Impressions of Venice
 

We're in Venice for a while - eight weeks in fact. I'm not attempting a travelogue, just scribbling. Some impressions:
The silence here is palpable, broken mainly by the bells of our local church, which strike the hours, and also play a tune somewhere between “I like Aeroplane Jelly” and “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam”. It was once said, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”, so assuming that the sunbeam scenario tolled for me, I found myself at Mass last Sunday in the Basillica of San Marco.

San Marco is Relic Central, Jim's Relics, Relics-r-Us, Relic Warehouse and Mr Relics rolled into one. It is claimed that relics include a knife used at the Last Supper, the stone on which John the baptist was beheaded, the skull of the said Baptist, an arm of St George, a picture painted by St Luke, a rib of St Stephen, a finger of Mary Magdalene, the sword with which St Peter cut off Malchus's ear, a splinter from the Cross, fish bones from the loaves-and-fishes miracle, chopsticks used by Buddha, a lace from the One True Blue Suede Shoe, the femur of St Dhakota and Pauline Hansen's wisdom teeth.

The above ensured a reasonable flow of pilgrims to Venice up to the ninth century, and when the pilgrim trade went quiet – Venice has always relied on a stream of tourists – a new attraction was needed, a patron Saint to replace St Theodore, who was not looking like being Venice's answer to Italian Idol. Enter, stage left, St Mark, or at least his remains, stolen from Alexandria by a pair of Venetian adventurers, smuggled out in a barrel of salt pork, in the knowledge that Muslim customs clerks would not open and check the barrel. St Mark, a Saint on the A-list, a first magnitude star in the panoply of Saints, was duly buried in a new Basilica, and the pilgrims flowed. Sadly, his remains were lost in the fire of 976, but were recovered in a well documented and brilliantly stage managed miracle when the bones burst forth from a marble column. Or bones very like St Mark's, as one skull looks much like another, dental records not being extant.

So, I had a few things to ponder when I attended Mass on Sunday – like, how did they apply all that gold leaf to the ceilng – reputed to be eight kilos of leaf, and would Pauline Hansen been any the wiser if she'd had wisdom teeth. And there was a choir from a girls school in Sydney singing parts of the Mass – quite special and ethereal.

Venice is big on campaniles, there are scads of them, and they occasionally collapse. The campanile in San Marco fell in 1902, the only casualty being the caretakers cat, and was rebuilt, dov'era e com'era, or “where it was, and as it was”. This possibly extended to the foundations, which are wooden soldier piles, and are now being restrained with titanium rods to stop the piles spreading. Sometimes repeating the designs of the past can be a problem, and they found a few years ago that the outer piles were starting to lean, the whole stone pile cap was growing. The titanium rods – which will see a lot of sea water – are being strain gauged so that growth can be monitored. The engineering here is amazing, especially when you consider that most of Venice is a only foot or so above the water table.

The clock tower in San Marco, built in 1490-odd survives. It has a 24 hour clock, digital date function (today being XI-XII, the year being not given), phase of the moon, and sign of the zodiac. The sign of the zodiac is a waste of time – all Venetians are fated to be Aquarians, water carriers, over the next few days – as the tide for Friday XII-XII is forecast to be 110 cm, which will flood most of Venice. Sump pumps are high on everyone's Christmas wish list, featuring prominantly in window displays, and carpenters all over town are hammering lee boards across doorways. Rubber boots are much in fashion, as are fishing waders. We bought carrots this morning from a guy standing in six inches of water, and the tide was ebbing at the time. It all seemed pretty normal to him. The Venetians don't talk about floods. For them, it's just acqua alta, high water, and an excuse for women to procure the most fashionable of rubber boots. Rubber boots with high heels. And gentlemen look pretty sharp in their Armani suits and waders.

There are sirens to warn of exceptionally high acqua alta – they go off about two hours before high water, and are the air raid sirens from WWII. They went off at 6:00 this morning, sounding like those Ealing Broadway 1950's movies. One expects to hear a clipped English accent saying “Right-ho lads, man the ack-ack guns, and well give Jerry a bloody nose”. Anyway, the Venetian sirens are being put to use – and I'd recommend Grundfoss shares as being a sound investment – Grundfoss pumps are walking out of the shops here. Selleys No-more-gaps seems popular also.

It is rumoured that the builders of the clock, an horogolical masterpiece of its time, were judicially blinded so that they could not create another. That seems a most robust way of securing intellectual property. One can visualise the dialogue at the the Risk Management Committee.
“How can we secure our IP?”
“Easy peasy, we'll just blind the engineers and drafters”.
“OK, sounds like a plan.”

Piaget of Geneva, Switzerland, have just completed an overhaul of the clock that has taken some six years. It's pretty complex, massive, and their craftsmen are sighted. There are a pair of life sized bronze statues armed with hammers which strike the bell – they inadvertently hit a workman, precipitating him into the square and breaking his neck about three hundred years ago. I believe that Piaget's artisans were better looked after – most likely with better permitting procedures in place.

There is every sort of craft here – rubbish boats with on-board compactor and jib crane, police boats – very snappy, ambulance boats with sirens and strobe lights, fire boats, boats delivering scaffold pipes and planks, boats with high reach cranes (you want your Steinway piano delivered to the top floor? No problem, we'll drop it in through that window”). Gondolas, of course, with the patrons being treated to endless “O solo mio's”, while drifting around at about two metres per minute, with the temperature hovering around 2 degrees. It's pretty cold here – the gondola patrons don't look all that happy with their 60 Euro per hour experience.

Mapping here is interesting. There are no street numbers, but every door has a number. Each sestier, or suburb, of which there are six, has had the doors numbered. Our address is simply 2xxxA Dorsoduro – the place over the road – the road being just two metres wide – being 2xxx Dorsorduro. Even doors that have been bricked up two hundred years ago have numbers. Simple, really. Unless you are the postman.


There's an amazing feling of antiquity here – you could walk into Venice after a 200 year absence and have no problem finding your way about. There is a ferry to cross the Grand Canal at the end of our street – a gondola with two at the oars – and the ferry or traghetto is shown on maps from the 14th century. You expect to run into Marco Polo, just back from the Orient with the latest in silks and spices, offering goods for sale on the street. Instead, it's dudes from Africa selling fake Gucci hand bags. Maps created 100 years ago still work well enough, - I bought a Baedeker printed in 1905 and it is accurate enough, and it reports the cafe at the railway station, the Ferrovia, as “cafe – poor”. The two main cafes in the Piazza, Florians and Quadri's, have both been in business for over 150 years. Both cafes can provide a cappucino at prices that are ruinous to the average tourist

Base price – 3 Euro, to drink it standing at the bar.
Extra to have it outside on the terrace – another 6 Euro.
Extra because the cafe orchestra is belting out selections from Phantom of the Opera – 5 Euro.
Service – 12 ½ %.
Total – about 17 Euro. But at least, you are taking coffee in what Napoleon was pleased to call “The drawing room of Europe”.

The two cafe orchestras are something of a bizarre institution, a Venetian Battle of the Sounds. Quadri will blast off with “Colonel Bogey”, Florians see them and raise them one with “I'm getting married in the morning”. Quadri tops out, though, the full musical royal flush, with “If I was a rich man” from Fiddler on the Roof. And if I was a rich man, we'd take coffee at Quadri's on the terrace.

But I'm not rich – and Quadri's going to flood tomorrow anyway.

Peter,

What fun! Thank you for writing about one of my favorite places.

And what a treat to be in Venice for eight weeks.

Byrd

OMG...Don't you love Venice! I can't wait to get back. I know exactly what you mean by the silence--and not just noise. No cars, no (well maybe one or two in all of Venice) neon lights, a peace and comfort that radiates from the buildings. It's absolutely amazing.
When a girl friend and I went this past year, it took me well in to the second day before I purposefully reached out a hand and touched a building and realized that I was actually there, I was actually in Venice seeing it with my own eyes and experiencing it with my own person and taste buds! I don't think-or remember- I touched anything before that point just to the mere fact that it felt like I was in a museum, in a painting.
Have fun and keep us posted!

Beck's beer boats, too.

Great stuff. Thanks.

The writing is not bad. Lured me in. I feel the wet cold.

Eight weeks in Venice: nice. What are you doing besides scribbling?

We took a trip to Rome for a several days.

As per below.
Rome.
I'm no big fan of motor racing, but I think I've discovered something. There's been no great Italian driver since Fangio, and the reason is now clear to me. All the Italians who might be gracing the Formula 1 Circuit are racing on a daily basis on the streets of Rome. And what a circuit it is. Round the Circus Maximus, down the via Di San Gregorio straight, hard right at Constantine's arch, sweeping left hander at the Colloseo, dodge the guys dressed as centurions who are waiting for (paid) photo ops. Full noise up the via de Fori Imperiali (mind that Korean guy taking snaps). Rocket through the Piazza Venezia past the Victor Emmanuel monument, minding the tight chicane by the barriers aroung the current archeological excavations, and off up the streets of the Capotoline Hill. Throw a left at St Peters, and blast down the bank of the Tiber. It's absoultely free for spectators, and the whole thing is raced in micro cars – or diesel buses.

If you are outrageously brave, you can stop the whole show by stepping onto a pedestrian crossing. This takes considerable nerve, I'm here to tell you. It is a test of will, pedestrian vs driver in Fiat 500, and leaves the running of the bulls in Pamplona for dead as a spectacle and adrenaline rush. There is an insane moment, when both pedestrian and driver do a quick “will he / won't he” calculation, eye contact is made, and one either crosses, or hops back to the safety of the pavement. It has one in mind of Octavius (later to become Ceasar Augustus) staring down Mark Antony in Egypt, except that in Rome, Cleopatra will likely be wearing ostrich leather boots (Prada), a silk scarf (Hermes), crocodile handbag (Gucci), a well cut little number (Yves st Laurent) and coat (Dolce & Gabana), bling by Cartier. As you do.

My Italian is not perfect, but I do have a grasp of basic sign language. I rather think that the two fngered salute that one receives from motorists on occasion is not meant in homage to Winston Churchill's “V for Victory” salute. Particularly when it comes with a blast from an air horn. Allora!

Motorcycling, or rather scootering, is a different contest to automobiles. Scooters are immune from road laws, pedestrian crossings and red lights. Lights and laws are clearly intended as advisory only, a sort of ”You might consider stopping here, provided it doesn't interfere too much with the chat you are having on the mobile phone, or maybe you need to pause to light a smoke”. The combination of cobbled streets and souped up scooters rattling themselves to pieces makes for some interesting spectacles. The double lines in the centre of the road seem intended as a two way dedicated scooter lane 40 cm wide. I can see now how Valentino Rossi has become a champion bike rider – he is Roman, and it's in the blood.

Combine all the above ingredients with some horse drawn carriages – Rome's answer to the gondola - Vespa 3 wheel delivery vans with two stroke engines blowing much smoke and some suicidal cyclists and the resulting pandemonium is a great performance.

Tourists are fair game for scams in Rome. We are tourists, so naturally fair game. We were stung in the most memorable fashion a couple of years ago, when we managed to purchase a pair of leather jackets (“I'm on my way home from the Milan fashion shows, where are you from?, my sister lives in Adelaide, I've lost half my map of Rome (shows half map), can you direct me to the bank, my Visa card is broken (shows Visa card with broken corner), here take these two leather jackets – they are just samples, I don't need them, could you spot me 50 Euro, I'm about out of petrol (points to petrol gauge)”. 50 Euro for two leather jackets – unbelievable, and they had an Italian label – pasted over the other label that said “Made in Beijing”. A few polyvinylchlorides were killed and their skins tanned to make those jackets. And he was right when he thanked us for our help – “you'll never forget me”, he said. We haven't.

So we were chuffed this time when a guy pulled up, asking to be directed to the Tiber – all of 50 metres away, bridge in full view, jackets in plastic bags on the back seat. Anticipation of sweet revenge. Same dialogue, up to the point when we were advised that his sister lived in Perth. And then he drove off – he must have spotted Lou's grin as she poked me in the ribs. Damn. Hate that.

The centre of Rome is ruined, totally. While the shortage of tradesmen is acknowledged, I find it hard to believe that after two thousand years, they could not have fixed it up a little. If I can paint a room in a mere six months, then surely the Colloseum could have been repaired in two thousand years. It looks for all the world like the MCG without the northern stand. And the Forum – it's just a total mess. Bits of marble everywhere.

The foundations to the temple of the Vestal Virgins still exist, but they've let the flame go out long ago. I thought they were instructed to keep the thing alight, on pain of excommunication or marriage or something, but obviously the message got lost. Or maybe the virgins just got de-flowered, and replacements were hard to come by - it's hard to tell.

The Palatine hill is slowly being dug over, revealing the most intricate brickwork, arches and vaults built on vaults, which in turn are built on vaults. The private residence of Augustus is open, and the frescoes on the walls that remain are in good condition. I find that remarkable – they are just water colour on plaster. And I can't see how they could ever have had enough firewood to fire the millions of bricks that create the Paletine. There are remains of sewers (draining to the Tiber, of course), wash troughs, chimneys, courtyards, all the requirements of a comfortable life in 50 B.C.


