Monday in Venice
Another slow start to the day but then it was a late night. We awoke to spectacular sunshine.
Neal took a quick run to the market and brought home bread, cheese, coffee and some salami.
We ate a little and then Shayna got up and we were off.
We took the boat to the Peggy Guggenheim museum. This was actually her home when she lived here. There is a garden decorated with sculpture and all 14 of her dogs were buried ere. Peggy is also buried here and this was quite a big deal. People are all buried on the cemetery island and not very many foreigners have been approved for burial.
We saw her extensive collection of art from the first half of the 20th century including a special collection of Jackson and Charles Pollack. There were actually 5 boys in the family and at one time all of them were in New York studying art. Imagine those education bills. There were copies of letters saying how proud their father was. Jackson died very young but Charles continued creating for years but not gaining much recognition.
A lot of other artists were on display including Picasso. She really helped a lot of artists get started and most of them were American.
We had a nice lunch in the café and visited the gift shop. Neal got a couple of Jackson Pollack ties.
We did a good job of finding the right boat; we are gaining confidence in this department.
Next we went to the St Georgio Majorio Church designed by Polattio in the 16th century. This glorious church won my heart when I first started reading about Venice. There are some well known Tintoretto
Paintings. There is also a bell tower that was used to watch for invading ships. We took the elevator to the top and enjoyed the view. The bell rang once for the half hour and scared us to death. I had been warned about this. It is a good thing it did not strike the hour or we might all still be hearing ringing.
We made our way home. The crowds are really dense in the middle of the day. We will continue trying to do mornings and evenings and sleep in the middle of the day. Tomorrow we will try to get out earlier.
We left for dinner at about 7:30. We walked to the street where we saw all the cute shops but they were closed. We stopped for a typical starter course at a little place and had interesting plates of several small fish dishes. This is called Cicchetti
When we were about to leave they gave us small glasses of Lemon cello or grappa. This was so sweet and made us feel very at home.
Then we walked around and found another restaurant for our next course and had wonderful pizza.
We walked a little more and got home just after 11:00. We hope to get an earlier start tomorrow.
We love our mornings in the flat. The garbage boat comes by every day but so far we have not had enough trash to bother. They also recycle here. Neal makes us coffee and we eat fruit and bread and cheese.