Venice, the Basilica & Museo Marciano, 18.10.05

A splendid day! We began with a successful quest to buy a post office box to send home some more bits and pieces, and then it was back to San Marco to see the Basilica and Museo Marciano. Even with our passes the queue was woeful, but once inside we jettisoned the tour groups and headed up some perilous stairs to the museum, from which you can look down into the church and admire all the vaults covered with gold mosaics. They are mainly from the 13th century and are breath-takingly beautiful. They’re mostly Old Testament scenes from Genesis and the story of the Creation, along with scenes featuring Moses and Joseph. From up in the museum you can see them up close and glittery and the details are amazing. The women have little sandals and beautiful smiles; their hairstyles are lovely. The little stones of the mosaics are all different sizes to fit the designs, though none are much bigger than the end of a pencil, if that. There’s a beautiful mosaic of Mary’s family tree, but alas, I couldn’t get a postcard of it.
Nor could I buy a postcard of Pilate washing his hands in the ten tapestries depicting the Stations of the Cross. Why 10 and not 14? Did I miss some? I don’t know. I was also most impressed by the restored stone Madonna that was smashed into 1400 pieces (did they count them all?) when the bell tower fell down in 1902. We loved the beautiful ‘chorus books’; in those days they had staves but not bar lines. There was also a three-stringed violincello made in 1545, given back to the Basilica when the musician died – apparently that was the custom. Other treasures included glorious gold ornate missals and other manuscripts; all just wonderful to see.
From the museum you can go out onto the balcony and take the obligatory photo with the four horses, but the real ones, inside, are gorgeous when you can see them close up. You can see their cheeky faces and their sturdy powerful bodies and each one is different; they weren’t all cast from the same mould.
 In the afternoon we made an abortive effort to visit Galleria Ca’Razzonico, not having noticed that it was closed on Tuesdays but it didn’t matter because we had a lovely time browsing around. We spent an earnest twenty minutes choosing a pair of leather gloves for me (that don’t go with anything I own), tried unsuccessfully to buy some bananas from the fruiterer, and smirked at the Venetian version of a garage. Unsurprisingly, we couldn’t find anything that would suit as a souvenir for Carl…We photographed ‘our’ Piazza, San Maurizio, and took some restorative time out with our feet up before heading out again for our last night in Venice.
 For dinner, we returned to Cafe Osteria Enoteca, and had a most enjoyable meal. For entree I had prawns and Tim had Pilgrim scallops & funghi, washed down with ‘Cocktail Venetian with sparkling wine and Aperol’ (of which we have become quite fond). We then had a 2003 Barbera Clerico Freigne with red mullet & funghi for me, and a duck breast with orange for Tim. The service in this restaurant is excellent, the food is modern Italian, and the atmosphere calm and sophisticated. No bellowing tourists or waiters at all!
Next – off to Monterchi in Tuscany!

Doge’s Palace & Cafe Florian, Venice, 17.10.05

Venice is awash (pun!) with what I call Venetian Tragics – pale middle-aged women in flat shoes and floating scarves, gazing soulfully at statuary on obscure buildings. They have no bags or guide books, and they stride about confidently as if they know the place intimately. They tend to look English and scholarly, as if they might be writing a thesis or a long and dull novel, or else they seem anxious, as if they might need their inadequate Italian to alert a negligent official to some falling stucco. They are always thin and mildly grubby, and they look vaguely hungry, as if they are eking out some miserable pittance to extend their stay for as long as they can. I expect they go home eventually, and bore people with breathless reveries about their pilgrimage to Venice…it is wisest to avoid getting into conversations with The Tragics…

In Venice, as elsewhere, our pre-paid tickets saved us from disappointment. The queue for the Doge’s Palace was long, but at least we were sure of getting in!