Back in Venice
We're back in Venice, and it's cold.
So IT'S FUR TIME! Venetian women of a certain age – the age being about 60 – take fur. I think it's a coming of age ritual, or maybe a status thing, in the way that top barristers take silk There are totally no PVC's being slaughtered to create the furs – but a lot of foxes, sables, arctic seals, minks and the like have met their end to dress these women. Their silouette resembles your average house brick, with colour and facial expression to match. Only the truly foolhardy would mess with these women.

They complain. “There's no cabbage to be bought in all of Venice”, which means that the green grocer that her family has been dealing with for the last 300 years has just sold his last cabbage. Tradition dies hard in this town.

Tradition is alive and well, and part of the tradition is keeping dogs. The average Venetian residence does not extend to a back yard, so Fido, a Great Dane, gets walked in the streets – which are alleys at best. And dogs being dogs, and Italians being Italians, having contempt for the sign that says “Clean up after your dog”, dog droppings are not unknown. The streets are swept every morning by folk using traditional brooms – twigs bound with wire onto a handle – and garbage is collected daily. There's no such thing as a mechanical street sweeper here.

The amount of pure physical work that goes to keep Venice operatiing is massive. Everything is ultimately carried by hand or barrow, and there are steps over every bridge. It's hard yacka. Barrels of beer, sheets of plaster board, structural steel, fish, fabrics, food, furniture, books, bricks, bread, boots, the lot. About the only place that has direct street, or rather canal, access, is our local Billa supermaret. They load the delivery truck onto a barge, and transport the whole contrivance to the front of the supermarket and unload it by fork truck. The fork was working in nine inches of water last week, acqua alta being acqua alta. It seemed part of the routine.

In spite of the work that goes to keep Venice afloat and proceeding under it's own steam, prices are not as savage as we would have expected. Wine is pleasingly cheap, with drinkable wine costing about 3 or 4 Euro a bottle, which does offset quite nicely the high cost of red meat. Fresh produce is cheap, even after allowing for the AUD/Euro exchange rate - cherries at 20 Euro or AUD 40 per kilo being a notable exception. Our apartment is well equipped, and we're working through the Venetian cook book we brought with us. The chicken stock is cooking now, ready for this evening's risotto.

Crime in Venice is not common, but we were in the right place at the right time to witness a police chase, Venice style, straight out of the Keystone Cops. Alt! Ladro! ( Stop! Thief!), blowing of whistles. African hand bag seller (specialising in fake Gucci, Prada and Louis Vuitton bags) runs through the campo at high speed, hurling bags behind him as a diversion, closely followed by policeman with whistle. That endurance training on the Veldt paid off for the chased, and he got away. Closing scene – cop returns, spends time kicking and stamping on the bags.

Priceless.


It's the Christmas holiday period, and so Venice is seeing an influx of visitors. American accents are heard on the streets, along with comments like “But they said it was just beside the canal, and can you tell me, Shirlene, which canal they meant. And how come that bar that Hemingway made famous, it's called Harry's rather than Ernest's”. That's the mid-West for you, I suppose.

Getting lost in Venice is part of life here. With the narrowest street being a bare two feet wide, finding one's way presents intersting challenges, and a GPS would suffer a total melt down. I anticipated this, and came armed with a compass, a fine Silva model. It has a slight problem, though, which has contributed to me seeing some most unexpected sights both in Rome and Venice – I've observed that the north end of the needle, painted red and clearly marked “N”, actually points south. I've checked this - the sun rises in the south east and sets in a westerly direction, right? - and I do lay claim to some basic navigational skills. Making a compass that is completely WRONG takes some doing. I could tolerate minor errors, magnetic deviation being not unknown, but 180 degrees wrong? I could be sailing the South Seas, and find myself heading towards Alaska when my destination is Terra del Fuego.

There will be words in Melbourne with the Silva retailers, and that will be quite fun. I'm not going to accept a replacement or refund – that compass has shown me way too many new vistas.

A greater hazard to navigation is tourists reading maps and taking photos. Hansel and Gretel laid a trail of bread crumbs to find a way back out of the forest (the trail eaten by sparrows, as I'm told, which rather prejudiced their return), but some tourists seem compelled to photograph every step of the way in Venice. Maybe they can just press re-wind, and find themselves back at Marco Polo Airport. I'm being cynical here. But Lou earned the ultimate accolade yesterday – an ITALIAN asked her for directions! Sadly, she had to reply, in her best Italian, “Mi scusui, non capisco, sono Australiana, ciao, ciao”, to which he replied “Allora”, and threw up his hands in his best Italian.

Cameras are big here – really big. Digital SLR cameras seem the weapon of choice, resembling a shoulder launched anti tank missile in both size and sophistication of electronics. Lock on and fire! I'm a bit of a Luddite here – I think I'm the last man standing in Venezia that is still using film and a hand held light meter. The people at the photo shop treat me as if I am from the past, a visitor from the nineteenth century – they speak slowly and gently to me when I buy film. Lou is doing water colour paintings, so not worrying in the slightest about apertures, shutter speeds or film ASA ratings.

I'm shooting black and white.

The sophistication of the digital cameras, however, is far exceeded by the sophistication of our washing machine. It has all the dials that one would expect in a Soviet era nuclear power station, Chernoble on the Adriatic. One can select temperature, time, spin speed, water quantity, day of the week and biorythm – and that's just the basic set of controls for the casual user. Power users can opt for water hardness, background radiation level, tide level, ambient temperature and barometric pressure. Lou's mastered it.

Have you ever seen that Alfred Hitchcock film “Rear Widow”? Venice is like that. Life is very internal – but the windows give a glimpse of life inside these houses. Sure, there's a problem with rising damp, Istrian stone not making the best of damp courses, and red brick working like a suction pump to pull water from the canals. But on the second floor, behind the peeling facade, people are living in rooms that were decorated 300 years ago. We've just watched through the window the woman of the house at No 2688B Calle Lunga St Barnaba setting the table for Christmas Eve, and the children unwrapping their Chrsimas presents, in a room with a chandelier that must weigh half a tonne. The presents look like a lava lamp and a Superman suit (Warning – wearing suit does not enable occupant to fly) and we will probably see the Superman suit at midnight Mass later tonight.

I am not often accused of being religious, but we did attend Mass at mid-night, in our local church, a church with the odd Tiepolo painting, a Veronese or two, plus minor works. Statues of various Saints and notables chisseled out in 1500 A.D. Incense, chanting, singing, the whole Ecclestical show. One can't help but be swept up in it, the knowledge that, for a brief time, one is part of an ancient tradition, part of a very old community of faith, and part of a continuing community too. The Christmas story resonates universally.

Houses, even the grand palazzios, are compact, with furniture and appliances to match. A wide screen television in Venice has a 17” screen, and I can't help but think that people live better when they have less stuff in their lives, and the life is simultaneously rich and simple. One factor that inhibits the acquisition of stuff is that it is just so hard to transport. Sure, there's an Ikea on the mainland, but to get that Billy bookcase home will mean a drive, and then walking it over about 40 bridges, and then up three floors. Alternatively, engage a transport company to deliver it by boat. The community is close, because people go about on foot all the time, and continually rub up against their neighbours. Shopping is a daily occurence, because it is impossible to cart a weekly shop home in your average troley. There are voices in the streets. And the garden next door is planted out with winter vegies. We've bought seeds from Venice for our garden in Melbourne.

This is a town with 60,000 permanent residents – the population of Wagga – with about 20 million visitors a year. That's a lot of visitors, making for pedestrian traffic jams in the streets. The protocol is that you walk on the right, and dawdling two abreast is seen as being anti-social, three abreast is the equivalent of a B-double smash on the Westgate bridge. Bearing in mind that the main drag from the Rialto to the railway station is frequently less than a couple of metres wide, traffic jams can be significant. Don't stop in mid step to consult that map. Pull over into a slip lane – the slip lane most likely to be selling horrible glass from Murano – Homer Simpson paddling a gondola. But maybe some of the Murano glasswere has just been unpacked out of a container from the Peoples Republic of China at Murano – it's hard to tell. Lou and I promised ourselves that we would buy some fine wine glasses here, and we've done it. They cost a bomb, and will be treasures to come. The contents come cheaply, so we see it as a kind of economy.

It's Boxing day, with the wind sweeping down from the Italian alps, blowing hard enough to have the shutters rattling and the seagulls working to windward with difficulty. A gondola ride today would be like a surf boat at Coogee or Bell's Beach, with no lifesavers standing by with the line and reel. It is freezing cold, one or two degrees, I think, with a perfectly clear sky that would have had Canaletto reaching for his paint box, or JMW Turner stretching a canvas. The wind carries the sound of the bells from the campaniles probably north of us (the compass being a dud), and so we are hearing a whole lot of new bells. I'm not totally anal, but I did count one bell ringing seventy three times. Venice is full of bells – it is just delightful.

The wind has also shredded the “No Mose” protest banner on the apartment railing a block away. One sees a lot of “No Mose” graffiti, Mose being the set of barriers presently being built at the entrance to the lagoon in an attempt to stem the flow of water when exceptionally high tides are anticipated. When a big acqua alta is expected, then the barriers will be raised to stem the flow of water from the Adriatic into the lagoon. Many Venetians think Mose is a waste of money – it's costing multi-billion Euro – and might not work anyway. I suspect the protests are about “We've been doing water here for 1500 years plus, so go buy some waders and get over it”. The floor of the lagoon has dropped about 20 cm over the last 50 years through extraction of ground water to supply the chemical industry at Mestre, on the land side of the lagoon. Add to this the dredging to allow tankers and corpulent cruise liners to enter the lagoon, and you've got the perfect environmental problem – tidal flows have increased hugely. The perfect environmental solution is something else again.

Maybe the locals just dont like the concept of Mose, or Moses, handing down a fresh set of commandments which will take the fun out of life. I can sympathise – the commandments will probably be driven by a bunch of EU officials from Brussels, and Brussels is not the most exciting of towns – even the citizens of Brussels agree on that. Or maybe the Venetians think that Mose will be about as effective as the tidal warning sirens, a system that sees much derision and humour.

We don't watch television much. Venetian TV seems to comprise movies dubbed into Italian by interpreters whose first language is Arabic. The alternative is soap operas that make “The Bold and the Beautiful” appear quite Shakesperean, or game shows that make “The Price is Right” look philosophically sophisticated. One particular game show seems designed to provide a venue for a woman with exceptional legs and miniskirt with a length measured in microns to prance across the stage, shaking her Watusi. Shot, as one would expect, from low camera angles.

The Christmas / New Year influx of visitors over the last few days has seen an equivalent influx of street vendors, handbag floggers and rose sellers. The rose vendors have a cool style – shove two roses into the woman's hand, demand money from her male companion. They won't take no for an answer, but we've now got a routine to foil them. Lou smiles, takes roses. Hands them to me. I hand back to vendor, who snatches them. He says something un-printable, expletives not deleted, in a language that I don't understand, but it's not Italian. Easy peasy. The handbag vendors (genuine Gucci, guaranteed) have a different system. Pick tourist, thrust handbag into woman's hand. Ask “what do you think this is worth”. Negotiate price with woman. Then say to male companion, as cash is handed over, “Is that all you are going to pay?” We've got no strategy for these gentlemen, we just click on mute, and pretend to be Venetian.

Priceless – or price negotiable.

Please keep posting your "impressions". I am re-living my last visit to Venice by reading your posts. I love your style!

Your comment about the television shows made me laugh out loud.

"One particular game show seems designed to provide a venue for a woman with exceptional legs and miniskirt with a length measured in microns to prance across the stage, shaking her Watusi. Shot, as one would expect, from low camera angles."

That would be the Italian version of Wheel of Fortune. My husband couldn't belive it! We watched almost every night - laughing hysterically the whole time. Our B&B "neighbors" must have thought we were crazy!

Anyway, I hope we keep hearing from you! And I wish I was in Venice right now. Thanks for bringing that wonderful city to me.

Pete

Great writing!

I doubt your Murrican readers understand the significance of the wisdom, or lack thereof, of Pauline Hanson.

I liked the description of the Coliseum as like the MCG without the northern stand. Caused me to LOL. Not 10 minutes earlier, in the Oz forum, I described one of the worst days of my life, (so far) - at the AFL Grand Final, in the northern stand of the MCG. :)

Keep on with the reporting - we were there in 2007 for a week, and were planning to spend a couple of weeks this year, but events have overtaken us - so I'm living vicariously!

Scribbling? I should scribble so well!! Love your style.Reminds me of Dame Edna's comments "Aren't those journalists clever ? They ought to be writers!" Your report is bringing back lovely memories of my time in Venice last September.

Really enjoying revising Venice through this narrative.

Pauline Hanson: related to Sarah Palin?

"The frescoes on the walls that remain are in good condition. I find that remarkable – they are just water colour on plaster"

Technically not true.

A <b> fresco </b> is a painting applied to plaster while it's wet. This creates a chemical bond between the plaster and the colouring, so the resultant screed is actually coloured plaster. It's an astonishingly fiddly and demanding job - but it produces paintings that last for thousands of years.

