Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Shopping in Venice Jocey style

Venice, Italy    July 22, 2015

We got a later start to the day today because (1) we all slept in and (2) because of technical difficuties in posting the blog last night we had to finish posting it this morning.  Besides the vaparettos on the Grand Canal, there are several places where you can take a traghetto straight across the canal.  A traghetto is nothing more then a gondola without all the singing.  It costs just 2 euros per person versus 80 euros or more for a gondola ride with the singing. In addition to the vaporetto stop just down from our apartment, there is also a traghetto stop.  This is convienent because the Peggy Guggenhiem Collection is right across the canal from us. That was our first stop this morning.  The Peggy Guggenhiem Collection is in the house that Peggy Guggenhiem lived in the last 30 years of her life.  All of the art in the house is from people Peggy was acquanited with and had befriended at some point.  The works are all late 19th century and 20th century.  There are the usual suspects, Picasso, Miro, DuBuffet, Dali, etc., as well as works by artists we have never heard of but liked their work. Additionally, there was a retrospective of the work of Charles Pollock, the brother of Jackson Pollock. Lynda knew, but Tim did not, that Charles Pollock was a famous painter in his own right.  We were fascinated to discover that Charles spent several years at MSU on the art faculty.  There was a copy of a letter and envelop that Jackson sent to Charles with the address being Michigan State College, and a picture of Charles working a printing press on the MSU campus in the 1950's obviously after the name change. Much of Charles early work was very different from the work we associate with Jackson Pollock, but as Charles got older his work began to look more like his brother's.  All three of us enjoyed the Collection.  As always, Tim and Lynda found a work or two that required Lynda to create a diversion so that Tim could steal said work or works.

After lunch we headed off in search of another modern art gallery but along the way, Jocey hijacked the afternoon.  During the Carnivale, our Mardi Gras, Venice is awash in masked balls. We passed a number of shops specializing in masks. Jocey fell in love with them. We lost track of how many mask shops we visited before Jocey finally made a purchase. Then her shopping turned to clothes. Tim does not remember seeing Lynda spend so much time clothes shopping.  By the time all of this shopping was done, Jocey and Lynda were exhausted. Not so much Tim.  All he did was continue to master his people watching skills and occasionally offer approval of clothes purchases. Both of us were thrilled to have her take over the afternoon.  While Jocey and Lynda returned to the apartment to rest, Tim went on to see the Bienalle Art Festival we had originally scheduled. The Festival turned out to be located in a large exhibition center that seemed a bit overwhelming, so Tim also returned to the apartment.

At the risk of sounding whiny, the weather,  specifically the heat, has been unbearable. Temperatures remain in the mid to upper 90's with the heat index over 100. We do more walking then we are accustomed to, and, with very little breeze, it saps our energy quickly.  The weekend forecast is for thunderstorms that will hopefully break the heat wave. We have said very little about evening meals other then Jocey's cuddle fish encounter. We have found two wonderful restaurants the last two nights and enjoyed excellent meals.  Jocey continues to be very adventuresome in her food selections. The evenings would have been magical if the temperature had been 20 degrees cooler.

We leave our apartment here in Venice tomorrow morning, collect our rental car and drive to Florence. Friday we have an appointment to see David.  We look forward to it.

Until then, ciao.

2 comments:

jonistarr said...

Tim,

Did you make it to the restaurant we told you about? Osteria L'Orto Dei Mori

Joni

Unknown said...

No, but we found other excellent places to eat.