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The sky is blue once more. The weather has been exceptional so far this trip – apart from our first night in Como when we were inside anyway – and each day is bluer than the last. It makes Venice look a little more appealing. It must look pretty rank during grey, rainy days. I hope I never get to see that.
This morning I made a second trip to the supermarket. It’s so much easier when you’ve already made a successful foray to repeat the feat. Mind you, it seemed further away than I thought but I did take about half a day the first time.
I needed to buy laundry detergent and fabric softener (among more important things like coffee and milk and sugar). You’d think this would be easy. There’s lots of helpful little symbols on these products that depict what they do. For instance, laundry detergent generally has a number on the front, indicating how many washes it will do before you need to buy more. No problem with that then. Softener, on the other hand, is not so simple.
I bought some in Como but I knew the brand, making it very simple but the COOP has all its own stuff. I stood staring at various bottles and tried to decipher the indecipherable. Eventually I gave up and returned without the softener. Scratchy clothes won’t kill us for a few days. The oddest thing was that they didn’t appear to have any sugar. I have no idea what that is about.
Today we went off to see the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. This marked our first real sight in Venice and what a great start. Peggy collected a lot of very important modern artworks in the early years of the 20th century and eventually had them hanging in her palazzo in Venice. This palazzo now houses her collection, some pieces hanging in the same place that she had them.
The garden in Peggy's house
If you like modern art, this place is brilliant. If you don’t understand how anyone could consider a lot of black lines against a white background could be art, then it wouldn’t be for you! I loved it. Mirinda took advantage of the talking stick so she could learn a lot more about some of the pieces. I also bought the collection catalogue which has a piece on everything in the collection which will be very handy about now…
It’s hard to pick a favourite but I really liked The Break of Day by Paul Delvaux. It features four naked women not looking at anything in particular but gesturing in interesting ways. The lower halves of their bodies are tree trunks, ending in roots planted in the ground. There is a tiny male in the painting, a long way in the distance, clothed in a suit, rushing somewhere. The picture, overall, has a mythological air but Delvaux insisted this wasn’t the case. The image is very haunting. (I found this one online as, obviously, I was unable to take a photo at the gallery.)
The Break of Day by Paul Delvaux
We spent a good couple of hours wandering around the pieces and wound up having a coffee in the café before spending some money in the museum shop. We then left for the glass shop we spotted on our first night in Venice and bought a few things we quite fancied.
We then decided to have lunch. We were going to visit S Maria della Salute which is closed from 12 to 3 so we could waste an hour over a salad and beer. Which we did. Very pleasant. One of the great things about Venice is that you never tire of people watching. You can’t really because there are just so many.
Our lunch view
Having eaten, we wandered around the edge of the grand canal to discover that the church was closed for the day because they had to clean up after the pope! A lot of disappointed people littered the steps in front and Mirinda said “Ok, we tried, but that’s it” and we left them to it.
At the end of the point of land there stands a big white statue of a young boy holding a frog in one hand by the leg. He is bigger than life size and very, very white. When we spotted him the other night, he was inside a glass box but during the day when the box is removed, he has his own guard. What an odd job. He is constantly waiting for the errant tourist stupid enough to reach out and touch his charge. He’s the one in the uniform.
The very white lad and his bodyguard
I’m wondering why the pope has to have a red carpet laid out inside the church. Stones and tiles are good enough for the poor wretches who pray and give money so he can exist and yet he gets the carpet. What does that say about the church? Jesus entered Nazareth on an ass and they threw down palm leaves. Clearly it’s more important that god’s representative on earth needs to do a little bit better. I wonder why the pope doesn’t do something more Christian, like give it all up and follow the path set out by Jesus.
I annoyed Mirinda with my opinions on organised religion until we found a lovely Italian cake shop where we purchased two delicious almond tarts for our afternoon tea.
