Monday Sept. 6: Lost in Venice….Part 1

OK, Blogspot is driving me crazy.  I've tried to do this post twice, and both times it's crashed upon posting for some reason.  So maybe it's too big.  Thus, I've decided to break it into parts.  So.

Our morning started off at 8:30 with a group tour led by a local guide named Elizabetha, a joyously staccato-speaking, wildly-gesturing Venetian.  She marched us--through the intermittent rain--up and down narrow passages between rows of tall old cracked moldy buildings, through Campos and Piazzas of various sizes and over the occasional footbridge spanning a canal.  At intervals we’d halt and be treated to a mini lecture in Elizabetha’s melodious Italian version of English, with lots of body language thrown in.  She was fascinating to watch and listen to; her oratory really was musical, in a “Minute Waltz” sort of way.  Or maybe like the piano solo at the beginning of Billy Joel’s “Angry Young Man.”

This is how goods are transported
in automobile-free Venice.

The Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge



Tom (and graffiti) atop the Rialto Bridge.



Typical narrow alleyway in the shopping
(i.e. tourist) area.

A smaller canal, with a couple enjoying
their pricey gondola ride.

 After about an hour of piazza- and campo-hopping, Elizabetha took us to a Venetian mask shop, Ca’ Del Sol, for a mask-making demonstration by its owner, an equally expressive, very artistic looking Italian who spoke no English.  So Elizabetha translated for him.  That made for some very nice Venetian communication in stereo.  It was like a manic, happy dance.  His shop was a riot of color.  Very nice.

He was showing us how to use
a mask mold.  I just loved his
style: hair, mustache, beret.

A member of our tour group, Scott,
served as a model for the different
styles of masks.

Ca' Del Sol--a beautiful shop!

Next on our schedule was a group tour of St. Mark’s Cathedral.  But when we reached St. Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco), the tide was high, the square was under a couple of inches of water in a couple of spots, they had closed all but one entrance to the cathedral and had cancelled all group tours.  (Question: why didn’t they just put a couple of boards down for people to walk over?)  If we wanted to go in we would have to wait in the loooonnng line with everyone else—about a two hour wait.  Or—there was a way to get to the front of the line that I viewed as dishonest and so I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I couldn’t take cuts like that, when all those unsuspecting people had been waiting in line so very long.  At that moment I realized that my roots seem to be very cut-and-dried, follow-the-rules, northern European.  So Tom and I didn’t see the inside of St. Marks.  Ah well.  Instead we wandered back to the hotel and took a midmorning nap.  Which was probably a good idea because the virus that had been touring our tour bus had reached Tom at this point and he was riding kind of low in the water (an appropriate metaphor for Venice.)