This is primarily a post of pictures, because right after Lisa got sick with the ‘flu, so did John. We both spent the days in our room, which fortunately had a small table with chairs and a couch, sleeping. Lots of tea was drunk, and we barely made it down for breakfast. The last days we made it out for dinner and a lunch in our area.

Very boring.

However! The hotel we stayed at, Cima Rosa Venezia, was exquisite and we would recommend them highly. A 15th century building located right on the Grand Canal, all of their rooms are suites. A superb breakfast is included, and Brittany is an excellent host. A water taxi and bus stand (San Stae) is a 5 minute walk away and the location is a 15 minute taxi ride south east from the Santa Lucia Train Station.

Here’s a look:

We simply must return again, and soon.

Our return was via Marco Polo Airport and we took the water bus directly there from San Stae for 11euros each. It took about 40 minutes and was a lovely way to be on the water (always the best choice in Venice). The bus runs every 30 minutes and no reservation is needed. (At high season I would plan to take a bus at least one run earlier than needed, just in case I can’t board because of crowds.) Once at the airport we walked about 20 minutes to get to the departures area . . . which is HUGE. There is plenty of seating and it’s quite modern.

And thus, with a tinge of regret yet a great deal of fondness, we close our final adventure of 2022.

The short answer is that we’re fortunate beyond words for how well it has turned out. This isn’t actually obvious at first glance. The apartment we’ve moved in to, which we were smitten with at first glance, has turned out to have a couple of almost-literally fatal flaws, to the point where we are moving out early to get to a new place. That story will probably come in more detail later, but the fact that we are packing up everything we own, again, slightly less than 4 months after we did it the last time, is certainly not optimal. Our first trip out of the country was not a resounding success. I mean let’s not kid ourselves, we saw and did some really amazing things, but we were overwhelmed at times in Barcelona and the chaos in the middle of our trip to France left us off-balance even as we tried to salvage the experience (which we did by and large). Certain goals that we set for ourselves and our health are more work-in-progress than mission-accomplished; as anybody’s therapist will tell them, the one thing you are certain to take with you wherever you go is yourself. I remember as a kid I heard “wherever you go, there you are” and thought “well that’s dumb.” Hang on, younger me, it’ll make sense one day. How exactly is it so amazing then?

Shockingly, we’ll explain by telling you a long story. Way back when we were in the planning stages of uprooting our lives and moving to a foreign country, we’d talk about why exactly we wanted to do it. For my (John’s) part, there was this hypothetical story I’d keep going back to. “Whenever we’re in a big city like New York or London or … wherever, you read the paper or Time Out Istanbul or or or … and read about all sorts of amazing cultural events that don’t even make the news. Like, when Lisa surprised me with a trip to New York to see Hamilton while the original cast was still there (<—brag), we dug around in the papers and found a little play that you never heard of outside of the city, called “The Woodsman”, and by golly if it wasn’t one of our most favorite theatrical experiences ever. These things are happening, all the time. We’re always seeing reviews of gallery exhibitions or plays or concerts that are taking place in far-flung corners of the world, and they might as well be in Narnia. How amazing would it be if we could actually go to these things?” Side note: whenever we travel to an English-speaking destination we make a point of rooting around for local theater options; we’ve had fantastic experiences in places like Dublin and London. More stories for another time. Anyway.

A couple weeks ago my news feed brought up a review of an exhibition going on at the British Museum in London, The World of Stonehenge. It sounds absolutely fascinating. Interesting. I mention it to Lisa and we both think it sounds neat. Then, a couple days later, another review pops up: A Century of the Artist’s Studio. It looks really fascinating, if maybe a little brief. The mental tea kettle starts to rattle. Then the dominoes start to teeter: in Oxford at this same time is Pissarro: Father of Impressionism. Now the kettle is whistling. We do some quick checks of the calendar, fiddle with a half-dozen websites and, just like that, we’ve got three days at the end of May where we fly to London, see a couple of amazing exhibitions, hop on the train for a day trip to Oxford to see the Pissarro and just sight-see one of the great universities of the world, then back to London to chomp on a Raphael exhibition at the National Gallery that we didn’t even know was there when we planned the trip. Do you see what I mean? Even now that we’re paying closer attention, a pretty fantastic event was going on that is aligned perfectly with our interests and we’d never have heard about it, but here we are seeing it.