The alternative - a wallpainting produced by just putting paint onto dry plaster - is technically known as a <b> secco </b>, though most people just call it a wall painting. It's a lot quicker and cheaper to do, was widely used in the Third World (above all, England) during mediaeval times and just a few hundred years later usually looks like a blob of mould.

I'm not sure how many Roman and Etruscan wallpaintings are actually frescoes (even seccoes can last in the right environment) - but in this, as in so many things, imperial Rome used more advanced technology than the backward parts of the world 1500 years later. Think concrete, central heating and lavatories.

annw

Yes, Pauline Hanson is sort of similar to Sarah Palin, but with red hair and an especially strident voice. I haven't heard SP speak; she may also have a grating voice. Failed politician and Aussie nightmare.

Absolutely first rate, mate!! I'm telling all my friends, Aussie and otherwise about this post.

Pauline Hanson doesn't have Sara Palin's wardrobe!! Hey Peter, I hope Pauline Hansen does have wisdom teeth just think how much more embarrassing she would be without them!! Love your report. I was a bit stunned to read that you have 8 weeks in Venice - what luxury!

Please keep your reports coming - it's a lovely read.

Oh pleeese keep writing! I am pretending I am back in Italy looking in amazement at the Italian women who go to the market dressed as I would dress when I am going to work, and laughing about your comments regarding the Italian tv. We were always amazed at the programs, but after spending a large part of the last year in Mexico, I have to say that American tv is rather tame compared to other countries' programs, and the acting in both Italy and Mexico is somewhat comparable to watching old Ponderosa reruns. You can't stop watching because it is so hysterical. Keep up the great comments.

If you have time you should do the &quot;Secret Itineraries Tour of Doges Palace&quot;. They take you behind the doors look at Casanova's prison cell and high up into the palace. It was an awesome tour.

Big Post - a couple of thousand words.
Food is good here, both what we buy and cook, and also eating out. Venice is known for sea food and fish, and so one particularly good place close to us advises “No fish” on its menu. Very Venetian, given Venetian perversity. You've got to be perverse to build a city on a mud flat, and turn it into a major maritime power. However, the restaurant does do smoked leg of goose and hare pie.

Supermarkets are different, too. Note the number of your produce (carrots are number 47), place produce on scales and enter the number. Put the resulting bar coded ticket on produce, and it will be scanned at the checkout. Easy – once you know the system – we got into trouble the first time around. Allora! Stupido! Bread is sold by weight too, and sliced bread is unknown – as are toasters, it would seem. They charge for plastic bags, and shopping jeeps are all the go. I've yet to see it, but I bet Louis Vuitton are making shopping jeeps for the Venetian market.

There are four classes of produce available. The imported (not desirable or in the least patriotic), the Italian (acceptable), produce from our region, the Veneto (OK, if you MUST!), and produce from the lagoon – which is the real thing, likely to be just off the boat. Artichokes are most popular here, and a source of local pride. Our favourite green grocer is friendly, and we stumble through in a combination of sign language, pointing, and “Si, si”. There's a boat load of produce just in front of his shop.

We're cooking in a kitchen about the size of the galley of your average racing yacht, but doing pretty well. The galley does not move with the swells – unless it's swells caused by the fact that wine is about 3 Euro a bottle. The fridge is microscopic – but as the outside temperature hovers around zero, food keeps well on our terrace.

Breakfast is now Italian-style, a cappucino and marmalade croissant, eaten at the bar. Many people take a glass of something stronger with their morning caffeine hit, a slug of grappa or a brandy. We have not taken to that practice – yet. This morning I saw a bottle of absinthe, guaranteed alcohol content 72%. It comes with a free spoon for some reason – maybe to scrape the consumer up off the pavement. I'd have thought that with that alcohol content, a fire extinguisher and Material Safety Data sheet would be more appropriate. I was tempted, though – it's so cold that maybe the alcohol would function like anti-freeze.

I think I mentioned the concept of getting lost in Venice. We were here with my five year old some years ago (about 33, in fact), and she got lost! Pip went in search of a toyshop she had seen. Twenty minutes while one's heart stops, and then we spotted her, or she spotted us. 'Where were you!!” she demanded, somewhat angrily. At times like that, you don't know whether to hug your child or beat them. I recollect we did both.

I also remember Pip dancing in St Marco's to “Tiptoe through the tulips”, belted out by Quadri's cafe orchestra, and breaking off in mid bar to harass pidgeons, of which there were multitudes, avain rats. Pidgeons have been a curse in Venice for centuries, and Venice has been trying to eliminate them. The main problem, I believe, were the licensed vendors of corn to feed them in St Marco's, with licenses probably issued by Benito Mussolini, so not easy to cancel. Somehow, the licences have been withdrawn, and the pidgeon population is now much reduced. Perhaps the corn vendors have been re-trained as street beggars, with turf allocated by ballot or public tender. They abound.

There's two contour maps here. The first is pretty simple – it just maps the areas that are likely to flood with acqua alta. The second is cost based, and we've noted that if one shops along the Statione / Rialto Bridge / St Marco ridge, the main visitor route, then prices will be higher. We're keeping to the lower ground. Slugging tourists has an ancient tradition here, ever since the knights of the Fourth Crusade were kept holed up on the Lido in 1202, while shipping rates to the Holy Land were negotiated and a fleet, fodder and victuals assembled. In the meantime, Venetian armourers were able to sell materiel to both sides of the conflict, making them, I suppose, the first war profiteers. The sting in the tail of the deal was, when the Crusaders were unable to pay, Doge Dandolo, near blind and aged 88, had a little side venture written into the charter agreement, “Yep, we'll ship you there, but as a little contract sweetener, we want you to subdue some recalcitrant Dalmatian colonies, and invade Constantinople en route”, thereby hijacking the Crusade. The Crusaders delivered on the deal, and history records that Dandolo was the first man ashore at Constantinople – history mostly being written by the victors. The crusade never reached the Holy Land, but from a minor breach of contract, the Venetians were able dominate the eastern Med. I believe they call it negotiating from a position of strength, and the tradition continues.

The population of Venice is in decline, and the permanent population is now about 60,000 – it was three times that number 30 years ago, and Venice has the oldest population of any European city. They also have the longest life expectancy of any European city, probably to do with all that walking, or 72% absinthe – or maybe, as cigarette smoking is de rigeur, they've preseved themselves like fine smoked proscuitto. Many people have moved to the mainland, to Mestre, an industrial city that looks as though it was designed by architects who worked with the radio on, listening to Easy Network, and whose last commission was East Berlin in 1947. There are many buildings in Venice with doors that look as though they have not been opened in years. Locks that appear to have been hand forged.

The upper floors of the house over the road at No 2691 Dorsoduro seem quite uninhabited, and the window shutters look as though they have not been opened in decades – possibly not since the Fourth crusade. This is common in Venice – commercial activity on the ground, and vacant rooms, whole vacant floors, above. I'd give my eye teeth to have a look in there. Furniture left over from Napoleon's time in Venice, wine from the vintage of 1930, and newspapers with headlines saying “Assassinato” “JFK morte”, “Jacki lamentare”.

We're studying hard at “Looking Venetian 101”, with mixed success. Decent marks are awarded if one can walk past a gondolier without him saying “Gondole, gondole”. A Credit is obtained when the handbag sellers don't bother to accost one, and a High Distinction is awarded when the rose sellers leave you alone. Dragging a shopping trolley helps, and leading a dog seems most Venetian. I could, of course, solve the problem with a stroke of a pen. Cash in my super, mortgage the house, and buy Lou a fur, preferably made of skin from an endangered species.

Molto Venetian, but I'm afraid not priceless.


5.

We find the greengrocer beside the Ponte de Pugni – the Bridge of Fists – not to be the friendliest of people. It's the signs in both Italian and English saying “Don't touch”, and he's a bit grumpy. Maybe he's just suspicious of anyone who walks over the bridge from the Parish of Santa Maria del Carmine into his Parish of San Barnaba. Parochialism raised to a high order – the Rialto Bridge had, in 1494, a drawbridge section in it, to keep the pesky tradesmen from San Polo away from the money changers, bankers, insurers and stock exchange traders in San Marco. In its day, the Rialto was Wall Street.

But the Ponte de Pugni has an interesting history. The bridge was the venue for organised fist fights between the Santa Maria lads vs the San Barnaba boys, and when fists proved insufficient to carry the day, resort was had to cudgels, iron bars, and the occasional dagger, Cronulla on the Veneto. There was no parapet on the bridge, so plunging into the Rio San Barnaba canal was common (and this at a time when the canals served as sewers and waste disposal systems). The history of the bridge is immortalised in footprints let into the paving in white stone, which deliniate the starting line for the fights. I've seen an engraving of an event, and it was certainly full on - maybe we cross on a daily basis the birthplace of football hooliganism. The fights were outlawed in 1705, and possibly peace broke out, or a fresh venue was found.

There's a parapet to the bridge now.


New Year.
There is a smell to New Years Eve in Venice, compounded of pizza, cooked fish, and freshly baked bread. There is another vital ingredient in the mix – the smell of black powder. Fireworks are available at our local mini mart, and the explosions started around dusk, about 5:00 PM this time of year, and continued until the small hours. Fireworks is really a misnomer – there were crackers being let off in San Marco about the size of a milk carton, which qualifies them as ordinance. I might mention that the entire population of Venice was in San Marco at the time, and so a little circle was cleared in the middle for the fireworks, displacing children, cops, prams and dogs – cleared by letting off fireworks.

There was a New Years Eve concert in San Marco, themed on “Love”, or “Lerve”, take your pick. Lots of encouragement to love, kiss somebody, anybody.
“Love to everyone, love to the world, we love you all”.
Followed by crash of exploding ordinance, loud enough to make the air pulsate and the window shutters dance.

The whole charade was sposored by the bottlers of Bellini, a pleasant concoction of peach juice and prosecco, a light sparkling white. We watched the Bellinii boys set out a couple of thousand plastic glasses for the crowd and fill them. Australia has the big banana, the big pineapple and the big Merino at Goulburn, and San Marco had the big inflated Bellini bottle. Bellini cocktails were invented by Cipriani, operator of Harry's bar, Hemingway's favourite drinking haunt, but not Hemingway's favourite drink, and I've always thought of him as a bourbon or rough rye man myself. But Ernest did try a Bellini once,, labelling it a drink for sissies, and suggesting that it was more appropriate for his drinking buddy, Scott Fitzgerald. One wonders what Hemingway would have thought of a thousand sneaker shod tourists consuming his not favourite cocktail.

A little dialogue, quoted from a not-remembered source,
Fitzgerald - “The rich, they're different to you and me”.
Hemmingway - “Yeah, they've got more money”.

It started to snow just before the stroke of midnight, which was quite magical, and one could imagine that the snow was the result of excellent stage management. This did not dampen the fireworks in the least. The snow lasted in places for a whole week – it's been exceptionally cold, daytime max of about one degree, if that.

There's a tradition of Americans in Venice, Henry James, Ernest H, Scott Fitzgerald, and Peggy Guggenheim who became Venice's favourite American daughter and an Honourary Venetian, which is no small accolade. She certainly did it in style, buying in 1951 the incomplete Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (started construction 1749, contractor claiming Extension of Time, negotiations still continuing), maintaing a private gondola and gondoliers, and a fleet of small dogs, which are buried in the garden of said Palazzo (the dogs, that is). She also maintained a salon of the brightest artists of her day, Paul Klee, Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Kandinsky, and was, by contemporary reports, as free with her favours as she was with her money, the USD / lire exchange rate being pretty hot in the fifties and sixties. As was Peggy. Kick Jackson out of bed, dust down the Picasso, send the gondolier out for some decent fresh food for the dogs, lunch with Mondrian. Take tea with Klee, dinner with Kandinsky, sup with the gondolier(s). Her legacy is a fine museum of modern art, including a large equestrian statue which many find a tad confronting, facing the Canal Grande.

This might, of course, be all untrue, facts being difficult to establish in Venice. Paolo Sarpi, the Venetian philosopher, once remarked, “I never, never tell a lie, but the truth not to everyone”. However, Peggy's gondola is in the Museum Maritime.

Or a gondola very like hers.

True.


6.
The Arsenale.

I visited the Museum Maritime yesterday, and yes, there's a gondola said to have been Peggy's. Venice has a proud naval history, having thumped just about every marine power over a period of one thousand years. Pick any country in the Levant, or all the eastern Med for that matter, and Venice has defeated them – along with some non-Levant nations like Libya. They had naval warfare developed to an art form, and one wonders what the outcome might have been if the Spanish at Trafalgar had the Venetian navy on its side. The sad thing, of course, is that by the time of Trafalgar, the Venetian navy was a shadow of its former self, Venice having turned into a sort of pleasure dome, repeating the excesses of Rome, and anticipating the speculative excesses of today's USA.