Dinner was interesting tonight. We wandered off in a new direction, towards the station. The further we walked, the more dismal everything became. We decided to sit in a place that had menus in three languages. We had read in a guide book that we should beware these sorts of places but we just had to experience it to be sure. We are now sure. If a menu has more than two languages, avoid the restaurant like the plague!
The problem with a lot of places in Venice is that they are not concerned with repeat customers. Because of this they can treat you however they want. They will always have the next bunch of tourists eating there the next night. They have a captive customer base. That seemed to be the problem with the place tonight. Still, it made some interesting people spotting.
Where we sat, opposite a building site, an alley went off towards a canal. We actually assumed it went to a canal because it had a bend and we couldn’t see where it ended but two things gave it away. The fact that most roads in Venice end in a canal and it was very smelly.
From this alley emerged a group of six people in the oddest assortment of clothes. From fur coats and gloves to a woollen beanie and a corset. The entire group smelled of moth balls, as if a group of kids had taken a load of old clothes out of the attic to play dress ups. We dubbed them the Canal People, just because they had come from that direction and they could possibly have emerged from one dressed for a night out – like zombies let off their leashes. They wandered up and down the street and, eventually, settled down near us.
Sitting at the next table to us were an odd couple. I’m pretty sure they were German but they looked like chavs. He wore white tracksuit bottoms and a white training top. She looked like she just stepped off a train from Essex. Interestingly she had ordered a litre of beer and he seemed to be drinking water. In a strange twist of fate, he looked like David Beckham and she looked nothing like Posh.
I’m pretty sure they were German (or Austrian or Swiss) but could only sort of hear them. Anyway, they ended up with an awful lot of food which we figured they hadn’t actually ordered. She was also pretty slow drinking the beer (the glass was bigger than her head) so we figured this was a mistake as well.
My reason for assuming they had the wrong order was the fact that we didn’t exactly get what we ordered. Mirinda’s veal cutlet was a schnitzel and my calzone was a pizza. They tasted fine and we ate them but it’s hardly the point. The waiter wrote the orders down. Could he not read his own writing? Or was it one of those places where you can order whatever you like but they decide what you’ll have regardless.
It turned out the Canal People were, in fact, not zombies but Spaniards who spoke only their own language and the restaurant staff that spoke every language BUT Spanish. There ensued a wonderful bit of improvised food ordering with the old geriatric waiter who didn’t seem to speak any language at all. It seems the only word they could all agree on was calamari. It should come as no surprise then that when their food arrived it was all calamari. One of them (the woman with the massively oversized lower face) was suddenly all confused and bemused as if she’d suddenly forgotten what calamari was. Eventually she accepted a bowl and ate it. Her jaw was really very big.
Meanwhile, at the German table, they were approached by one of the very annoying flower sellers. These guys shove a bunch of roses in your face and mumble something which I can only imagine means “Would you like to buy a beautiful red rose for your lady love?” but which sounds like “Gloomphna?” So this guy approaches the Germans and the Beckham clone looks up, mid-conversation to stare at this strange guy holding out a bunch of flowers to him. There is a short pause and then Beckham holds up two fingers as if asking for two roses. He then returned to his conversation with the woman who was with him.
Meanwhile flower selling guy is fumbling away, trying to separate three flowers (sign language is obviously not his strong suit) which he then extends to Beckham. He stands holding them for a short while and then Beckham finally looks up as if he’s never seen the guy before. He looks mystified, confused. He shushes the guy away. The flower guy is now completely at sea. He has no idea what’s happening. He slowly replaces the roses into the bunch and walks away.
A little while later we saw the flower seller in earnest conversation with a guy who Mirinda thinks is the flower seller pimp. We are pretty sure the German may just have ended up at the bottom of a canal before the night was out. It’s a bit dangerous to mess with these flower seller guys.
Bored with the company, we asked for the bill. Three times. Eventually it came. Begrudgingly I paid. On the way back to the flat we bought ice cream. Now that was nice.
And the moral for today is don’t eat in restaurants that have menus in more than two languages!!!! Just like it said in the guide book.
