Venice in the Sun – 17 June 2015

Today was a much better day than yesterday.  Today there was light cloud that soon burned off and left clear skies – no sign of rain.  We took an early vaporetto in to St Mark’s Square and walked away from the square then into one of the back streets.  From there we just wandered the streets for a while and had a coffee in a wee cafe.  Before we knew it, we found ourselves at St Mark’s Square again.  Actually, we found our way back to the little close we had sheltered in yesterday, just along from the square.  Scamp thought it would be a good idea to go left this time, past the square instead of through it.  This led us through an avenue of trees with lots of people selling the usual tourist stuff from kiosks.  I got a Bluetooth iPhone remote that seems to work very well.  We walked around the Accademia area and Scamp found an old church that had been turned into a museum for musical instruments.  Really, really interesting.  One particular exhibit showed the stages in making a violin.  I remember some of the steps from guitar making at college, but we didn’t put 40 coats of natural lacquer on the finished article.  We thought 10 coats of A/C lacquer was extreme!

We had lunch in a little Italian (of course) restaurant just off a side street.  Highlight was one poor American boy breaking two wine glasses in two separate incidents and rushing off in shame.  His dad, or at least I took it to be his dad, went after him and brought him back.  Poor boy seemed shattered, like the glasses.  Scamp had macaroni with fresh tomatoes and basil.  I had linguine a la pesto.  Mine was delicious and I think Scamp’s was too judging by the tiny amount she left.  After we left we walked further into the Accademia area and Scamp found a shop selling Murano glass bracelets, so that was her present from Venice.  I found an art shop and bought myself a sketch pad and a watercolour block.  After that, we headed back to SM’sS which is really easy to find as almost all roads lead to it.  We stopped on the way for an ice-cream.  I was trying to get a photo of Scamp in the square when I accidentally got in the way of a German bloke (poor bloke only had a Canon).  He said something rude to me in German, so I just turned round and told him to “Fuck Off!”  Fuck Off! is such a great expression, isn’t it?  It doesn’t matter what language you speak, Fuck Off! is Fuck Off!  Anyway it worked, because off he fucked!

Got back to the vaporetto place just as the boat was coming in.  Scamp nicked away to take a photo of one of the street performers dressed up in a fancy ball gown and wearing a mask.  Talking about masks, there were a lot of Japanese in Venice today and loads of them were wearing masks like surgeons wear.  We were talking about this with Derek and Sue during the week and they thought it was a fear of contracting Bird Flu.  It could be.  One of the girls I saw had a lovely lace facemask.  Pretty and functional.

Back at the ship, we had two new playmates at the dinner table.  Can’t remember her name, but Scamp says his name was Andy.  Scamp will interrogate them tomorrow if they come back.  She scared the other two away.  Tomato Cheesecake (strange) for starter, Venison for main and Limoncello Panacotta (which didn’t taste in the slightest of lemons).

Watched the sail away from the very front of the ship and it was quite a dramatic exit.  Venice is lovely.  Very expensive, but lovely.  I really hope we can come back some day.

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