The Venetians built ships at the Arsenale for any one who would pay, and they pumped them out. It's recorded that, as a demonstration for a visiting big-wig, the Venetians laid the keel for a galley at breakfast, and rowed the completed vesssel past the visitor as he completed his dinner. Complete with a cannon or mortar, cast that morning, that weighed 2,000 pounds. (The engineer in me questions the cannon – it takes longer than a day to cool a casting of that mass. But it was a standard piece of ordinance, so a switch was possible.)

The galley that rowed past the dinner party was very much like the one whose keel was laid in the morning – that's Venetian marketing for you, and galleys were a standard product. Contemporary records recount the “galley in a day” story, while word of the substitution was likely suppressed. “The truth not to everyone”, as they say.

It's undeniable, though, that the Arsenale was the biggest industrial facility of its time, the progenitor of the military-industrial complex, and the time lasted about 800 years. At its peak, it employed 17,000 tradesmen, who were skilled and, once employed at the Arsenale, were guaranteed a job for life, still paid if they were sick or after they finished work. The Job for Life tradition still seems to continue – many of the trades at the Williamstown Dockyard in Melbourne (“Warship Builders to the Nation” was their proud bumper sticker) seemed to think the same way, even if they did little work. But the Arsenale was “Warship Builders to Anyone Who Could Pay”, and the Arsenale was able to launch a ship a day, and did. It has me in mind of the present day Korean ship yards, with ten vessels on the stocks, extruding tankers by the metre.

The Arsenale facility was self contained, producing rope and cordage, cannon balls, cloth for sails, gold leaf for decoration, gunpowder, oars for galleys (which weigh 60 kilos each, so a decent sized vessel sailed with six tonnes of oars), salted meat in barrels and even baked ships biscuit, which was highly regarded. One biscuit oven survives at the Arsenale, but the recipe has sadly been lost with the death of the last baker. A store of ships biscuit was found walled up in a store in a Venetian fortress in Crete and was still edible and free of mould and weevils after 150 years when the fortress had been abandoned. Good news for the citizens of Crete who were suffering a famine, and redefining the concept of “Use by”, or “Best before”, I suppose.

In a way, there were two power bases in Venice, the Doge's Palace and the Arsenale. Napoleon laid waste and looted both when the Austrians invaded, and I'm inclined to think that a visitor who nominates a Viennese address in the hotel register may still not receive the best of service. Memories are long here. There are “before and after” engravings of the Arsenale, showing in great detail the broken ships, torched sheds and ruined slips, missing piles of lead ingots, spars and masting, stolen cannonballs, and mentioning the 6000 cannons looted and melted down. The Sestier of Castello, where most of the trades lived, still retains something of a gritty working class feeling, like suburbs on Tyne-side or around the Belfast yards, where the Titanic was built.

The Venetians were particulary grumpy when Napoleon looted the four gilded bronze horses from the portico of St Marks – they represented the soul of Venice. The Venetians were devastated, the portico looked naked without them. In some ways, their complaints seem a bit rich – the Venetians had looted the horses in turn from the Hippodrome, the racecourse in Constantinople in 1204, payola from assisting the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Easy come, easy go, but for Venice easy come has always been preferable, and the easy go side is not so happy for them. I notice this at the supermarket - if the tab comes to 10.97 Euro, dont expect change from eleven. If the tab comes to 11.03 Euro, the full amount is expected. Small change is always in scant supply – when we bought mussels yesterday, the fishmonger threw in a few extras to bring the cost up to a rounded Euro.

Plunder can be unlucky for some, too. It's unlucky to walk between the pair of columns by the Basin of St Marks. One column has the winged lion of St Mark atop, and St Theodore, with his foot resting on a crrocodile, is on the other. The origin of the crocodile is uncertain, but many theories abound. The columns were looted, also from Constantinople courtesy of said Crusade, and took some removal and erecting, being about 20 metres tall and monolithic. Legend has it that there were three columns, but one was dropped into the Basin of St Marks, where it rests to this day, but maybe that's a “Truth not to everyone” sort of thing. The Incident Report would make fine reading, and the remaining columns were erected in 1172, as it took 150 years to figure out how to raise them.

The erection was overseen by Nicolo Barattieri, also engineer for the first Rialto bridge. He sweated them into place by rigging them with wet rope, and as the rope dried, it tightened and lifted the columns a couple of millimetres. Pack columns with dunnage, re-rig ropes and repeat the process – many times. I've seen the detailed engravings for the process, probably part of his tender submission. For his efforts, Nicolo was awarded a licence to operate gaming tables between the columns. There are spoil sports in every society, and to curb the gaming the authorities used the air space above the tables for public executions, which were not infrequent. This rather cruelled the place as a gaming venue, and it's still unlucky to walk between the columns. I don't walk between them, and I'm not even a gambler.

Got an issue with problem gambling?
Public hangings on Southbank should do the trick.

Peter, thank you so much for your delightful musings! I am enjoying them so much I intend to print them out to re-read each time the Venice-hunger strikes, as it often does on these dark and dreary January days here in Oregon. I envy you spending eight weeks in one of my favorite places, envy in the nicest possible way. I hope you will share some of your photos with us - I know you would have to scan the slides/negatives and that is a lot of work, but you're sure to have some moody treasures and I'd love to see them. Here's a link to some of my Venice images, for others like me who need a Venice-fix: http://my.fotopic.net/collection/01636029/

I'm sorry - I posted an incorrect link. Here's another: http://jmstudio.fotopic.net/c1636029.html

Very well done and enjoyable! Looking forward to more . . .

Wonderful writing Peter. We live in Sydney and know four people (two couples) with those beautiful leather? jackets bought for a bargain in Rome. Maybe there should be a club! You could always donate one to our Pauline Hansen, who also loves a bargain, saw her at the markets at Noosa last weekend.

7.

There is a chain of stores in Melbourne called “Sexyland” - product range is obvious. I've found no corresponding chain in Venice, not that I'm looking in particular, but it has not always been so.

Gutenberg invented movable type, and Caxton the press. Venetian printers were onto this in a flash, and a stream of publications followed, many of them of a licentious nature. Bookshops need books, even bookshops like Sexyland, where the pictures are more important than the text and wood block prints won't cut it. Enter stage left the skilled engravers and lithograph techos. The Church issued an “Index of Forbidden Books” in 1449 - Venetian printers naturally ignored it, seeing it as restraint of trade, and a most lucrative trade at that. In 1605, Pope Paul V attempted to exert Church authority on Earth, and the Venetians were not about to concede to this authority – it would have threatened the book trade, along with other commercial activities. The Pope retaliated by threatening to excommunicate anyone who did not yield, and more significantly, confiscate property. The Venetians upped the ante, in the usual Venetian style, by forbidding publication of the Papal edict. The Jesuits obeyed the Pope, published the edict, and were expelled from the city for their pains. “Publish and be damned”, or “Publish and be expelled”.

This war of the scriptures was watched by all Europe, until a Venetian friar, one Paolo Sarpi (who told the truth not to everyone) came up with the solution. There are two distinct empires, one Holy and one Temporal, and they co-exist, a version of the “Render unto Ceasar” dictum, and so there should be no conflict. This put the whole church taxation regime in jeopardy, along with church military activities, and so was not well received. Paolo survived two assination attempts for his troubles, and Venice continued to thumb its nose at the Vatican. The thumbing of the nose tradition has existed for a long time here, the Rialto bridge being a fine example.

There have been a number of Rialto bridges, built in 1180, 1264 and 1310. In 1144 the bridge collapsed under the weight of a crowd gathered to witness the arrival of the wife of the Marquis of Ferrara, a beauty in her day. (Eat your heart out, Paris Hilton, you are too late on the scene.) Antonio da Ponte (Tony of the Bridge) built the present structure between 1588 and 1590. The three year construction period clearly inconvenienced the Rialto merchants, who were partly funding the Works, and the rumour was started that the bridge wouldn't be finished until the male organ grew fingernails, and the female counterpart caught fire – or words to that effect.

The contractor can always have the last word. Tony placed small statues of these very events on the adjacent Palazzo dei Camerlinghi. They survive to this day, and are quite graphic in their detail. That's what I call having the last word – 600 years later.

There's a concept here - restaurants with cashiers. You order with a cashier, who gives you a ticket for what you want – “due cappucini e due brioche”. Take the ticket to the counter, and an exceptionally suave gentlemen will furnish said coffees and croissants. Front up to the counter without the ticket and receive derision instead of coffees from less than suave gentleman – or you will simply be ignored. This is a particular trap at the railway station, for tourists just off the train, unfamiliar with the system and desperate for a caffeine hit. One wonders what Herr Baedeker would have thought – maybe that is why he reported “cafe-poor” at the station in his 1905 guide to Northern Italy. However, his descriptions of San Marco are still accurate, and he recommends Quadri's over Florians “unless the sun is hot, in which case Florians will provide welcome shade for the visitor” – as would I, if I could afford to buy a coffee at either of those fine establishments, and make an informed decision.

He also comments on dealing with street beggars - best ignored, or possibly a copper coin if one is generous - and the availability of porters at the station. One can imagine porters struggling with those trunks – the Edwardian generation never travelled light, and Baedeker could never have endorsed the “carry it yourself” generation of back-packers. He comments “A gondola can be taken from the station to your hotel, and porters will transport your luggage promptly”, taking the assumption that no traveller would stay at a hotel anywhere but on the Grand Canal. My Baedeker has margin comments pencilled in the best copperplate - against the Scuollo San Rocco, “fine Tintoretto”, courtesy of some long dead lady of good taste – and well funded too, I suspect.

Baedeker never had to visit our Billa supermarket, as he would have had peple to attend to such matters. Our Billa – built in a palazzo on the Zattere – is the biggest supermarket in Venice. It is microscopic, about the size of your average 7/11 times six, but has barge access to the front door, acqua alta notwithstanding. It is frantically busy of an evening, when one mixes with well-furred Venetian women buying the evening meal. While the supermarket is microscopic, the range of produce is astronomical. Three different types of radiccio (in Melbourne, we can't even buy it), and rabbit sausages. Cooking here is an adventure, and buying fish at the Rialto market is like being exposed to the contents of a most exotic acquariam.

Billa also have this old tradition, long dead in Melbourne. Green trading stamps (or actually, red stamps), handed to one when a purchase is made. We've witnessed people negotiating the quantum of stamps – one per ten Euro spent. “Hang on, E49.95 – surely that's five stamps”. “No, No, Giacomo”. Collect enough, and receive a discount on a promotional item. We've collected 24 stamps, and will receive a discount on the risotto pan that we are about to purchase. Frequent flyer points may not be worth a cracker, but loyalty to Billa pays off.

8.
There was a public holiday on the sixth of January, and this marked the end of the high winter tourist season. Venice seems to be sleeping, hibernating a little before the start of Carnivale in February. Many restaurants have closed for a month, some for holidays and others for renovations. A lot of shops are closed on the major tourist trail, and we are discovering smaller places, workshops doing shop fittings, guilders laying on gold leaf to mirror frames, workshops creating masks. Shops are no longer selling Christmas product – the windows now feature masks in bulk. There are fewer visitors, and more tradesmen to be seen – or maybe the tradies are just more visible now. It is now possible to open up pavements without causing a traffic sensation, and in a way we are able to see more of a working city. The African bag (Gucci, genuine, guaranteed, here, look at the label) sellers have departed to warmer climes, and the gondoliers spend more time texting one another than at the oars.

It is cold. Weather report issued at 9:00 on 9th January, courtesy of me. Sky – clear. Temperature - minus 1 deg C (or that is the reading on my thermometer, and I think it is accurate). Acqua alta forecast for 60cm, which won't cause any issues in San Marco. It has been cold since New year when it snowed, and there is still snow on next-door's lawn. There was a micro heat wave yesterday when there was a little snow turning to rain, and the mercury shot up to 4.5 degrees. The sky is absolutely clear and it is very sunny.

I'm tracking the sun with all the enthusiasm of a Druid at the Stonehenge observatory, constructed to determine the time of the Winter solstice. “I just asked for a bloody sundial, and you gather a thousand tonnes of bloody rocks” - contract negotiations still continuing. If you make it to the Winter Solstice, then you've got a chance of seeing Spring, and it's OK to eat more of that pig that you killed and smoked in Autumn. The Winter Solstice is a real marker for survival. Even though we've got Billa and central heating, the advance of the sun is welcome. We've watched it climb a little higher each day, scraping over the Istrian stone parapet next door, then clearing the 300 year old tiled roof, brushing the top of the neighbours conical brick chimney. Today it will clear the satellite dish, and we see more and more sun on our balcony. The conical chimneys are a curiously Venetian affair, maybe constructed with an internal matrix of brick to prevent spread of sparks. It's only 4.5 degrees outside at noon, too cold for Lou to paint “en plein air”.

The tradesmen at No 2686 are back on the job, carrying bricks. Italian bricks are half the size of the Australian version, about 9” x 4.5” x 1.5”, and are solid, so they weigh about five pounds. The guys have a trolley with about 250 bricks on it – so they have dragged more than half a tonne of bricks 200 metres from the unloading point in Campo San Barnaba down Calle Lunga – but at least there are no bridges to cross en-route. The work proceeds slowly – Calle Lunga San Barnaba, while being a “big” street, is two metres wide, and the guys are mixing it with the rubbish collection barrows and a lot of pedestrian traffic. Tradesmen being tradesmen the world over, and attractive girls being a big part of the pedestrian mix, and in good supply on Calle Lunga, the guys take more than the occasional pause and lingering look. Or maybe it is just the cold they are feeling.