Another story. Lisa likes the beach. Waaaaay more than I do, although I’m coming around. Back in the States we would occasionally try to work out a trip every couple of years to somewhere with decent beaches so we could sun ourselves and splash around a bit. This year, she says she’d like some beach time for her birthday. No problem. Plan A is to head to the Greek islands to hit the Mediterranean, but the truth is we were just there a couple years ago and that trip left a mark (another story for another time) so maybe give that a rest. So instead, right now we’re in the middle of planning a few weeks in the south of France and the Loire valley. We’ll splash around in Nice for awhile, then head up into the center of the country and take a gander at a dozen gorgeously-restored castles and their magnificent gardens.

Oh, and in October we’re taking the Orient Express to Venice to spend a week, and we’re trying to sort out which cities’ Christmas markets we want to visit this year. And when we aren’t hitting the road, we live in a charming European city complete with cobblestone streets and an easy pace to life. Whatever travails we’re going through, bumps in the road or whatever you’d like to call it, the truth of the matter is that we are living exactly the life we’d hoped to be living; we know it, and we’re so so grateful for it.

(April 21-22, 2014)

Tuesday, J was feeling better, so we went out to see some museums. Although we aren’t big fans of ‘modern’ art, the Ca’Pesaro has perfect little gem of a collection. There are some very big names here: Rothko, Warhol, Kandinsky, Calder, Moro, and usually Klimpt. (The latter’s works were all on loan to Milan, dammit.) The collection is divided amongst several rooms, each with a well-edited explanation card that gave each piece good context in both history and within the collection. Turns out that we still aren’t fans of most modern art. But that’s us, I think we’ve seem some of the best now, and we can at least state out opinion with some context to support it.

After that, we walked down to the Scuola di Grande San Rocco and saw the incredible Tintoretto church, often billed as his Sistine Chapel. All of the works in the building are by him, or from his workshop. It is an incredible piece, and one of the best collections of work we saw in our entire trip. They sensibly offer mirrors for people to be able to really examine the ceiling, images from the Last Testament; a smart move I thought. Not to be missed are the gorgeous carvings in wood all around the church depicting virtues and vices. This place is a jewel, and the 1 euro audio tour was absolutely great.

After all of the art, we were feeling a bit peckish, so we stopped into a trattoria in the next campo. Over a nice lunch of pasta with seafood (me) and meat (J), we talked about what we’d seen. We also ended up talking about the masks we’d seen and wanted, and agreed that we didn’t want mass-produced. I expressed the opinion that we might have a hard time finding a place where they *really* make their own masks. (I wasn’t expecting a workshop like the one found in Joan Vinge’s The Snow Queen, but we both wanted the quality that comes from creating by hand, not machine.)

After lunch, we went to the Gallerie Accademia which is described as a treasure trove of Venetian art, only to find that it was basically it was another collection of religious art, and didn’t have much to recommend it. The only highlight were the Titians, they allowed us to finally understand why people found that painter so important. Otherwise this was just really expensive and not that great.

Because it’s Venice, and because I had read about it in so many books (not travel guides), we then went to Harry’s Bar and had a Bellini. At 16.50 euro for each, we definitely had -A- drink.

We were so very close, so we wandered over to San Marco piazza and looked around. Definitely not our scene, but we’re glad we saw it.

As I mentioned, we’d fallen in love with a new kind of mask, done in a steampunk style, but didn’t want to buy something mass-produced. As we were wandering home, we happened to pass by a small mask shop. In the window of which was something that caught our eye. We talked with the owner for awhile, and he showed us pictures of his process of making the item we were interested in, and talked about the process for another one that caught our eye. He was the real deal, and we enjoyed fumbling though a mix of languages to talk art and process with him. It was a nice little gift from the Universe to give me in return for my asking.

Tuesday evening we had our ‘splurge’ dinner at Da’Fiore, which I’ve been told is the most exclusive restaurant in Venice. This was our ‘Il Convivo’ meal, and deliberately different from the very casual places we’d been to otherwise. We had a wonderful time. The architecture is that of a boat, and the service was exquisite. We were given amuse bouches of fried barcallo (codfish) that were delicious. From there we went on to pasta — wide green noodles with clams and mussels for me, a cream-based ‘gratin’ for J. J had sliced beef with mashed potatoes for his main, and I went a little retro and had their deep-fried oysters in spicy sabayon sauce. J’s was gorgeous and definitely the best beef we’d had to date. My oysters were delicious, but too rich, and I only had half of them. I drank a delicious Soave Classico for the first time and it perfectly paired with the meal.

Da’Fiore was literally in our neighborhood, so a five minute walk brought us home. Another lovely day.

