This was our last day in Venice, and of our trip. We spent some time in St. Mark’s Square and
on the adjacent Riva (waterfront promenade), with its classic views of gondolas
lined up in the foreground and the grand churches of St. Gregory the Great and
La Salute across the lagoon.
Then, we walked to Rialto via the most direct route, a
distinctly relative designation. It was
pretty straightforward – OK, forward, but not straight – and lined with lots of
interesting shops. Crossing the Rialto
Bridge, we wandered through the fruit and vegetable market and then on through
the San Polo sestiere to the train station, where we re-crossed the Grand
Canal. We just wanted to visit
neighborhoods we hadn’t seen before and soak up our last hours in the
city. We had light rain on and off,
nothing major, but lots of umbrellas in the narrow streets can make for a lot
of juggling back and forth.
After lunch and a walk on the Riva in our neighborhood, we
picked up our suitcases and took the one-hour boat trip to our airport hotel
for tomorrow morning’s early flight.
We’ve loved our time in Italy and never seem to tire of
coming here, or find that we’ve run out of things to see in this ancient and
beautiful country. Of course, we have a
few random, unrelated and unimportant but interesting-to-us observations before
we bring this journal to an end:
· -
Motorcyclists all wear helmets, and even
Neapolitans seem to have given up flaunting the law on that score.
· -
Bicyclists (other than those seriously riding
for sport out in the countryside) never wear helmets.
·
English is very commonly used in the names of
businesses (e.g. “Cash and Carry”) and other environmental print and American
music is everywhere.
· -
Speaking of music, if you have an old accordion
in your closet and have spent a lifetime wondering why you ever took lessons
(you know who I’m talking to), bring it over here and join all the others
playing for their supper.
· -
Italians have style, even the young guys in
their skinny jeans and scarves. They
take La Bella Figura seriously and almost
manage to make smoking (which they do an enormous amount of) look cool.
· -
It is mandatory to issue a receipt for every
payment, even if it’s to use a public rest room. The amount of paper generated is astounding,
and that’s even allowing for those “independent businesspeople” who flaunt that
law in hopes of gaining some undeclared income.
·
-A very efficient combined drying and storage
system for dishes is widespread. Clean,
wet dishes are placed in racks above the sink and drain down into the sink or
onto a tray. They drip-dry behind a
closed cabinet door and don’t have to be put away.
·
-There is a huge number of immigrants, all up and
down the peninsula. On previous trips,
we’d grown accustomed to seeing lots of young North African men, but now
they’ve been joined by great numbers of Indians and/or Pakistanis, also
families from the Mideast. The Africans
seem to have the franchise on street sales of knock-off purses, while young men
from the Indian sub-continent hawk sunglasses on good days, umbrellas when it
rains, and glow-in-the-dark things at night in the piazzas. And, none of them seems to be printing any
receipts!
This has been a great five-week adventure, though now we
feel it’s time to go home, face the real world, and re-connect with friends and
family. We appreciate your having
traveled with us and hope you’ll join us again; we’ve already started to
consider future destinations!
Until then, ciao!
I just had to add a picture of the 995 Euro ($1300) shoes at Chanel in Venice. La Bella Figura costs money.-Tom
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