Morris - James or Jan, take your pick – wrote what many consider the definitive book, “Venice”, in MCMLX, and comments on the attractiveness of Venetian women. “The women of Venice are very handsome, and very vain. They are tall, they walk beautifully, ...”. He's right, and the tradesman over the road would agree. Morris also speaks about rats and mice being common in 1960, and cats being about in gangs, troops, indeed armies of cats. I visited Kakadu a while ago, and was advised “you are not at the top of the food chain here – crocodiles are”. Maybe St Theodore, with foot on crocodile was making a statement. Cats are at the top of the food chain here, and better rubbish collection and sanitation over the last sixty years has reduced the rat and mouse population - we've not seen any – and so there is less food for cats. The cats are around, looking most satisfied and completely un-feral. They always welcome a pat, and respond to “Gattim gatti”.

Morris is interesting. As journalist for The Times, he was accredited to the successful Everest expedition in 1952 (or was it '53), wrote “Venice” while living here with his family for a year in 1960, followed this up with a three volume history of the British Empire in the Victorian era. The description of his gender re-assignment half way through writing that trilogy makes good, if perplexing, reading, and Morris, at the age of 81, attended Ed Hilary's funeral in New Zealand last year. I've stolen phrases from Morris, for which I offer a somewhat insincere apology.

Lou pointed out a funny anomaly this morning – no cars in Venice, but all the boats are strung about with car tyres as fenders. The used tyres would have to be imported – by boat. Another anomoly – the last steam powered ferry was withdrawn from service in 1956, but ferries are still known as steamers, vaporetti.

I keep on mentioning rubbish collection. It's the engineer in me. The garbage boats are little more than a compactor with a hull wrapped around them, a cab for the operator and a jib crane. This superstructure makes them too tall to pass uinder some bridges when the tide is high. They passed under the bridges to get to our Campo San Barnaba, and this morning the garbage boat and the paper recycling boat are trapped between two bridges (one bridge being the Ponte de Pugni) by the rising tide. They have enough garbage to keep them busy until they are liberated by the falling tide. Actually, the above “tall superstructure” thing is wrong – the operator's cabin telescopes down by a metre, allowing clearance under the bridges. I saw this happen this morning - ingenious

We are close to the Municipal Fire Station, and a fleet of fire boats is wet berthed, ready to steam out and fight the latest conflagration. It looks just like a normal terrestrial station, with traffic lights, “No Parking” signs on the canal, warning hooters and bored looking firies lounging around. Fire fighting is problematic, as ladder access is impossible. Add to this a total lack of fire segration of buildings, shared staircases, chimneys and ventilation shafts, no reliable fire water (you need fire water? – put a pump in a canal) and you have a disaster waiting to happen. It happened at the the opera house, La Fenice, in 1996 – the canal had been drained for cleaning when the fire broke out, and la Fenice burned to the ground, as no fire water was available. The fire was set by a disgruntled electrical contractor, running late on his Works, and looking to gain some time. I believe he may still be in jail, and if not, he should be, fit punishment for torching Venice's heart.

Buildings here are friendly and good companions to each other, relying on each other for mutual support, slumping together in a cooperative fashion, linking their arms around each other as people do in the street. There are arched brick compression struts built across alleys, so that the corners can be supported by neighbours. Walkways, sotoportegi, are built through and under buildings, created by the City authorities taking a room by compulsory acquisition. The city is a maze. We walked down what is said to be Venice's narrowest street, the Salizzada Zusto, twenty metres long, and a scant two feet wide. A real challenge for members of Weight Watchers.

9.
Radio is said to have been invented by Marconi or by someone else. We came to Venice equipped with some CD's and an iPod shuffle with scant contents which are now exhausted. So we're listening to the radio, Easy Network, “Rete facile”. Easy Networks are the same the world over, and it's like being in an audio time warp. To quote the play list for the last twenty minutes:
l What's in a kiss
l Evil Woman
l When you get caught between the moon and New York City (make sense of that, I challenge you. Go call a cab, or ask a cop for directions.)
l Sex 'n Dwugs 'n Wock 'n Woll (what, all together, or in that order)
l Won't you take me to funky town (a question better addressed to a travel agent. I'd rather stay in Venice, if that's OK, but Bologna is nice too)
l Boogie Wonderland (surely an oxymoron)
l We're all American Girls and we love the life that we lead. We're all Amercan girls, hear what we say and know what we mean. (“You know, you know, you know”, to quote the recent interview transcript by Ms Kennedy)
l Fernando - Abba (the definitive history of a failed Mexican uprising)
l Dancing Queen - Abba (Hear the beat of the tambourine! Obviously, if it rhymes, it goes into the lyrics. Possibly a musical legacy of Bjorn's tambourine playing time with the Salvation Army).
l Dance like an Egyptian (Belly dancing classes, anyone?)
l la Bomba (!!)

I rest my case. The architects of Mestre were listening to Easy Network.

Shopping is simultaneously interesting and scary. Scary because it's SALDI time, 30% off everything (skins of endangered species being an exception), so the plastic can take a hammering. Interesting, because we've found some great shops. Two years ago we were here, bought paper products from Legatoria Polliero, and forgot both the name and location of the shop. It's taken four weeks to find the shop again in Campo dei Frari (I believe I've mentioned the concept of getting lost). Paolo Polliero, a gentleman of about 70, has been making paper products seemingly forever, and by the look of his shop, his great great grandfather occupied the same premises, probably refusing service to Austrian invaders. There's still no service as such, and Paolo gets on with his business while you browse his shop. You can stand in a corner and watch a volume being bound in leather, marbled end papers being applied, and the cut leaves being polished with graphite and an agate rubbing stone. It is very special to watch a master craftsman in action.

And then connection is made, and he is the most lovely person imaginable, the apparent mask of indifference hiding a person of great courtesy. I picked up a photo of him with his grandson, and he explained that while he has no English, his son has some, and his grandson, now eight years old, is fluent, like a bird, “e somigliare il uccello”. I envy his grandson, being bi-lingual. As we made purchases, he was at pains to explain “non fabbrica, artisan”, and he cut the wrapping paper on a guillotine. The fine objects that he makes and sells are certainly not factory produced, and he's an artisan. Shopping like that is more than buying stuff – there's a little relationship being started as well. He'll recognise us next time we are there, and I like that.

We found a tiny shop selling turned wooden items, wooden eggs, children's spinning tops, pedestals to mount an egg on. The owner left his lathe, covered in shavings. We explained that we needed a pedestal for an “uovo ostriche”, and he understood – there was, after all, an ostrich egg in the window. I did not try to explain that it was actually for an emu egg – I've no idea what the Italian word is for emu. We find that the older shopkeepers with no English take the trouble to speak Italian slowly, and so we get by. Again, the knowledge that one is dealing with an artisan, and a relationship started.

Of course it is possible to get it wrong, and I witnessed this yesterday at our local bar about 10:30 AM, after the breakfast rush was over. Real estate in Venice is tight, even the real estate taken by a table, which is why a coffee taken at the bar costs Euro 1.20, while at the table it is twice that. Two women walked in, asked “Do you serve lunch?”. Blank look from behind the counter – lunch happens around 1:00 PM. Slightly louder (if they don't speak English, talk louder. They must be thick or something) “Do you serve spaghetti, pizza, food for lunch”. Confirmation from behind counter, a rather grumpy “Si”. Women take table, and don't order anything. Shrug from behind counter, but as time progressed, the body language started to display consternation and we left. If you want a table, at least order a coffee, pay the rent.

Until last night, I've not been particlarly fond of quail, a legacy of my grandfather. He was the classic “poor boy makes exceptionally good” story, one of seven children, starting work aged twelve as an office boy filling ink wells, same employer for about sixty years, career finishing as Managing Director. In the course of turning himself into a gentlemen (children to fine schools, family takes European tour in 1927, Baedeker in hand) he took to gentlemanly pursuits, notably fly fishing and shooting – he never would have “hunted”. There was a gun room in the house, with guns, rods, fly boxes, gun oil, boxes of shells. It was forbidden territory to a six year old. Amongst the game he shot were quail, and I have recollections of my grandmother placing pieces of lead shot around her plate when quail was served. He was a good shot, by all accounts, and a 4-10 shell devestates a quail. It seemed like eating the family fowl, like the scene in the late 1950's film “Giant” when Rock Hudson's and Elizabeth Taylor's children burst into tears at the sight of the pet family turkey being served up at Thanksgiving.

I digress, a written ramble, pushing words around the page the way a child plays with its food, pushing the hated beans or quail to the side of the plate is an attempt to hide them and move on to the ice cream course.

Last night we cooked quail risotto, and it was both excellent and free of shot. We have a cook book, written by one Francesco da Mosco, a writer, architect, TV series producer, thorough Venetian and clearly an excellent cook. The Palazzo da Mosco stands on the grand Canal, and is the oldest surviving Palazzo, with the facade now covered in scaffold. The book is simply “Francesco's Kitchen”, and I'd recommend it. It is a great read, and is as much about Venetian life, both now and for the last 500 years, as a cook book. The recipe for quail risotto works well. He also includes recipes for eel dishes, and I can't quite come at them. Our local fishmonger had half a dozen of them, very alive and swimming around in a styrene box a couple of days ago. Not being armed with a 4-10 gun, I'd not know how to kill one, let alone butcher it.

Here's anothe bit - a brain dump almost.
Don't blame me - I just write this stuff.
10.
Venice has never been big on public monuments to notables – one will walk many streets before finding an equivalent to Nelson's column, or our Melbourne monument to the explorers Bourke and Wills (who sadly failed to take copy right on the phrase that best described their ill fated adventure – “Get Lost”). Melbourne even has a statue of Kylie Minogue – the reason for this escapes me, but at least it is at one of Melbourne's more windswept locations. A monument to Carlo Goldoni the playwright stands near the Rialto, and a happy man he looks with a slightly quizzical gaze, a life well lived. He has a smile, and looks as if he is about to greet a dear friend. There's a monument to Vittorio Emmanuel near the San Zaccaria vaporetto stop, but these are a dime a dozen in Italy, and Rome's monument makes the Venitian version pale into insignificance. The statue to Daniele Manin, leader of the 1848 revolution against the Austrians, stands in Campo Manin, with a most excellent winged lion. Taxidermists would wonder at the lion – it is not clear whether the lion should have fur or feathers under its wings, and would seem to have a mixture of both.

The exception, however, is the equestrian statue in Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo and it's a monster. I'm no judge of horseflesh (my bookmaker can supply confirmation of this) but I reckon the horse stands about 37 hands. It's magnificent, and was meant to be somewhere else – like in the Piazza San Marco, to be exact.

The statue celebrates Bartolomeo Colleoni. I recollect that Marlon Brando played Don Corleone in “The Godfather”, and if the horses head in the bed had been as big as the statue in Campo SS Giovani et al, the bed would have collapsed. Colleoni was a mercenary commander from Bergamo (Venice has never been averse to contracting out the dirty work, as evidence the Fourth Crusade) and was most successful. He made a small fortune, or maybe a not so small fortune, as a part of his military service – perhaps it was written into his Conditions of Engagement. “A dollar a day, plus a percentage of loot.” Military operations would appear to have been self funding, for the Venetians at least.

Colleoni, patriot to the last, or at least knowing who buttered his bread, left his fortune – half a million ducats - to the State of Venice which was broke at the time, on condition that a statue be erected to him “in front of San Marco”, with his estate to fund the statue. Big conundrum for the City Fathers – while wanting the money, a statue of anyone in front of St Marks was inconcievable. But a deal is a deal, and Venetians honour deals. So the statue stands in all its magiificence in front of San Marco – the Scuole Grande San Marco. Colleoni should have defined his conditions a little more tightly, and the Venetians delivered on the agreement – to the letter. If not the spirit. Molto Veneziano. The Scuolo Grand San Marco is just around the corner from the site of the Municipal Gasworks, next to the Hospital, and a fair step from the Piazza San Marco.

It is, even to one with a less than perfect eye for horseflesh, a fine bronze statue, and Colleoni looks quite magnificent, and not cheesed off in the slightest to be in his present location. He's been there since 1496.

Sunday 11 January, so we are just over half way through out time here. We can feel the days racing past. Happily, we are having a micro heat wave – the mercury hit 10 degrees – and the remnants of New Year's snow next door have almost all melted. “Molto freddo” is not so often heard, and I think the last couple of weeks have been exceptionally cold, even by Venetian standards. We can now take coffee because we want a coffee, not because we need refuge in a warm bar from the cold.