The Great Council room, at 55 metres long, is vast. It’s a good spot for a rest, because its size dissipates the irritating voices of the tour guides and that exasperating incessant burr of the ever-present Americans. (‘Why, honey, will you look at that! We don’t have anything like that at home in Texas/Minnesota/Illinois etc’) Everywhere in the palace there are fabulous paintings in massive gold stucco frames, but in the Great Council Hall the artworks are breathtaking. This hall is where all the nobles over the age of 25 met to elect the Doge, and there’s a huge mural of J C and the Saints in the heaven to which they presumably aspired. The whole room is decorated with scenes about the triumphs of Venice, including a painting of her successful battle with the Pope.
 After the Doge’s Palace, we had a restorative coffee at Cafe Florian, first opened in 1720 and patronised by Dickens, Byron and Proust. It was ruinously expensive, but I didn’t care…We were put in with ‘the foreigners’ but the waiter was sweet and friendly when spoken to in Italian. We sat in a little alcove with a Marco Polo ‘fresco’ behind us, and others that might have been Titians. The tables were battered old marble, the floors were parquet and the walls were rather like the first cafe we went to in Vienna with sumptuously aged wooden panels. There were giant ‘aged’ photocopies of illegible handwriting, an allusion to which famous writer I don’t know, maybe Henry James? (He wrote The Aspbern Papers here, one of his short stories, a much better one than The Turn of the Screw).
Our waiter arrived with our order on a great silver tray. There were little coffee cups with the Florian logo, topped with small brass individual coffee filters through which he poured the hot water with a great flourish. Our cakes (mine was chocolate and his was almond) were topped with slivers of chocolate also with the Florian logo, and it was all just gorgeous. It would be really nice to have high tea here, next time.

San Marco was much less crowded on a Monday, so we explored the piazza until it was time for a light lunch, at Osteria Enoteca San Marco. (Near where Paul Keating buys his suits.) It had a lovely atmosphere, plastered walls and brickwork, space to breathe, and delicious simple meals. I had gnocchi and Tim had Tagliatelli Con Sarde (sardines, pinenuts and raisins, like he cooks at home), the meal washed down with a Russob Ronco Calay Pinot Grigio 2004 from the local region. The waiters were kindly and patient and encouraging about my Italian – more than making up for that nasty place on Sunday.
After lunch, a shopping trip, to augment Tim’s wardrobe. (You’d think an experienced traveller like him would pack enough shirts, eh?) We found a very classy little gentleman’s outfitters near our hotel, which turned out to be surprisingly reasonable so he bought a new shirt, a belt and a couple of polo tops, and we had done our bit for the Venetian economy.
Then, down to the Rialto where there were more expensive shops but it was very crowded and the smokers irritated both of us intensely. The pathways are very narrow, so there is nowhere to escape the filthy stink of it,  so we headed back to the wide open spaces of Piazza San Marco and sat down to enjoy a jazz band at Cafe Quadri. Alas, before long the band took a break, leaving us to be assailed by two competing bands, one from Cafe Florian on the other side of the piazza, and one from an adjacent cafe.
I finally, finally got close enough to see the four horses at San Marco. The ones outside are only the copies but they do look very impressive. The originals used to be in Constantinople, where they stood above the emperor’s royal box to impress everyone when he was watching the chariot races. They went to Venice when the Doge claimed them as booty from the Fourth Crusade because he’d financed it, though he didn’t get round to putting them anywhere – it was a later Doge who had them installed above the cathedral as a symbol of Venetian power. There they stayed for 500 years or so till Napoleon swiped them and then was made to return them in 1815. They then went up and down a number of times for restoration, safe storage during wars and so on, until finally they were removed to the museum to protect them from pollution and the replicas installed in their place.

Venice, 16.10.05

 We were up early and at the Milan station in plenty of time, only to find out at the last minute that they had told us (and everyone else) to go to the wrong platform so we had to lug the suitcases up and down the stairs all over again. On board, we discovered that our seats were not together, but rather one behind the other, which didn’t matter for most of the way as there was nothing special in the way of a view. But when we came into Venice, and saw the lagoon, we wanted to share it with each other so Tim turned around and kneeled up on his seat and we got excited about it together.

