Pandemic Diaries - Italian Interlude fast forward to real time, 17 October 2022

 16 October 2022

I’m posting as I write blogs, because I keep losing text on the iPad.  Something with things going to the cloud in one form, but staying on the iPad in another form - I don’t know, I had to rewrite part 2 of this post four times, and I’m just frustrated.  So I’ll post as I go, add photos when back in the US, and then try to get these all in chronological order.  Until then, please bear with me and just enjoy.  I’m having fun, and I hope that comes across in these posts.

-Phebe

 

I’m currently in Venice, or Venezia, and oh how I love this city!  It’s Italian but somehow different, a little bit edgier and wilder below the surface.  Maybe it’s left over from the sea-going culture of the city’s origins.  Maybe it’s the traces of Carnivale that are still here even in October.  Maybe it’s the unique architecture, the bridges.  Or it could be the plethora of tourists and visitors and immigrants that flock here.  I don’t know, but La Serenissima has an aura, a flavor, all her own.

 

Our hotel is in Cannaregio, near the original Jewish Ghetto.  I had hoped to visit the synagogues and museums, maybe find a place serving Jewish Venetian food.  But it is still Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, so most Jewish places seem to still be closed.

 

But I’m sitting at a “bar,” the term meaning a small eatery that also serves drinks.  Some bars serve sandwiches and pastries, others also have gelato, and others serve cooked food.  The term “bar” encompasses more than just alcoholic drinks here, but it also means that the food is usually less expensive than places with fancier names. 

 

Most eating places along the main road in our neighborhood have a menu of the day that includes primi piatti, first plates, the choices almost always pasta.  The secondi piatti, second course, is usually meat or fish or chicken with a side vegetable.  Third choice is contorni, sides, usually a choice of potatoes or salad.

 

I skipped the menu del giorno, and went for the tagliatelle con zucchini e gamberetti, pasta with zucchini and small shrimp, on the advice of the young couple sitting next to my table.  They both said it was amazing.  When in Venice, eat seafood!!!  Turned out to be delizioso, and a whole meal in itself!  (Then a bit of a walk, and a small cup of gelato.  Life is good!)

 

This little spot is right near the bridge of our side canal.  This little canal, the Canale di Cannaregio, connects to Il Grande Canale about one block to the south, and continues north to the Adriatic – or maybe just the Venetian Lagoon.  Either way, there’s a water bus (vaporetto) to the Marco Polo airport, where Richard arrives on Tuesday morning.  Isn’t that a great way to get to an airport, a 45 minute ferry ride?  I’m looking forward to this!

 

On my walk today, I passed by a little art display.  As I looked at the paintings and prints, the artist came over to try to sell something to me.  I had to explain that while they were beautiful, and I liked them all, I didn’t have a permanent home, that I was retired and travelled all the time.  He said I could still put art up in my living space.  I explained again that I just lived wherever I was, that today I was in Venice, that next week I would be somewhere else.  He eventually understood, and thought it was fantastic – to spend money on travel, rather than rent.  On the other hand, living in Venice would not be bad, despite the fact that this is a rather expensive city.

 

That’s the current update.  Someone outside is playing Queen’s “We Are The Champions,” as the sun begins to fade.  Life is a bit slow and relaxed here in this city on the sea – though I suppose that may only be for visitors, not people who live and work here.  Rather like when we lived and worked in the US Virgin Islands, held jobs and paid rent and car loans – it’s a normal work week while living in a tropical paradise.

 

I forgot to mention that I had a pleasant train trip up to Venice from Terni.  It was an easy trip to Roma Termini, and while there I bought my ticket on the speedier train to Venice.  I had some time, so I had a sandwich and drink.  Then got on the train, and four hours later, here I was in Venice.  