We went to the opera a few nights ago. They gave Verdi's “la Traviata”, with a small cast, leading to some confusion, and a chamber orchestra, piano, two violins, viola and 'cello. The first violin was exceptionally good, indeed all the music was excellent, and the performance was in the Scuola Grande S. Giovanni Evangelista, in a hall dating from the 1700's. The story of la Traviata is simple – Courtesan takes up with gentleman A, she is also fancied by another gentleman B. There is an argument between Courtesan and Gent A, possibly a duel – certainly a challenge to a duel, between Gent A and Gent B, as Gent A has insulted the woman that Gent B fancies. Gent A and Courtesan are reconciled, she dies of TB in his arms. Closing aria, Gran Dio! morir si giovane - “O God, to die so young”.

Walk out into the streets of the most lovely city in the world at mid-night, freezing cold, ice crackling underfoot, voices fading away, silent.



11.
Big problem – Lou's set her heart on No 1, Santa Croce. Close to all facilities, short walk to the Punto supermarket, widows walk at roof level, wine shop just over the bridge, choice of three fishmongers within 75 metres, and a florist 100 metres away. It's all just too, too convenient. Nice corner room, with two windows overlooking the Nuove Rio di Ca' Foscari (she's promised me that room). Canal entrance, place to park a small boat, vacant shop that can certainly be put to some good use. The clincher, the thing that sold it to her, was when she discovered a postcard, shot in about 1900, of No 1 Santa Croce. It is quite recognisable in the photo – even the news stand and my corner window are visible. It is quite vacant and derelict, the TV aerial looks as though it would be connected to a black and white set, the bottom bars of the water gate rusted clean off, the shutters rotting off their hinges. It looks ready to tumble into the Nuove Rio di Ca' Foscari, which will certainly be a hazard to navigation. If I can find a lazy 10 million Euro I should be able to secure it. She really wants it. Another million or four for renovations – just a Venetian tad of rising damp to cure – and we're set. There is even a firm of architects in the adjacent building to supervise the renovations.

And I can't even afford table rental at Quadri's – where does she get these notions!

It's a worry, I'm here to tell you.

But there's another story there as well, to do with this door numbering protocol in Venice. The adjacent building, with the architects, has door number 2 – and that door did not exist in 1900, in the postcard. So when did the door numbering system kick in? There's a little research project to consider. I suspect that it is after Napoleon, because the numbers have not changed where he had a few buildings torn down to create the public gardens between the Piazza and the Grand Canal. We tried to find 1 San Marco, but I don't know that it exists – the closest number we found was No 3, facing the Piazzetta, close to St Theodore's (and the crocodile's) column.

We are quite disconnected from reality here, the World exists in a parallel universe that we're mostly ignoring. I'm not going in search of English language newspapers, which I suspect will be full of the horrible events happening in Gaza – we can pick that up even from the Italian language papers.

There is, of course, the internet. The letter “W” does not exist in Italian, there is no Italian word equating to the English “W”. But even Easy Network has to advertise its web site in case one wishes to stream their audio, and return to the 60's. So one hears “Vou vou vou punto Easynetwork punto ita”. I've yet to visit their web site, but I would expect their home page to be written on paisley pattern wall paper or maybe lime green text on burnt orange background. Technology does abound, but in a discreet fashion, as does advertising. Satellite dishes are common, but all the roof mounted dishes are coloured terracotta. This may be a planning requirement, and there is no outdoor advertising – maybe a small sandwich board in the street, but not much more. We found the same in Rome. Even Maccas has been forced to comply – the Golden Arches look like an “M” in 24 point font.

I've seen technology in the form of a GPS in Venice. The GPS owner was lost, and was asking directions. He'll be given the standard Venetian response – Sempre diritto, straight ahead. Maybe “straight ahead” is designed to reduce the number of visitors – walk straight ahead to Mestre – it's too crowded already here. Summer must be unbearable, standing in line to cross the Rialto.

Venetians have been advising “straight ahead” since Pepin, son of Charlemagne, entered the lagoon in 809, bent on invasion. The Venetians, outnumbered and out-gunned (actually, out-crossbowed), pulled up all the stakes that marked the channels and retreated. Pepin invaded Malomocco, a small island in the lagoon, the then seat of Venetian power, vacated in a hurry by the Venetians. Except one old crone remained, determined to defend Malomocco (or maybe just left behind as too grumpy – the truth not to everyone). History, or at least Morris, records that she was summonsed by Pepin, and asked “Which way to the Rivo Alto” (later to be the Rialto). She advised “sempre diretto”, straight ahead, with quivering finger, towards the unmarked channels, tide races and mud banks of the lagoon. Pepin followed her directions, his fleet was grounded, and his troops slaughtered. The channel running to Malomocco is called the Canale del Orfano, because so many orphans were made that day.

So, when advised “sempre diretto” by a Venetian, take it with a grain of salt – it may not be kindly meant.

12.
Old crones feature not infrequently in the history of Venice – one is credited with ending a revolt by one Biaminti Tiepolo. Biaminti was cheesed off when the Golden Book, the list of notables and persons of clout, was closed (unless one was prepared to buy one's way in), and figured a revolution was the way to resolve his ego problem. His little revolution proceeded towards San Marco, up the Merceria from the Rialto, as far as the intersection with the Merceria and the Calle Capello. A brave show it must have been, drums, standards, shouting, confusion, probably women in furs, dogs of various breeds, the whole box and dice. The revolution was brought to its knees when a mortar was dropped or hurled by said crone from her window, braining Biamintini Tiepolo's standard bearer. Or maybe she just knocked the mortar off her window sill as she leaned out to see what all the fuss was about, or maybe she was just adjusting her flower pots, hanging out the washing, or hurling everything to hand at the revolutionaries – I think I've previously mentioned the concept of “the truth not to everyone”. Confusion reigned, revolution failed, and the episode is immortalised in statuary and inscription. A bust of the famous crone with mortar high on the wall, and a stone let into the pavement marking the point of impact. The stone bears the inscription XV-VI-MCCCX, 15th June, 1310, and you can see it on the left, about 15 metres after you walk under the clock tower towards Rialto.

I suppose that Venetian women of a certain age, clad in fur, take this story to heart. Don't get in their way if they are armed with pestle and mortar. Revolutionary Tiepolo was tortured and then hanged for his trouble, others merely hanged. Do not, on any account mess, with Venetian women.

Lou's into painting, and painters need paint, plus all sorts of other artistic paraphenalia, so we went shopping. We found an artists supplies shop, complete with jars and trays of powdered pigments. I've never seen that before, pigments in the raw. Just add linseed, gum arabic, ox gall or whatever and attack that canvas or fresh frescoe. I suppose that is how Antony Canal, aka Cannaletto, mixed his paints, or had an apprentice mix them for him. A little mercuric oxide (toxic), a little plumbum oxide (ditto), and advertise for a new apprentice. The shop looks as though it has been serving artists for a long time – I fancy I saw an instruction pinned up, “No more paint for Senor Tintorretto unti he settles his account. Same applies for Titian. I don't care if they are painting the Doge's dungeon – NO MORE CREDIT”. But maybe I mis-translated it, and artist's shops are the best fun. For Lou.

I have my revenge by subjecting Lou to the contents of a hardware shop that sells Proxxon machine tools. They are miniatures – reflecting the size of the shed of your average Venetian bloke. Tiny milling machine, drill press, lathe, a buzzer and a band saw that I'd love to take back to Aus. This hardware shop is the best fun. But not automatically fun for Lou.

There's Venice, and then there's Giudecca, that long fish shaped island just south of San Marco. I won't say it's a different country, but I think it might be part of a different city. It is to Venice as Melton is to Melbourne, or Mount Druitt is to Sydney, lacking the post industrial buzz of Yarraville or Ultimo. Like parts of Castello, it retains a working class feel, and one guide book that we have records that some houses on Guidecca did not have indoor plumbing as recently as 1960. At one end of Guidecca, the east, there is the Church of San Gieorgi Maggiore, a magnificent structure designed by Palladio. (Yes, purists, I acknowledge that San Gieorgio is on it's own island). Move west a little and one comes to the Hotel Cipriani, run by the Harry's bar folk, pretty flash with its own dedicated water taxi from San Marco. Move past the Church of the Redentore (Palladio again) and it gets pretty gritty. At the other end, there is the Gothic pile of the Mulino Stucky, once a flour and pasta mill, owned by one Kevin Stucky (or was it Bruce), employing some two thousand people, now converted to a five plus star hotel, with Venice's only rooftop swimming pool. In between, it seems depopulated and desolated. Heavy cranes on the south side, waiting for ships to come and be repaired – except those ships now go to Korea to be repaired. New housing for workers, with the salt already leaching out of the 1970 brickwork, and not the press of people to brush the salt deposits off the face brick. Sorry folks, but that's how La Giudecca seemed to me – I'm sure that in Summer it would be a different story. We found a good bar, but.

Again the engineer in me raises its ugly head, and I work in the area of Water. Otherwise known as sewage treatment. The bathroom equipment shop just over the Ponte de Pugni sells a fine range of sanitary fixtures. The thing I don't understand is how they feel it a need to have fourty nine (yep, count 'em, folks), fourty nine toilet brushes of different configurations in the window. That shop is toilet brush central. They do sump pumps, too, for the acqua alta. Most shops have a barrier they can fix across the doorway, and a sump pump to discharge water that flows past the barrier – the pump discharges back into the street, and you can see them going flat stick when the water is high. Flooding is interesting. I'd expected to see water overflowing from the canals, but water just rises out of the drains in a most discreet fashion, creating ever-expanding puddles.

Food and hints for travellers.
I've not attempted to do a trip report, rather a written ramble around my head, while my head is in Venice. However, some recommendations.
In Rome, have a meal at Le Tamerici, which is near the Trevi Fountain. Vicolo Scavolino 79, uphill from the Trevi, take via del Lavatore, and first left. Think 120 Euro for two, and we ate there twice in three days. They have a web site, www.letamerici.com. Best food we have eaten in all Italy, ever, and was one of the reasons we went to Rome this time. We were served by one Kate, who hails from the Hunter Valley ioin Aus, a girl of good humour. (“Would you recommend the pork or the duck?” “Don't ask me, I'm a vegetarian.”)
In Rome, the bar called “The Glass”, Via Carlo Battisti, left side as you go downhill. It looks very cool and expensive – but it's not.
La Bitta in Calle Lunga San Barnaba, Dorsoduro, is a good place to eat – they don't do fish. On the left as you walk west from Campo San Barnaba.
The bar, Ai Artisti in Campo San Barnaba, is fun, and the staff get to know you quickly.
Fabio Bressanello, Calle Lunga San Barnaba, Dorsoduro 2751 sells photos, which is a complete understatement. He's brilliant, some of the most evocative images of Venice and the lagoon that I've ever seen. Limited edition photos, printed on good paper, four colour offset for the technically minded, registration of the print is perfect. Pleasant guy, we talked for half an hour about photography, printing, selling stuff. www.bressanelloartstudio.com is worth a look.
The shop just west of him sells linen, and the woman who runs it is most charming.
Glass – try L'Isola, Salizada San Moise, San Marco 1468 (Salizada San Moise runs west of the Piazza.) This is the showroom for glass by Carlo Moretti, and not cheap. However, you can buy work there that you won't see anywhere else, except in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in NY, and the designs are spectacular. Expect to shell out 70 Euro for a glass that you'll use and treasure forever. www.lisola.com. He does mail order, for when you smash the treasured glass and can't live without it.
Paper – try Legatoria Polliero, Campo dei Frari, San Polo 2995.
Nice green grocer with good smile – Fondamenta San Basillio, Dorsoduro, near the church of San Sabastiano. He's fun, even if you just buy an apple and munch it in the sun on the Zattere.

Gondolas have a list price of 80 Euro for the first 40 minutes, plus 40 Euro for each additional 20 minutes. Charge may increase with additional passengers – I'm not sure. But traghettos, which cross the Grand Canal, cost 50 cents each way, and can save a lot of walking. It is de rigeur to stand up, and when embarking, walk to the farthest end of the gondola, and turn around. Dogs travel free – the Golden Retriever on the Ca' Rezonnico traghetto yesterday seemed to enjoy the voyage, but then, they are water dogs.

A 12 hour Waterbus pass costs 14 Euro, and must be the best bargain available anywhere.

MacDonalds. A Big Mac, Fries and Coke will set you back 7.60, but I'm not about to pass through the Golden Arches. Maccas are pleased to call this a Happy Meal, surely an oxymoron, up there with “friendly fire”, “military intelligence” and “fun run” on the oxymoron league table.

Hint for travellers – navigation in Venice is tricky. (Oh, derr, tell us something we don't know.) I've found that the maps, and more importantly the street index in the Moleskine Venice City Notebook to be the most useful, and it is pocket sized. The maps cover all of Venice proper, but not the Lido or Murano. It's a guidebook that you write yourself – there is not much other info, but it serves to scribble notes in, and makes a great memento. The best water bus route map is one you get when you buy tickets – most guide book maps are too small to read. Another hint for travellers – bring a copy of Venice by James Morris, if you are interested in the odd, the quirky, the unusual. Like dead elaphants, of which more later.

