Saturday in Venice

Sabato, il 16 maggio    Venezia

On Sabato, we took the river boat in to San Marco but were dismayed by the queues and left immediately for the Above Tide ticket office to pay for our flat. Then we were off to Murano for a look at the glass factory. One of the glass artisans was crafting a horse at the end of his long pole and the whole process of heating, sculpting and molding the glass is quite miraculous. Interestingly, several of the shops had hand-lettered signs claiming "We sell Murano glass only...no Chinese glass!" We wandered around Murano and had a lovely lunch beside the canale before heading back to the alternate waterbus stop of San Pietro near our flat. A nap followed and then we meandered back down the via Garibaldi and had a lovely meal at Ristorante San Giorgio, immediately across the quay from the Arsenale vaporetto stop. The liver and onions was especially good. Do you see a Venetian pattern here--eating, sleeping, wandering the canals--not necessarily in that order.

After dinner, I talked everyone into an evening vaporetto cruise, so we hopped on board and had a perfectly lovely time seeing Venice by night, courtesy of the normal public transport. What amazed and enchanted me about Venice was the life on the canals. Of course there are the stereotypical gondolas, but more interesting to me were the normal human life processes in "watercolor." There were waterborne hearses carrying coffins covered with flowers en route to a church for prayers or an island cemetery for burial. There were waterborne moving vans carrying a couple's entire apartment (washing machine, bedframe and mattresses, worldly goods in boxes, lamps, AND the couple who was moving!). There were waterborne garbage "trucks" which pull up alongside the quay, send out an arm which grasps a little cart full of garbage bags that has been wheeled into place, invert it and dump the garbage into the hold. Needless to say, there is a lot more attention paid to recycling and to the sorting of garbage, with heavy attendant fines for non-compliance!

One of my favorite sights was early morning market along the Via Garibaldi. The greengrocer's barge would come into a quiet little neighborhood canal, laden with boxes of fresh vegetables and fruit beautifully arranged. The customers would queue up on the pavement and point to the produce they wanted on the floating shop. The greengrocer would weigh and price it, the cash would be exchanged, and on to the next customer. For this Scorpio water sign, I was "in my element!"