivery boat and one that was acting as a water-board scaffold for some workmen repairing a wall.
Walking through the canal side of the square we walked a short distance along the waterfront, hoping to get as far as the gardens. Again, without a plan to do so, we walked into an amazing painting exhibition by the Bosnian artist Safet Zak. They were beautifully rendered large paintings of human suffering. The canvasses were hung in a church and one minute they looked like a modern reflection on the Pieta and in the next they were the suffering of ordinary contemporary people swept up in the misery of displacement, torture and death in one of the many conflicts currently flaring across our world. The church the exhibition was held in was the one favoured by Vivaldi and his music played in the background, giving the visual images an added poignancy.
By now our feet were starting to feel tired so we turned for home but not before a last turn through the setting sun in St Mark’s Square. The square was still filled with tourists. A lovely ensemble played in front of a restaurant, painting the whole scene with nostalgia.
It was defiantly time for rest for body and soul so it was back to the hotel.
Dinner was at a nice local restaurant: Restaurante Trattoria Cherubini We had an entree of thinly sliced and slightly smoked swordfish. Then I had a crab and tomato tagliatelle and Johnny had tortelli filled with ricotta in a tomato sauce. Very nice. We set off quickly afterwards towards the theatre as I hoped we would be first in line. another couple were already there so by 8pm when the doors opened, there were a couple of hundred people already in line with us.
It was a lovely performance and the period costumes they wore helped to create the atmosphere. We planned to see the Rialto Bridge by night as the concert finished but it was after 10 and quite cold so we opted for home and bed. Another lovely day in Italy.