 

I had used googlemaps to figure out how to get to my hotel, so it was an easy trip on the vaporetto (waterbus) to the stop I needed.  Then a convoluted walk, with a break for a light dinner.  (I met a very nice waiter who spoke English, and looked rather like Chris Martin of Coldplay.  I ate at their caffeteria, coffee shop, several times and he always was my waiter, and remembered me each time.  My new Venetian friend!)  Then it was a few short blocks with quick turns, and I checked in to our hotel and fell into bed.  

 

But today is Sunday, it’s the daily walking hour (the passagiatta), and it’s wonderful to be back on the road.

17 October 2022

 

Our hotel offers a nice breakfast beginning at 8:30 AM, through to 10 AM.  This seems so much more civilized to me than places that begin breakfast at 6 or so, and close up by 8 or 9.  I am not a morning person, and I’ve missed more than one breakfast by just not waking up or getting showered in time.  So beginning at 8:30 seems just about right to me!

 

The breakfast room is attached to a mini kitchen where the breakfast lady heats croissants, makes espresso, adds more crostata (tart) or cheese or ham to the spread.  And there’s a red marble sink, with faucets shaped like dragons!!!  I love dragon shaped faucets, what a wonderful concept!  

 

Today, I walked over to the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo. Crisostomo comes from the Greek meaning “golden mouthed” – I guess we now call that speaking with a silver tongue, or something. Well-spoken and convincing, glib, persuasive, all those things.  Who this particular silver- or golden-tongued Saint John was, I have no idea.

 

I went to his church for the art.  One painting in particular, the painting behind the altar, by the late Renaissance artist Sebastiano del Piombo.  He isn’t well known, but two of his models intrigue me.  The Mary Magdalene figure, the woman looking at the viewers and the congregation, looks rather like another painting of del Piombo’s, the “Portrait of a Young Woman as a Wise Virgin.”  That painting is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and looks eerily like me as a 16 to 24 year old, somewhere in that range.  (The young woman in blue.)  Enough that other people see the similarities.  The Mary Magdalene looks somewhat like me at that age, but even more like one of my nieces.  (Link to the painting at the National Gallery:  https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.41591.html)

So who knows, maybe we had ancestors who lived in Renaissance Venice.  Maybe we lived here in a former lifetime.  No idea, but it really is a bit odd to look at a 500+ year old painting and recognize oneself in the portrait.  I go to visit these paintings and say hello.  I find it eerie but also somehow comforting, as if we’re all just part of some great continuum of space and time.  Maybe our souls and bodies are somehow recycled, and we come back again and again.  Renaissance Venice wouldn’t have been a horrible time or place to live, better than the Iron Age, or the Medieval period, or even 17^th century Salem, Massachusetts.

 

I had a nice long walk, and despite bad directions from Google Maps, I didn’t get lost.  There’s something about Canneregio that keeps me oriented and going in the right direction – again, maybe I lived here in a former lifetime.  I don’t know how else I manage to navigate the plethora of narrow streets and alleyways, numerous canals and bridges.  Of course, all those canals and bridges include views of gondolas and gondoliers, those symbols of Venice.

 

Navigating by shop displays helps me – I remember colors and shapes as my landmarks.  Of course, that also meant I got in a bit of shopping, including buying a new rain jacket in a lovely blueish greyish green, rather like the color of the Venetian lagoon and canals.  It has three-quarter sleeves, which always seems odd to me – doesn’t one wear jackets to keep warm and dry?  The shop lady said to be a fashionable woman, eh, and she shrugged.  I guess we just have to endure chilly forearms!

 

Lunch today was at a canal-side trattoria, and I had the “menu di pesce,” the fish menu – penne with a little salmon, grilled sea bass with what turned out to be a rather large salad.  And a cappuccino, despite it being afternoon.  (Real Italians only have cappuccino in the morning, for some unknown reason.)

 

As I sat there, watching the canal traffic, an ambulance boat pulled up.  Two attendants walked an old woman in a wheelchair up to the water ambulance, and she was chatting with the so I guess it wasn’t a major emergency.  But wow, a water ambulance!