Our first impressions were just wonderful. Off the train and through the station and there’s a huge piazza down to the vaporettos and water taxis. The fog had lifted by then so I left Tim blinking into the sunlight and listening to someone playing music while I found my way to the ticket office and found some 3-day Travelcards. A short wait for the vaporetto and we were off along the Grand Canal, marvelling at the buildings and museums whose names we recognised, and then our stop was suddenly before us and we had arrived.

A short walk across a couple of bridges (more stairs) and then we found our little hotel, Residenza San Maurizio. Our room was traditional Venetian style (we were told) and quite spacious and comfortable. Its little windows open out onto a tiny courtyard and it’s very pretty. We stashed our bags upstairs (no lift, alas) and set off for lunch.

We found a nearby restaurant adjacent to the famous Harry’s Bar (though we, not being very good at popular culture, didn’t know it was famous) and it serves the rich and famous. Hemingway used to go there. Perhaps not being famous was why we found it hard to catch the waiter’s eye, but when we did he was very nice and friendly, and fairly prompt.

The pasta was lovely: mine was prawns and zucchini flowers, and Tim’s was the black pasta made from squid, but oh dear! the stink of cigarette smoke got on my nerves and gave Tim hay fever. Still, the sun was shining, and it was blissfully quiet after the hustle and bustle of Milan.

After that we went for a walk, but it didn’t take long for me to get completely sick of the shops and the shoppers, all trailing around gawping at the same ornate masks, the same over-elaborate clothes and the same flamboyant jewellery everywhere we went. There was only one little place selling hand-made papers and papier-mâché dioramas that was of any interest at all…and it was shut.

Arriving in St Mark’s square (San Marco Piazza), however, was amazing. To be in the pictures painted by Canaletto felt surreal, and I would have liked to look closer but the crowds were so oppressive and there were disgusting pigeons everywhere. Goodness knows what it’s like in summer during the peak season! So we walked past Cafe Florian and round to the ‘front’ of the Ducal Palace (the canal side) and then struggled along the promenade until somehow (how does he do it??) Tim found our way back to where we belonged.

En route back to the hotel for some peace and quiet with a book, we discovered La Fenice, Venice’s opera house. I had just finished reading about it in John Berendt’s book, City of Falling Angels, and if I hadn’t known that it had burnt down in 1996 and been rebuilt, I’d have thought it was a very old building.  According to Berendt, there were endless shenanigans after the fire: officials charged with negligence ensured that some electricians were convicted for arson so that they couldn’t be sued. The fire brigade, apparently, couldn’t use water from the local canal because it had been drained for a long overdue repaint, and no alternative water supply had been arranged. The rebuilding contract was awarded to a company that had been able to undercut the others because an extra room hadn’t been included in the design, and the others all sued because it wasn’t fair…and then the contract was awarded to another company which went bust – and so on. All very Venetian, apparently, and inextricably linked to Venetian aristocrats enjoying endless family feuds, and American expats who vie for access to Venetian society by fundraising for building and artwork restorations.

For us, however, Sunday in Venice seemed to consist of endless tourists, and workers who hold them to ransom – like at the truly awful place when we ventured out for dinner. The Restaurant Al Calice in the same street as Osteria San Marco (Frezzeria) has the most disgusting, inedible food and the worst and rudest waiter I have ever encountered. I pity anyone who thinks that this place is representative of Italian cuisine…
The crowds had dissipated by the time we escaped the restaurant, and so we risked a stroll nearby our hotel. We found street artists and opera singers in the piazza, and a fantastic exhibition of early musical instruments in a church.

In bed at night, the silence is surreal. There are no cars or trucks, no motorbikes and not even a dog barking. There are hardly any trees or shrubs, so there’s no wildlife to make any noise either, at least when the pigeons are asleep!