(it’s the best way to explore Venice)

(April 20 and 21, 2014)

Our time in Venice was lovely, and very different from other cities. For one thing, J came down with a cold, which meant that we wanted to throttle back on our activities a bit to let him rest up. For another, Venice is not the art/museum intensity that our other places were. This is a city for walking around, finding hidden corners, and for smooching in secret places.

And that’s what we did.

We woke up to Easter Bells and had a slow morning of just puttering around and then having breakfast. The weather was variable, and we figured not much was open, so we decided to go for a walk around the city and get lost.

It was huge fun! We’ve got a great map — MapEasy’s Guidemap to Venice — and it made figuring out where we were at any given point fairly simple. We basically spiraled out from our neighborhood and eventually crossed over to the ‘main’ area where St. Mark’s is. We didn’t actually go there, but wandered in the area around it, and then over into the northern part of our neighborhood and eventually home.

No vaporettos, just bridges. It was great. We even had a treat of a lovely trio of musicians playing exquisitely.

Lunch was pizzas at our local joint, Taverna Buffa. Because it turns out that although I’d been told ‘everything’ would be closed on Easter, in fact many many many places were open and we didn’t need to shop at all.

Back home, we spent a quiet afternoon and evening watching our Surface (47 Ronin — a truly gorgeous movie — and several episodes of the first season of Dr. Who). Dinner was prosciutto and cheese on toasted bread. Delicious.
*   *   *

Easter Monday is a big holiday in Italy, many places that were open on Sunday the 20th were closed today; moreover, the weather was kind of mucky — overcast and drizzly. So we opted to sleep in and not emerge from our apartment until nearly noon. From there, we wandered the city again, poking into nooks and crannies; just looking around.

We’d fallen in love with a new kind of mask, done in a steampunk style. It was clearly mass-produced, but an unusual design and so very much in our oeuvre, if you will. We were very tempted, but held off to think about it for a day or two.

It was another evening of watching Dr. Who and relaxing in our apartment.

(April 19, 2014)

Not much to say about today — we had breakfast then drove to Florence, then took the train to Venice. Not much else happened.

A conversation we’ve been having a lot during this trip has revolved around our being amateur art historians. It goes like this: we’ve seen a lot of art of the last few trips, much of it live and in person as it were. At the same time, we’ve had a lot of tour guides give us really good context for what we’re seeing and why its important. So now we recognize artists and we can make linkages between them by time period and other reference points. So, definitely amateur, but maybe its something we can explore and develop.

J. reminds me of a scene in the movie Good Will Hunting in which Damon’s character humiliates a Harvard kid by telling him all the things he is thinking, and should be thinking, and could be thinking, ending with, “and after all of that you’ll realize you just spent $250,000 for an education you could have gotten with a library card and $2 in late fees.” We’re reasonably intelligent people, we’re interested in this art stuff, we have library cards . . . why don’t we get into it more and see what happens?

Personally, I have a strong desire to curate an exhibit that features Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Sargent. I’d call it “Moving Into the Light”. Maybe you can see why?

Our train pulled into Venice St. Lucia and we were promptly met by our guide, Anna. (It’s a service I requested from our hostess, fearing we’d get lost, with luggage making it super irritating). Stepping out we were immediately confronted by water and craziness, but Anna guided us over bridges, through squares, and into alleys and after ~25 mins, we arrived at our new, and last, home in Italy.

With that we had two very important issues to tackle: finding a grocery store and doing laundry. J went out, I stayed in . . . but only long enough to unpack and sort clothing into small piles. It turns out the grocery is just a few ‘streets’ away. So off we went to lay in provisions for breakfast all week and Easter, when pretty much everything would be closed. (Monday too, but less likely.) The shop was mobbed with people doing last-minute holiday prep shopping. Whole types of milk and eggs were gone, produce had been picked over, and there we were two gormless tourists trying to plan to make a meal in a kitchen we’d never cooked in before. Oh, and in another language.

I *think* we came home with tomato sauce, potato gnocchi, cheese, bread, prosciutto, juice, milk, cereal, sparkling water, strawberries, lettuce, shredded carrots, carrots, and eggs. I’ll let you know!

With one load done, we hung it on the line, just like the neighbors, and started a 2nd load this one to be hung indoors in front of the windows. The forecast is for rain tomorrow, so we’re playing it safe. By this time we were hungry, although it was still early. Fortunately, our neighborhood has a ton of places . . . so we went to the closest: Taverna Boffa. With a mix of seafood and regular Italian dishes, the menu was good. I loved their octopus salad and the venetian sardines. Less interesting was the grilled fish — it needed more acid or something, it was too plain. J enjoyed his pasta with tomato sauce.

A short walk home and a bit of a read and off we went to sleep.