Bon Giorno from Venice

Venice, Italy    July 21, 2015

"Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote and I know I shall be happily infected until the end of my life."

We came across this Michael Palin quote on our last cruise and published it at that time on the blog because it pretty much sums up our feeling about travel.  We are now in Venice with our 14 year old grand daughter, Jocelyn Phillips, hoping to infect her with the bug.  It seems to have become a tradition that when one of our grandchildren turn 10 they travel with us, sans parents, for the first time to Chicago.  When they turn 14 or 15, we take them to Europe.  The first two such trips have been to Italy.

Our two flights to Venice were uneventful except for one minor incident that you may find interesting. Our flight out of Detroit was delayed because a family of four lied to Hom eland Security officers about the amount of money they were taking out of the United States. The family was removed from our flight and we had to wait for their nine (!) pieces of luggage to be off loaded from the plane. When we arrived at the airport in Venice, Jocey was intrigued that we had to take a water bus from the airport to a stop near our apartment. The water buses in Venice are called vaporetto's and we have a vaporetto stop a mere 50 yards from our apartment. Francesca greeted us at the vaporetto stop and took us to the apartment where she spent over an hour going over the details of the apartment as well as information about doing the tourist thing in Venice. Our apartment overlooks a small canal off of the Grand Canal that is one of the main routes for the gondolas. As we write this blog entry we can hear a gondolier serenading his passengers. Unfortunately, it is a poor rendition of the old Dean Martin tune, "Volare". On second thought, it is kind of cool. By the time Francesca left, Lynda and Jocey were ready for naps as neither had slept on our two flights. Tim did a bit of exploring, looking for the necessaties of life: bottled water for the apartment, the closest gelato shop, nearby pastry shop and restuarants.

After naps and showers we set off to give Jocey her first taste of Venice.  After a gelato, we headed toward San Marco Piazza.  Along the way we went in a hope that sold Murano glass. Jocey was very interested in the pieces we saw and we told her it was just a small sampling of what she would see tomorrow when we visited Murano.  San Marco Piazza is a huge square (actually it is rectangular in shape) that is the location of the Basillica of San Marco as well as the Doge Palace, the home of the early rulers of Venice.  When we first entered the piazza all Jocey could say was "Wow".  She was suitably impressed.  We wandered about the piazza and sat on a bench and luxuriated in the atmosphere and the people watching.  Hunger finally forced us to move on in search of a restaurant.  In Venice, if you don't follow the signs to major tourist attractions it is very easy to become lost. Our family see us as seasoned travelers who always know where we are and where we are going so Jocey was impressed when we quickly became lost.  She soon joined the fun of being lost and exploring Venice.  We were actually able to find, almost by accident, one of the restuarants that Francesca had recommended.  When we traveled with Madison several years ago she ate only pizza.  Jocey promised us before we left that she would be more adventuresome in her eating.  She lived up to her promise tonight, ordering pasta with cuddle fish.  It turns out that cuddle fish uses black ink as a defense mechanism so the spaghetti she had was black.  She really enjoyed the pieces of cuddle fish in her dish but did not like the pasta.  We are not sure if that is because the spaghetti was a homemade, rustic pasta, or because the spaghetti was black.  What ever the reason, we certainly had an entertaining meal.

After a day and a half of traveling we were all in bed and asleep by 10:00.  Tim was shocked  the next morning when Jocey and Lynda woke him up at 6:00.  By 8:00 we were on our way to San Marco Piazza, the closest location of a ticket booth for the vaporetto's.  Venice is actually made up of a bunch of islands with Murano being the closest to the main island and also one of the largest. This was our first stop of the day.  Murano is famous for being the home of all of the glass works factories, more accurately, furnaces.  Practically all of the shops on the island sell Murano glass with some of them owned by the glass artists themselves.  When we first visited Venice and Murano 14 years ago most of the glass was still being produced in the traditional designs of the past.  We did find one artist, Simone Cendense, whose work was more contemporary that we liked.  We have purchased several small pieces of his that grace our home. Because of Jocey and Lynda's early start to the day, most of the shops were not open when we arrived on Murano.  But after visiting the few shops that were open and resting with bottles of water, Cendense's shop finally opened.  A young women explained several pieces that we were interested in and then took us back to the furnace room where the glass blowers, and the master himself, were working.  She explained to us what the men were doing.  We did not stay long as the heat from the furnaces was very intense but all three of us thoroughly enjoyed watching the pieces being made.  We visited a couple more galleries and left Murano without any purchases.  Our next stop was the island of Burano. Those of you who are loyal readers of our blog and have studied the blog because of the fascinating facts we present and the erudite observations we make of the places we visit, will remember that Burano is famous for the lace making by the residents of the island.  Tim has no interest in lace work and Lynda has only a passing interest.  However, Jocey seemed quite taken with what she saw, pulling Lynda into one shop after another.  Tim remained outside refining his people watching skills.  After several purchases and lunch we were all hot and tired and so we returned to our apartment we drank much water and some of us napped.  We will go out later this evening when hopefully it will cooler to do some more exploring and find a nice place for dinner.

Tomorrow the plan is to visit the Venice Bienalle, a months long celebration of the arts, and the Peggy Guggenhiem Art Museum.  Will report on those and other exciting things we encounter in the next blog posting.

Ciao