On Friday, August 17th, we went up to the pleasant, sunny breakfast room on the third (second, European style) floor, where Marco served us cereal, croissants, bread and jam (or Nutella) and coffee. We could also have had cheese if we'd wanted it.
Then we went out to do a little shopping. Across the street from Al Campaniel are two shops. A chocolatier that, whenever it was open, ran the film Chocolat, with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, continuously on a TV facing the door. Our friend Marika said that it is recommended in her German guidebook, but we never went in. It was open a couple of times when we passed, and we still had a substantial remnant of the six chocolate tablets that we had received for free in Switzerland (two from the railroad and four left for us on the table of our apartment in Unterseen).
The other shop was a clothing store, and it had a half-off sale, so we went in to remedy my clothing malfunction by buying a new pair of pants. Given the heat (it was in the high eighties Fahrenheit, and humid--Florence would be much worse), I wanted a pair of shorts. We tried several pairs--size 60, too big; size 58, still too big; size 56, just right. I ended up with a pair of knee-length, dark navy blue, pinstriped shorts. Mary Joy tried on a white blouse, but it was too sheer.
We then went to Piazzale Roma to take an ATVO bus to Venice Marco Polo Airport. We just missed one while buying the eleven-euro-per-person round trip tickets, and had to wait half an hour in a little park bordering the giant Piazzale. There are two buses an hour for the twenty-minute trip.
Our German friend Marika's plane from Berlin was a little early, so, since she only had a carry-on bag, we met her just inside the terminal, and were able to quickly buy her round trip ticket and jump onto the bus on which we had arrived, before it left ten minutes after arriving.
Marika had never been to Venice before, and when we offered to meet her there for that weekend or in Amsterdam for the following one, she chose Venice.
Marco had given us her keys already, but he was there when we got back, and checked her into her room, which was directly above ours.
Then we went out to look for lunch. Marco had made some restaurant suggestions, mostly around the Campos Santa Margherita and San Barnaba, in Dorsoduro, to our south. We wandered down in that direction, running into a dead end or two and visiting the Church of San Pantalon on the way. Saint Pantalon is the namesake of the Commedia del'Arte character Pantalone, the old miser, after whose garb pantaloons, i.e., pants, are named.
We entered the very large, very lively Campo Santa Margherita, where we found Pier Dickens, one of Marco's recommendations. There we had salads that were substantially better than those of the previous evening.
Also, we filled our water bottles at the fountain in the campo. On our first day, someone had pointed out to us one of these great urban amenities. In the old days, Venetians had gotten all their water from rainwater cisterns in the center of practically every campo. The fountains are generally simple pipes with water continually flowing into a drain.
Then we rushed to catch the 3:00 organ vespers at Santa Maria della Salute, the very large church near the tip of the Dorsoduro, almost opposite San Marco. But vespers was at 3:30, immediately before the 4:00 daily mass, so we wandered around, going out to the very end of the Dorsoduro island, where the Customs House welcomed foreign merchants (and their money) in the days of the Venetian Republic.
Then we went up to the front of the church and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, we decided that the signs saying that the daily 4:00 mass was cancelled for the month of August also must apply to the organ vespers service.
Then, we decided to go to San Marco, so we walked back to the Accademia Bridge, by way of the Zattere, to get more of a glimpse of water. For a city full of water, Venice has amazingly few places to take a stroll along the waterfront. Except by San Marco, by Santa Maria della Salute and by the Pescheria (fish market), the Grand Canal is generally crowded with buildings down to the water. On the south side of Dorsoduro, however, stretches the Zattere, providing a promenade along much of the north shore of the broad Giudecca Canal. That day the Zattere was almost unbearably hot, with its open sunshine, as opposed to the darkish, narrow channels of inland Venice. We escaped at the Gesuati church, turning up the broad, shady way to the Accademia Bridge. We crossed to the Campo San Stefano, where we visited its namesake church. At that point, we decided that San Marco was too far, in the heat and crowds. Marika's guidebook and its associated map recommended a gelateria named Nico, on the Zattere, so we turned, recrossed the bridge and went down along the Rio di San Trovaso canal back to the Zattere, where we immediately found Nico. We went out on the deck over the water, found a table shaded by a large umbrella, and ordered. Marika and I had ice cream concoctions, while Mary Joy had a bowl of fruit. Mary Joy noted that immediately next to Nico was one of our recommended restaurants, Casin dei Nobili.
