Venezia in Novembre

After returning from Bologna and Ravenna we spent a few days taking care of routine chores like cleaning house, doing laundry, paying bills, and a little shopping, plus, of course, daily trips to "our" cafe for coffee or a spritz and use of the free wi-fi.

Tom ordering an Americano in 'our' cafe

Why Starbucks can't get anywhere in Italy

The cafe near our apartment isn't an old world charming place.  It is very modern and large, but the coffee and drinks are good, the wi fi is free, and they don't seem to mind when we camp out at a table for a couple of hours.   Starbucks doesn't have a chance here--the price of coffee is regulated by the government, with expresso 1E and a cappucino 1.20, plus the cappucino is a lot better even at our cafe than it is at Starbucks.

We also found a barber for Tom and a paruchierre (hair stylist) for me and got our first Italian haircuts.  Everything like that is an exercise in learning new vocabulary--I had to look up the word for haircut which turns out to be taglio di capelli (cut of the hair).  I enjoyed chatting with the stylist who likes Seattle because she watches Grey's Anatomy which is quite popular here.  It is on every night, dubbed into Italian.  Sandra Oh makes commercials for Sky TV, also dubbed.  George Clooney makes commercials for Nescafe which seems to be really popular here. I told Annabella that Macklemore is from Seattle (a song was playing at the time) and she was quite impressed and asked me to translate the words for her.  My translation of  "I'm gonna pop some tags, got $20 in my pocket..."  was pretty stilted--"Ho intenzione di rimuovere alcuni cartellini dei prezzi. ha ottenuto 20 dollari in tasca"  She appreciated the effort though.

Yesterday we made another day trip to Venezia--we feel like old pro's now, catching the bus to Piazzale Roma, then the traghetto down the Grand Canal.  This time we visited the Peggy Guggenheim museum.  She retired in Italy, where she collected a lot of art by  Picasso, Salvador Dali,  Magritte, Kandinsky, Calder, etc., many of whom were her friends or proteges.  She bequeathed her palazzo and art to the city.  The Guggenheim was a nice change from a steady diet of madonnas and crucifixions.  No photos allowed inside (although as far as we can tell we are the only two who ever heed that rule), but these are from the sculpture garden.

Entry to the Peggy Guggenheim museum

One of the sculpture gardens with a piece by Henry Moore in the back

Another sculpture garden shot--I liked the neon writing in the vines.

After the Guggenheim we walked along the streets until we found a restaurant for lunch, then continued on to the Accademia, the opposite of the Guggenheim--a collection of Venetian art from the 13-17 centuries. Following are a few pictures we took along the way.

Some scenes on the way to the Accademia

Church in a piazza where we stopped for a breather

You see a lot of artists in Venice

Gondolier on his cell phone

One of the rooms in the Accademia

A few weeks made a lot of difference in the number of tourists in Venice. Mid-October had about half the number of tourists as we saw when we visited in August years ago, and November probably half that of  October.  We didn't even have to rush to get the coveted (by tourists) seats in the front of the traghetto.  We didn't hear or see many Americans, the tourists that were there were mostly Asian or German. There were quite a few people at the Guggenheim,  but not at the Accademia, even though there was a special Leonardo exhibit there.  The Leonardo exhibit had mostly smaller works, and pages from notebooks, as well as works inspired by Leonardo, but it was still fascinating.  The Biennale has a few weeks left to run, so we will probably go another day just to looks at some of those exhibits before they are gone. Next week we head to Trieste and then Rovinj--first time in Croatia.

Starting to drizzle--have to rush home and bring in the laundry!
Ciao a tutti