Italy Trip 2016 - day nine (Venice)

last city, only a couple of days to go (sad face)...


Day nine:  Venice

After a good night's sleep, we decided to meet down at the hotel's continental breakfast. The room was quite full, but the breakfast was surprisingly large!  There are lots of cereals, meats, cheeses, several different kinds of breads/croissants/pastries, and a large coffee machine that can make cappuccinos, coffees or even tea.  I made myself some toast and had some tea (sometimes, coffee in the morning is not my friend, which is so dumb when you're in Italy) - and we all chatted about the sites we wanted to visit.  We knew we wanted to go to the Peggy Guggenheim museum and maybe take a gondola ride, but other than that, we'd let the wind take us wherever.

Off we went, in the opposite direction of the previous night's walk, towards the Accademia Bridge, which would lead us to the Peggy Guggenheim.  It was a lovely walk, first though St. Mark's Square, along the Grand Canal, then more into the twisty streets and lovely tiny bridges of Venice.  We enjoyed looking in windows, listening to church bells, taking photos of lovely things and seeing gondoliers everywhere.  After crossing the beautiful Accademia Bridge, we made it to the Peggy Guggenheim museum.

Peggy Guggenheim bought the 18th century palazzo that now houses her art collection in 1947 and opened the doors to the public in 1949.  Throughout the palazzo are photos of Peggy in the rooms, to give you a sense of how she filled the space with her larger-than-life persona.  How one woman could amass so much art by so many famous artists is beyond me.  There was art by Kandinsky, Picasso, Klee, Braque and several Jackson Pollocks.  It was an embarrassment of modern art riches - I have to admit I'm not a modern art devotee, but I do enjoy the color and spatial relationships in a lot of Cubist and Surreal work, plus I took a Surrealism course in college.  My teacher would be so proud I recognized one of the sculptors before looking at the label.  It was amazing to spend so much time so close to famous art.  I had a great time.

When we finished at the museum, I thought that because it was a lovely sunny day, we should head out to the island of San Michele, where Venice's cemetery is.    When I was doing some research on Venice, I read an article about San Michele - knowing that a few people in our party are particularly interested in cemeteries, I put it on my 'we should do this if we can' list.  Happily, when I suggested taking a boat out there, everyone was, as they say, on board.  We did have to wander around a bit to figure out which vaporetto (sort of like city bus boats) to take to the island, but once we figured it out, all was well.

The boat ride out there was a little longer than I expected, but it was glorious to stand on deck and feel the wind and smell the sea air (truth be told, some of Venice is a little stinky - this trip wasn't).  The cemetery was established during Napoleon's reign. Getting off the boat and walking onto the island is a pretty awe-inspiring moment - it's huge, with rows and rows and sections and sections of headstones, tombs, chapels and monuments.  There's a gent near the dock who will give you a map, which shows how the island is laid out, and shows where the 'famous' graves are.  To try to narrow down our afternoon, we decided to walk around a bit and look for them.



San Michele is gorgeous, peaceful, quiet, and so sad.  I started to

cry when we walked past the rows of "I Bambini," many of them with photos of the children on the headstone. Many of the monuments were well-tended and had fresh flowers on them. This isn't really a touristy area, it's more where families come to celebrate their ancestors.  That was lovely.  Many of the stone pieces are sinking or cracking or falling apart, which was sad to see.  After wandering a while, we found Diaghilev and Stravinsky easily, finding Ezra Pound took a little longer.  There were very few people on the island, it was almost as if we had it to ourselves.  We had hoped to go into the church, but it was closed. Nevertheless, it was a lovely, unique respite and I'm really glad we went.

There was no place to buy return boat tickets, but we hopped onto a return boat anyway, only going one stop.  We figured we could walk most of the way back and see more of the not-as-touristy parts of Venice.  So much loveliness, I can never find the right words to express it.  Really, everywhere you look, Venice is gorgeous.  Once again, we were a little between lunch and dinner times, so it took a few minutes before we could find a place for a snack.  Finally we found a spot called La Tappa.  A very casual spot, but the pizza there was pretty tasty!

After we finished lunch, there were a few places we wanted to see:  Sant'Apostol, the Jewish ghetto and the Teatro Goldoni. Using handy dandy phone GPSs, we stumbled our way around Venice to find them.   It was amazing how quickly it got dark there - it would be perfectly light, we'd think 'hey, we should move faster, it could be dark soon,' and boom, it would be dark.  Unfortunately, it got too dark to appreciate the Jewish ghetto, but as I was reading aloud from a guidebook to my travelmates about the ghetto, we were sad to have missed seeing it during the day. Then we went in search of Sant'Apostol - we found a couple of churches we thought would be it, but weren't.  Luckily, every church in Italy is glorious, so it wasn't a problem popping into the wrong ones.  When we finally found Sant'Apostol, it was worth the wait. It's a stunning seventh century church, one of the oldest in Venice.  It has undergone some restoration since it was built, some of the existing church is from the sixteenth century. But the art and the architecture were incredible.

photo credit: Gregg Moore

We spent a good amount of time in that spectacular church, then went in search of the Teatro Goldoni.  I studied Goldoni and commedia dell'arte in college, so I was keen to take a look.  My GPS led us somewhere completely wrong, so thankfully my beautiful gal pal's phone was working correctly.  What a beautiful facade to the theater - I wish we could've at least gotten a look at the lobby, but the doors were locked.  Oh well, next time.  I'm happy I got to at least see the building and the beautiful front signage.  After seeing the theater, we walked back towards our hotel with the goal of finding a good place for dinner.  We finally decided on Ristorante Marco Polo, which seemed like a good idea from the outside. 

Actually, the inside of the restaurant was lovely and it was filled with mainly locals, which was nice.  Our server, though, had little to no interest in us.  We're used to having servers leave us alone until we want them, but having a server who considered our ordering food an inconvenience was not the most pleasant way to spend dinner.  At least we can always turn any situation into fun.  I wasn't particularly hungry so I got the vegetable soup, which was really really good.  I also ordered a gingerino, which, in my inexperience. I thought would be a ginger beverage.  Uh, no.  Actually (as I discovered online later), it's a local Venetian drink made from sugar, extracts of citrus fruits and peels, spices and herbs; it's pink and slightly bitter.  Not what I was expecting, but tasty and actually a good drink to have with the rich soup.  But I will remember to ask before ordering something new next time... 

After a long, productive day, we went back to the hotel to prepare for our last full day in Venice.  I can hardly believe this magical trip is almost over.

photo credit: Gregg Moore