I know I keep banging on about food, but one does have to eat three times a day, approx. I'd expected fresh food to be expensive (I'm not sure why I expected this, but there you go). So I thought a list of things would be good.
Wine – you can buy drinkable wine for 4 Euro a bottle, and it will be better than Australian generic wine – Jacob's Creek, for example. Spirits – vodka, Baileys, etc – are about Euro 10.00 a bottle.
Meat – Red meat is expensive. Good quality minced beef plus pork is Euro 9.90 a kilo. It makes good ragu for spag Bol, and is good value.
Here's an interesting one – chicken livers are about Euro 6.90 a kilo, indicating that they are not treated as awful offal, as they are in Aus.
Chicken breast fillet – say Euro 7.00 a kilo, which is about AUD 14.00 – almost the same as in Melbourne.
Bread – Euro 3.20 per kilo, and it is sold by weight.
Mussels – about 3.00 a kilo, but more exotic crustacea cost more – and are worth every cent. Razor clams are excellent, 12.00 a kilo, and are live.
Can't comment on eel.
Tripe costs more than chicken – what we Aussies see as un-saleable, Venetians see as special.
Glass of wine and a little roll, a panini, about 4.50, taken at the bar.
Vegetables are about the same as in Melbourne, except for exotics. Potatoes and carrots – two Euro a kilo, tomatoes 3.50, radiccio 3.90, parsley thrown in for free. All in all, we find that we are spending not much more on food than we would in Melbourne.
There is less fast food – or less conventional fast food – than some places. A micro McDdonalds, a modest Burger King. Fast food is slices of pizza, with a thin crust and not much cheese, excellent.
Coffee and croissant – costs Euro 2.10, taken at the bar at our local. Expect to pay 3.40 if you want to have a table. But just a coffee at the Bar Americano at San Marco will set you back 2.00. It all depends on location – or maybe they think that Americans are loaded. You don't see people toting take away coffees, the cappucino grande, beloved of Hudsons or Starbucks. If you want a coffee to go, drink it at the bar quickly, unless you come from an adjacent shop or gondola, in which case take cup, saucer and all. I'd love to know if Starbucks ever attempted a coffee shop in Venice. It might have seen patronage from visitors, but Italians would never go there. A bar selling just coffee – coffee in buckets – and no alcohol would fail the morning it opened in Italy.

Eating out is not a killer. We ate well last night – a shared entree, plus two main courses (we both had the pork shank) plus a shared dessert and bottle of wine – 65 Euro, including service, bread, tablecloth. The same meal in Melbourne would cost AUD 120, so it seems good value. A five Euro tip seemed completely justified. However, I would recommend never to order the Ensalada Verde, the green salad. Grated carrot atop ordinary lettuce. Don't go there – it's a waste of money.

All in all, food is fun, as is buying it. Our favourite geeengrocer smiles and corrects Lou's pronunciation, and enquires whether the potatoes are for gnochi or not. On being told “not”, he directs us to the appropriate spuds, and there's an Italian lesson thrown in free gratis. The butcher wants to know if the mince is for ragu, and then points to the best. The whole process from recipe book to table is an adventure, creating relationships along the way.

Just stumbled across your impressions; what an enjoyable read.
Eight weeks in Venice sounds just wonderful!

Oh, you are taking me back! (wistful look as I close my eyes!)

magnifico, pietro,

reading this is having to do service as today's italian lesson as a heavy cold has confined me to barracks.

so grazie mille.

as you are a collector of the curious, you may be interested in a little shop on the way to another supermarket [coop this time I seem to remember] round the back of san bartolomeo. it is [I think] easiest to get to if you exit campo san bartolomeo via the public toilets, and then follow the little streets east, over the rio d. fava, then turn north. what you are looking for is a shop selling hand-made shoes - my favourites were the gondolas and the feet! no prices - if you need to ask, you can't afford them.

looking forward so much to your next installment,

regards, ann

Hi Peter, there is a little shop somewhere near the Rialto Bridge (from memory) called Il Papiro, it is a gorgeous shop and the only reason I mention it is that they have another shop in de Greves Lane in Melbourne.

I first visited Il Papiro in Melbourne some years ago and stopped dead in my tracks last June when I stumbled across this gorgeous little shops in Venice.

They have very cute bookmarks with an assortment of little drawings at the top and the words &quot;here I fell asleep&quot; printed down the length of the bookmark. They are quite inexpensive if you are looking for little keepsakes or gifts to take home.

Apparently the main store is in Florence, but I've not come across it there.

Sorry, forgot to say that they also sell beautiful stationery and leather bound journals.

What a good read! Who have you chosen to play the parts of you and Lou, in the forthcoming movie? Hugh and Nicole??

This section tickled my fancy, but leads to a question:

&quot;the operator's cabin telescopes down by a metre, allowing clearance under the bridges. I saw this happen this morning - ingenious&quot;

Does the operator lie on the deck, or telescope also??

This is the best &quot;report&quot; ever! Can't wait for the next installment. Thanks!

Peter, please buy 1 Santa Croce for Lou. There will be so much for you to write about during the renovation and we will all promise to read every word.

we might even chip in for the pleasure of keeping you writing to us!

Enjoy the reading very much, thank you.

Here's anothe chunk. More dross from the end of my pen.
14.
We're not really doing the sights here, but we're spending time seeking out the strange and unusual, like the Corte del Teatro, site of the first screening of a movie in Venice, on 9th June, 1896. We've visited San Marco for Mass, the odd Palladian church, checked out the monster equestrian statue. We saw an exhibition of engravings from about 1700, scenes of Venice. A syndicate of engravers did them, the lead man doing the architectural details, and others putting in people, animals, boats and so on. The lead man was acknowledged as being not good at people, so subbed the work out. They were devised as a promotional set of about 30 sheets, to lure the tourists, so the Doge Palace, the equestrian statue of Colleoni, San Marco, the Torre dell Orologio all feature (including a view of the Piazza from said clock tower). The bell ringing would have been deafening while the sketches were being made.

One engraving took our fancy – a view of a canal, the Rio del Mendicianti, hospital to east side, a boat repair yard, a squero, to the west. In 1700, the squero was a mud bank with boats drawn up. We found it, and the squero is still there, albeit concrete paved with a small slip. Boat builders mostly came from the alps, and I suppose the Venetians were better with stone and brick than with timber. The architecture of the squero reflects the alpine heritage, timber buildings, vertical timber cladding, where's Heidi the cowherd. The name “squero”, or rather the nick-name comes from the square, as in carpenter's square. There are many streets all over Venice named “squero” - it was a big industry here. Only a couple of squero remain now, and I've sought them out, as I've messed about in boats a bit.

A canal, the Rio del Santissimo di S Stefano, passes clean under the church of that name, and a kayak would be fun. There's a nice conjunction – the roof of the church is a “ships keel” roof, and most spectacular. It mirrors, in a way, the fact that a canal runs under the high altar, an upturned ships hull over the canal. We sought out the cloister of San Stefano, now occupied by a government department, Taxation, I believe, so accordingly fraught and tense. As was Pordeonone, who went about his work armed with a fistfull of paintbrushes and a sword when he painted a series of Biblical frescoes in the building. His bitter rival, and possibly the losing bidder for the Works, Titian, was in the habit of harassing him as he worked. I suppose this anticipated the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, by a few centuries, and Pordeonone possibly wished for a nice little hand gun, a Beretta maybe, being a patriotic Italian.

San Stefano has clearly seen its share of angst. The Church has been de-consecrated five times, evidence of power strruggles between the Vatican and Venice, or perhaps just bad behaviour. And there has clearly been some innapropriate behaviour outside the church doors, too. The stone plaque, dated 20th June 1663 (I love the precision engraved into the stone tablet), advises that it is forbidden to gamble, set up stands, sell things or blaspheme in the vicinity. Transgressors risk banishment, the galleys, or a period in stir.

I've found the church of San' Antonin, but it's been de-consectrated and is closed. Morris records that, in 1819, an elephant, having escaped from a visiting managerie, took refuge in that church, and was “only despatched with a shot from a piece of ordnance”, according to contemporary records. The main doors open towards the Rio de San Agostino, no doubt allowing easy removal of the unfortunate animal. The Church is just around the corner from the Calle della Morte, not a dead end street, and probably not imortalising the death of the elephant. One wonders who died – maybe it was a plague thing. The church is close to the Arsenale, and so ordnance was conveniently to hand, even after Napoleon had looted the place. Hemingway records a duck shooting expedition on the lagoon, with a grumpy boatman smashing the ice to float decoys, but I doubt if even Ern, big game hunter as he was, came equipped with an elephant gun to Venice. Times change, and the elephant attraction has been replaced with a merry-go-round and set of dodgem cars on the Riva degli Schiavoni, just down the way from the Danieli, Ernest's preferred hotel.

There are other sights, micro sights. We witnessed the Fire Department at work, raising a sunken motor boat from a canal. Drag boat to surface, pump faster than water flows in until freeboard is obtained. I think this was more a public service than a favour to the unfortunate owner – a sunken boat may play havoc with navigation. Pity about the outboard motor – it'll need a trip to the nearby squerro.

Another sight is artisans at work, and one can linger at shop windows and workshops. Workers painting gondolas, which have to be slipped and cleaned and anti-fouled about once a month, as marine growth is fierce in the lagoon. Skilled restorers touching up antiques, including a four drawer chest, with fine inlaid pearl shell. We've watched the progression through the drawers, and now he is onto the carcasse. We passed his shop this morning and he was on the telephone, and I'm sure it was a bakelite job. His assistant is carefully restoring the paintwork on an old bench, being careful to preserve the patina.

It's wet, umbrella time, and I'm almost inclined to wear safety glasses. The combination of fur clad woman plus umbrella equals Peter might have to learn Braile. Children are the same the world over. Little girls chatter and carry pink umbrellas. Little boys jump in puddles. The thing that amazes me is how the kids can speak such good Italian. They are totally brilliant, dressed to kill. I can see how Italian women are so well dressed – they have been working at it since birth, if not conception. I don't think they would even own a polyester track suit, much less wear it in public.

Dorsoduro, where we live, is close to the Academe and sundry other University campuses (campii, maybe, to call up my poor schoolboy Latin. I remember amo, amas, amat, amamus, amartant, amant. The balance is lost in a haze of detentions and other punishments). We are surrounded by students, and they make for a lively environment, along with book shops to die for. Shops are shuttered at lunch time, and at night. I don't believe this is a crime prevention thing, it would seem the shutters are intended to provide a canvas for graffiti. There are more political slogans, “Bush = War', and less street art than in inner Melbourne, probably a higher class of graffitisti. “The medium is the message”, to quote Marshall McCluhan, and the medium is a closed shutter and spray can. Many closed shutters, but it still pains me to see graffiti on a 500 year old church – go find a blank shutter. I get the impression that people are more politically connected, and we witnessed a political rally with as many as say, oh, at least fifteen people in attendance. There was a hammer and sickle flag – talk about a blast from the past!


15.
Venice is reputed to be pretty much free of crime. Doubtless there's the odd pickpocket, and I could imagine the pickings are rich in Summer, when the crowds are dense. Maybe there's the occasional hand bag vendor out-sprinting the police, but the feeling is one of safety. Goods are left beside the canal for a few hours – pallet loads of product – cases of Johny Walker, barrels of Heineken, protected by no more than shrink wrap. I've taken a walk in the small hours, down twisting alleys and dead ends, and had no apprehension. At the Bridge of Breasts, so named because it was a place favoured by courtesans, there are no working girls to be seen. Even in the Rio Terra degli Assassini, there's no fear of a stilletto in the ribs. Fear of the stilletto in the instep is another thing – don't get me started on Italian women's shoes.

The names of streets and lanes are evocative. The Alley of the Curly Headed Woman, the Alley of the Love of Friends or of the Gypsies, The Filled In Canal of Thoughts, The Broad Alley of the Proverbs, The First Burnt Alley, the Street of the Monkey or of the Swords, the Alley of the Blind, The Bridge of the Honest Woman (perhaps a scarcity in Venice at the time?).

In the meantime, I've lost Lou, she's disappeared into an identity crisis of her own making, by enrolling in a short course of Italian. When you study a foreign language, you unearth your lack of knowledge of your own language, or at least your lack of formal knowledge of grammar. While Lou is not likely to utter the phrase “Doge Dandolo, he done gone invaded Constantinople”, the structure of irregular verbs and nouns are not her forte, and not mine either. And what tense is the phrase “Dandolo was later to discover that invading Constantinople was not such a smart trick”? Is it the past imperfect, the pluperfect, or what. I don't know. But Lou can now conjugate with the best of them, she's a champ. It's just that she might not know what the verb means.

She's lost so much of her identity that she's not able to mutter the phrase “Look, I'm paying for these bloody lessons, so SPEAK SLOWER, per favore.” Her teacher, despite a seemingly good knowledge of English, refuses to utter a single word in the language of that green and pleasant land, perfidious Albion.

I've started a couple of other threads.
Teenagers in Venice, and Sad Tale in Venice.
Just for interest.