We headed for home, westward along the Zattere, but I miscalculated where to turn inland, so we ended up going all the way to the end, by San Basilio. Then we wandered streets where we had never been before. Somewhere near the Carmini church we came across a shop where an older man was selling wine that he had, as he explained proudly, produced himself. We decided to buy a bottle for a picnic dinner, but that meant we would have to choose between the Soave (white) and the Lambrusco (sparkling red). We decided to go with the Lambrusco, in part because we wouldn't need a corkscrew because it had a champagne cork in a metal cage.
We bought some bread, salami and cheese for our picnic and went back to Al Campaniel.
It may have been at this point, or maybe the next day, that we realized that a) our air conditioning didn't work; b) the electric outlet over the desk didn't work; c) the room phone was dead. Otherwise the electricity in the room was working. We discovered that Marika, whose room was directly above ours, had the same problems. In addition, the Internet access wasn't working.
Marco doesn't live on the premises, but you can call him from your room phone by dialing 300. If your room phone works. The card on the back of the door said that if your phone didn't work you should go upstairs and use the phone on the wall. There was a phone on the wall of the breakfast room, but it had no number pad. When I picked up the handset, there was no dial tone, just a distant sound of children, like the French family down in the room by the front door.
If we had gotten a SIM card for our cell phone, we could use it now, but we at first hadn't managed to do that, because of holidays, siestas, etc., and then we had decided that with less time it wouldn't be worthwhile. Now, Marika came to the rescue, after some failed attempts due to our difficulty in figuring out the difference between calling from Germany and calling from Italy. I used her cell phone to call the full telephone number on the office door, and reached Marco, who said that I didn't need to call that way, but could have called directly from the room phone. I explained how that wasn't possible and what exactly our problem was. He said tat he lived in the neighborhood, and would be over in five minutes.
He was, and as I had thought, a circuit breaker had been tripped. After fixing it, he asked if we had used an American hair dryer. Yes, Mary Joy had, with a 240 volt switch. He said that that didn't matter. It wasn't quite the same as a European hair dryer, even though she had used it without problem in Switzerland. So, for the next day, Mary Joy borrowed Marika's hair dryer.
Marika went to her room to rest awhile (she had gotten up very early that morning). Mary Joy and I went to a recommended deli, not far from the Rialto, to pick up more provisions. She asked what sort of salami was typical of Venice and the shop owner chose some and gave it to her. Then Mary Joy had trouble figuring out which cheese was which and what to choose, and the lady finally said "This is what you want," and cut her off a hunk.
Then we gathered Marika and went looking for a picnic site. This was a little problematic. It was around 8 p.m. and would soon be dark. We headed south, looking for benches or possibly steps. Some people were sitting on the steps of the little humpbacked bridges over the little side canals, but we didn't find any place suitable.
We got to Campo Santa Margherita, where we had had lunch. The long square was full of life, families with children and other apparently local people eating, drinking, doing the passeggiata (evening stroll) and, most relevant to our situation, sitting on the many park benches.
However, all those benches were currently full. We decided to split up along the lengthy campo and watch for a bench to empty, then pounce on it and call the others. Marika was the successful bench hunter. She saw a bench open at the far southern end of the square. She ran over and sat on it, but immediately an Italian woman sat at the other end. Marika asked if she could bring two friends over to sit there, too, and the Italian woman said yes. So Marika got Mary Joy, who was in the middle of the campo, and Mary Joy waved to me, at the north end.
No comments:
Post a Comment