Saturday in Venice. 20111022

20101022 Saturday in Venice Not to get too cocky, but i can get around without a map in SanMarco. Right at the moon, left at the green bra, bear to the left past the "cleaning in progress", quick right into the closet, left around the dead end electrical box, over the bridge, I see a slash of white through the canyon...La FENICE! Beside being a splotchy red mess, and unable to walk for hours a a time, all is good. I was attacked by one lone mosquito on my first night here. You know, that buzz in your ear being swatted away, drifting off, she's back, ferocious swatting now, more buzz, all the lights on, climbing over the dresser to smash bits of wispy black into that padded wall, finally silence, dark, drifting, BUZzZZZZZbuzz.... I have about ten bites on my face; cheeks, bridge of nose, forehead, and a nice puffy red eyelid. A natural conversation stopper.
Today I was at the palace of the Doges early to beat any lines. It was cold clear and crisp. I hobbled my little route knowledgeably and as swiftly as i could, puffy eyes to the ground, and swept the corner round to the quay as a cruise ship was coming in. Towering over the flotilla of gondolas, the scale is immense. The wind was up, the chop was on, the crowds were already starting. Doges was palatial, is, was, a palace. Room after room of gilded ceilings, carvings, sculptures, paintings on very inch of surface, balconies and verandas, courtyards. Not as moving as the basilica, commerce and law rarely are, but impressive in it's magnitude. I sat in a couple of the rooms, and contemplated some of the larger pieces. The tour groups were starting to crowd me, so I maybe left sooner than I would have expected to. Off to the glass making island of Murano. In hyper shopper form, I bought a glass lampshade, had it packed, and brought it to the post office in my first twenty minutes on the island. I have no idea if I'll actually get it, or even receive it in one piece. The insurance and shipping from the store would have made the price prohibitive, and I'm sensing a racket. I wish i had taken a picture of it, so I could at least have that as a memory for posterity. Oh well, if it arrives in bits, maybe Marilyn could show me how to do mosaics.... I wandered into shops, bought a few momentos, went to the glass museum, had lunch. It was my favorite weather, sunny, windy and cool. Not many people. The vaparetto ride also did the whole outside turn of Venice, past a more industrial area and neighborhoods you could imagine the plainer people lived. Italy, plain? A place where tall thin, spa-ed, gilded and coiffed individuals, wearing ten of thousands of euros on their bodies did not live.
Back to the city, I then went to the accadmie, a museum of mostly medieval and renaissance paintings so lustrous that I wanted to cry. This was another space I could visit every day for a year to meditate on one piece a a time.
Now because I know some of the back doors, I was able to walk fr. The accademie back to la FENICE. I stopped in palazzo piazza pissina (I get all those things mixed up) San stefano, and took a table in the late afternoon sun at a cafe to just enjoy the space and watch the people. A pear vanilla gelato chocolate sauce extravagance in front of me. Happy. Quick hop into "another" paper marbler. Hotel. Nap. Waken. Terrace. Breath. Church Bells. CNN.