Yet more dribble off my pen!
16.
The Lagoon.
“Sono, sei, siamo Veneziano” (sung to the tune “I am, you are, we are Australian”). But we went to Burano, and they'd never claim to be Venetian – they remain proudly Buranese. Burano is, of course, famous for lace, and the legend is that the women of Burano made lace in imitation of their men-folk who were making fishing nets. I find this a bit far-fetched – the intricacy of the lace makes your average purse sein or drift net look most basic. We saw a lace museum, lace made in Belgium in the 16th century, christening gowns, first communion dresses, Buranese lace. And there was an incomplete work, a sampler, showing the different knots used in Buranese lace – 16 different knots, from memory. Each lace maker specialises in only a couple of knots, and so a piece of work with many different knots will be passed from hand to hand, a community effort. It is not cheap – a fine piece, say A5 plus a bit, will cost about one thousand Euro. We saw such a piece being created, by a woman who must have been about 80, wearing glasses as thick as a milk bottle. The work is slow, and there must be hundreds of hours of work in that A5 piece, which possibly explains the quite hard sell that we experienced, having us in mind of the handbag (Gucci, guaranteed) sellers.

Burano is like a country town, tiny houses, painted brightly, so that fishermen could find their way home through the fog, so I am told, and not a fur clad woman to be seen. The dogs on Burano seem a tougher breed than their Venetian counterparts, as they go about their business without the benefit of coats in Burberry pattern. Lagoon sized fishing boats abound, fully kitted for dredging shellfish, an ingenious drum screen on board, electrically driven, to reject both oversized and undersized shell fish, which would explain why the clams that we buy are so regular in size. Fishing nets strung up, being dried and mended, floats, buoys, styrene boxes, rope, all the marine paraphanelia one could imagine. A “Service Station” beside the canal sells diesel fuel oil at 1.15 per litre, unleaded 1.18.

The inclination to the south on the San Martino Vescovo campanile rivals the tower at Pisa, and when it falls, it will surely put the adjacent soccer pitch out of action for months. One can only hope there is not a game in progress at the time. Doubtless Buranese mothers have been warning their sons of the danger of the falling campanile for several centuries. Buranese males, like Buranese dogs, being of an independent streak, will have been ignoring the warnings for the same period.

One could imagine that Venice hangs as a pendulum from the rail bridge, the Ponte della Liberta from Mestre, suspended in the lagoon, surrounded by Murano, the Lido and Giudecca, with Burano and Torcello away in the lower 40, and not much else. There are many other islands, some inhabited, others not. The ferry to Burano takes one close to Polviera, a tiny island, or two islands, one containing just a heap of bricks, the other a three story building, mostly ruined, that covers almost the entire island. None of the guide books I've found recounts its history, and one can't help but wonder what its story has been. Away off in the northern lagoon is Sant' Ariano, once a thriving community and suburb of Torcello, which in its day was bigger than Venice. It is now a bone house, an Osseria, as the bones from San' Michelle would be taken there once their allotted time was up, a practice dating from 1575 and finishing in the 1950's. I'm not all that keen to go there.

Erasmo and Vignole are just off the tip of Castello, Vignole barely two kilometres from San Marco, and both islands are market garden islands. The No 13 ferry will get you there, and the land area of the two islands is greater than Venice. The tranquil island of San Francisco del Deserte near Burano still contains a monastery of the Franciscan Order, and a church built in 1228. St Francis was shipwrecked here in 1219 for his troubles, returning from the East where he had been engaged in evangelizing Muslims, with minimal success, one imagines.

La Grazia, half a mile from Giudecca, used to be a hospice for pilgrims going to the Holy Land, in the days when the Venetians organised it most thoroughly like travel agents, as Islamic countries do the Haj to Mecca in these days. The Venetians had multi-lingual greeters at San Marco, directing the pilgrims to La Grazie, probably not mentioning that it lay right beside the Canal of the Orphans, and taking a kick back from the tour operators. Nothing changes in Venice – I heard the multi lingual waiter outside a restaurant near San Marco greet a party of Japanese with “Konichi-wa”. La Grazie had a Gothic Church, which Napoleon requisitioned as a powder magazine, and which was destroyed in the revolution of 1848 when someone lit a match inside.

Mazzorbo, just beside Burano and connected by footbridge, was big in its day. In Roman times, the site of a shrine to the god Belanus, and its name means “major urbis”, “big town”. The Mazzorbo customs controlled entry of trade from Germany, indeed most of Eastern Europe and there was a series of particularly flash convents and monasteries, five in all, particularly rich, inhabited by particularly racy nuns. Palaces lined the canal, and merchants made it comfortable. In the mid 1700's, eight campaniles still stood there, probably demolished since and the bricks recycled.

Malaria, silting of canals, and the rise of the Rialto exchange did for Mazzorbo, as it did for Torcello. By the eleventh century, the place was in decline, and the citizens mostly decided to emigrate. They took their houses with them, loaded into barges stone by stone, to Venice, where they were re-erected near the Rialto. One wonders if they were considered trailer trash by the Venetians. Mazzorbo now contains the cemetery for Burano, some modern housing in a style that could be called “functional-brutalist meets Victorian Ministry of Housing”, and not a great deal else. A few gardens, a little trattoria, that's it, a rather melancholy it, a thousand years after its greatness. There are many vacant houses, and you think “At some time, someone spent the night in that house, and nobody has slept there since”. It sends a slight shiver down the spine.

We travelled across the lagoon as calm as glass, channel markers standing like old sentinels. A strange, melancholy feel to the whole environment.

I found the saddest story carved on the facade of the Doge palace. Count six columns (not including the corner column) along the Piazzetta, and on the octagonal capitol to the column there is a tale in eight parts, the first part facing the Piazzetta, and proceeding clockwise.

A girl greets a man from her window, Romeo and Juiet in stone.
They meet
She professes her love of him
They are wed.
They are seen in bed.
A baby is born, a son.
He is seen standing between his proud parents.
The last scene shows them burying him.

I can't help but think the mason was telling his own story, it is so touching. It is a story five hundred years old, and still can move one today.

The figures are less than a hand span high, just the right size for such an intimate account, and yet such a universal tragedy.




17.
You will see “Ticket Restaurant” on doors. This means that the establishment has been forced to subscribe to a system that must make the Mafia green with envy. Here's how it works.
A company, say Mister Tickets, prints booklets of vouchers, with a face value of say five Euro per voucher.
Employer buys vouchers from Mister Tickets, probably for the face value less a discount.
Employer gives vouchers to employees as part of their salary – but it won't be taxed.
Employee hands over a voucher instead of cash at Ticket Restaurant when buying lunch – or at Billa when buying groceries.
Restaurant collates tickets into a say 5000 Euro package and then claims money back from Mister Ticket.
Mister Ticket pays restaurant after 90 days – less a whacking discount, say 12.5% for one restaurant that we know. Billa would be on a lesser discount, but I don't know how much.
Winners - the employer, the employee, and Mister Ticket.
Loser – the restaurant, by 12.5%, and taxation revenues.
It is a licence to print money, but the restaurant has no choice but to go along and accept the tickets - otherwise they lose significant patronage. There is a bit of a scandal in Italy about this system – there are many millions of tickets being presented each day. Someone's printing money.

However, one would not dare to present a ticket at the Rialto Market.
This morning we were up early, for us, at 6:30, and headed off to the Rialto market to watch the fish being unloaded – we should have been earlier, there is so much action. Such a variety, shark, shellfish, trout which looked farmed, as they were all of a size, crabs, tuna, sardines, flounder, squid, scampi, octopus and very few oysters, which I suspect are very expensive. Even when fish were in their styrene boxes, they looked beautifully arranged, and no frozen fish.

Cruised the butchers shops. There's a butcher who does horse. Horse meat, horse carpachio, horse salami. Vicious thought – take horse salami sandwiches next time you are rostered onto canteen duty at Pony Club. Ouch. I've not seen horse on a Venetian menu, but someone must be buying it, and it's not cheap.

23 January, and we have had a morning taking us from the sublime to the ridiculous. I'll start with the sublime – the Frari Church.
If you only visit one church in all of Venice, the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, aka “the Frari” is it. While the Basilicca is Byzantine, the Frari is pure, soaring, spiritual, take your breath away, Gothic. You walk in the front door, and the whole 100 metre long nave is laid out before you, a visual procession. There is a monument to the sculptor, Canova, which is the most achingly beautiful work of art I have seen anywhere. It was created by Canova's pupils, to a design created by Canova, but intended as a monument to Titian. It is simplicity in itself, the figures at human scale, the bronze door into the sepulchure where Canova's heart rests in an urn is invitingly ajar. The angel and lion of Venice are both mourning, and the funeral procession leads to the bronze doors, representing the gap, the space, the ultimate divide between living and dead. You could study the face of the woman carrying the urn for hours. It brings a lump to my throat, a tingle up the spine.

The monument to Titian stands opposite, and shows in bas-relief the painting by Titian, the Assumption of the Virgin, that stands over the altar. Titian died of the plague, and always wished to buried in the Frari. At the time, authorities had decreed that plague victims were to be buried in mass graves. A rare exception was made for Titian, and he's buried in the Frari, as a genius ought be.

Titian painted a madonna for the Pesaro family in 1509, which hangs in the Frari. There are both Saints, and members of the Pesaro family in the painting. The faces are all turned to the Madonna, except St Peter, who is looking at Jacopo Pesaro, Titian's patron, who kneels to give thanks. And also, Lunardo Pesaro, who gazes outwards towards the viewer, almost in a way confronting the viewer, challenging the viewer. “Well, are you going to look at the Madonna, or are you going to look at me”. He inherited the family fortune, and looks as if he knows it is coming his way.

Another thing in the Frari Church is the Nativity. It is fascinating – an Italian village with animated figures, with the village coming to life, chooks being fed, a man fishing, knife grinder at work, plus sound effects. I liked it – little kids would be fascinated, and you enter the chapel by the side door closest to the campanile, which is presently having some seriously heavy restoration. The movement of the campanile is being tracked, with an accuracy of one hundredth of a millimetre. These buildings are being cherished.

Now the ridiculous – or at least the strange.
Riduculous / Strange No 1. In the Frari church, on the left hand side, past the Canova monument, past the monument with the four huge Negro gentlemen to a deceased doge, one Doge Giovanni Pessaro, 1669 (described in my Rough Guide as surely the most grotesque monument in the city, “a German sculptor called Melchiorre Barthel must take the blame”) there is a small unexploded bomb mounted on the wall. It fell in February 1918 on the Frari, and failed to detonate. I assume it's been disarmed.

Riduculous / Remarkable No. 2. Canova was honourary President of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.

Ridiculous / Bizarre No 3. Canova's heart rests in the monument to him in the Frari, most of his body at Possagno, and his right hand is somehwere in the Academia.

Ridiculous / Riduculous No 4. Venice has suffered a small invasion, maybe a pre-carnivale thing, of German and Swiss brass bands. There is a distinct lack of spit and polish with these bands. Think a band dressed with masks in the shape of wolves heads, gents in dresses with cleavage that makes the Grand Canyon look like a suburban gutter, folk with the hairiest legs – thshe barely tanned hide of polyvinylchlorides, purple wigs, Neanderthals, Wassail, Viking horn hats, the whole insane get-up. They numbered about three hundred, and thumped, drummed and blew their way along the Riva Schiavoni, through the Piazza, as far as Campo San Maurizo. A fine show indeed – some of them looked like Hells Angels with trumpets and tambourines.

They did some excellent reggae music, and then gave a fine rendition of the March of the Corriedors from Carmen. One wonders what Bizet would have thought. One also wonders what the Korean tourists though of them – if I'd been asked, I'd have had to say that it was a traditional religious festival, instituted by Doge Pantaloon.

Venice has been divided on clan lines, the Nicolotti and the Castellani, for centuries, millenia. The Nicolletti are from Dorsoduro, San Polo and Santa Croce – I'm not a little proud to be a member, albeit a most temporary member, of the Nicolotti. The Castellani are from Cannaregio, San Marco and Castello, and, sad to say, must be regarded as a most inferior lot. I think this might re-open the matter of fist fights on the Ponte de Pugni, but there you go, can't be helped. No edged weapons or firearms, concealed carry or otherwise, commence on the last stroke at noon of the Santa Maria Carmini campanile. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, 12 and open hostilities. I mean, we Nicolotti have the Frari and the Venice prison. What have the poor Castellani got? San Marco and the Arsenale. I rest my case – there's no need to fight after all.

But there's a greater fault line running through all Italy, greater than the conflict between Communist and Christian Democrats, greater than Montagu vs Capulet,a fault line of geological proportions, making the San Andreas Fault in California look like a minor crack in the bitumen. I speak, of course, about the Campari / Aperol fault. One is either a Campari man, or an Aperol man. It is similar, for Australians, being a Fosters man, or a Tooheys man (God forbid). This raises a problem. I am a Campari man, and Lou has declared a liking for Aperol. I think our marriage can survive this schism, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. For insurance, I put a slug of vodka in her Aperol - “In Vino, Veritas”.

bless you peter s aus

You have made me very happy reading this post..

Go, Pete...

Passed your Burke and Wills yesterday - I was in Melbourne for a little bit of tennis, and Australia Day.

Talking of Mr Ticket - you haven't kidnapped Mr Cricket, have you? The one masquerading here is a very pale shadow.

Bloody hot here, though!