I was remiss earlier, and forgot to tell two exciting stories that happened to us while in Venice.
When we boarded the (incredibly busy) water bus at the train station, there was a family, comprised of a mom and a dad, a toddler, and an infant in a stroller sitting in the priority seating area, which made sense, as the area for things like strollers was being taken up by a gentleman in an electric wheelchair.
At one of the stops, these two older ladies got on, and started having an animated discussion with the mother, at first in Italian, and then after it was apparent she did not speak Italian, in English. The gist of it (which I did not understand at first because it seemed so ridiculous) was that the two old women wanted the mother to stand up, move her stroller and her family into the area currently occupied by the man in the wheelchair (and several other people who had no place to sit).
Now, I am all for surrendering priority seating to the elderly, and had I been sitting, I would have gladly given up my seat when asked. If I was paying attention, I'd even do it without being asked. But asking an entire family to move (into an area already occupied) so that these two ladies (who did not look especially frail, I might add) could sit there was the height of selfishness. In my opinion, a lady with a baby has as much right to priority seating as the elderly, and I believe my opinion was born out by the signage on the seats.
Several other people offered those ladies their seats, but they refused to take them, eventually forcing the poor mother to move, with her stroller into a space where they did not fit. Thing was, if the ladies could have waited like two stops (almost the entire time they were arguing), there would have been a tonne of open seats after the bus stopped at Saint Mark's Square. I have never in my life been so astounded by someone's rudeness, and if it had happened to me, you can bet I would not have moved (although I am unlikely to be the mother of an infant any time soon).
The other thing that happened is we were wandering through some of Venice's back alleys, when we came across a gentleman painting watercolours, and we made the terrible mistake of looking twice at his paintings. He immediately accosted us, and started telling us how great his art was (it was fairly pretty). He did not stop for a moment to let us talk, or get away. In fact, when Darcy did not seem interested, he implied she had no taste, and relied on experts to tell her what was great art.
Little did he know, neither Darcy nor I care at all about "great art," but we know what we like. And I am pretty sure that someone who puts a price on his art, and then offers it to strangers in an alleyway for half the price is a pretty sketchy individual. I saw him paint, so I know the art was his, but I don't really appreciate super hard sales, so we left.
Speaking of "Great Art" today we visited the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice. Peggy Guggenheim was a rich (somewhat strange) lady who lived in Venice towards the end of her life. She opened an art museum in New York (the "Guggenheim", which sounded familiar to me, so it's probably famous), but her estate posthumously opened a museum here in Venice in her former house.
Ms. Guggenheim loved modern art. She just loved that stuff to death. So, as you might expect, her collection is comprised almost entirely of Abstract and Surrealist art, or in other words, art that only sometimes looks like something. We started in the garden, which is full of sculptures, the highlight of which was a stone with two perfectly round bowls carved out of them, and polished. When you stood in front of it, it looked precisely like a holographic mirror, in the sense that your image appeared to be standing in front of the rock. It was cool.
Inside the house were a bunch of paintings, including some by Picaso, and some by Pollack (which until today was the extent of my knowledge of modern artists). I discovered that in some cases, I enjoy abstract art, and it really made me think about art as expression, which I think was the point, so good job guys. Darcy preferred the Surrealist stuff to the abstract, and so was very excited to see a couple Salvador Dalis present. All in all, I feel my horizons have been quite expanded art-wise, and I wouldn't mind coming to another art museum (in Venice, it's not hard. The only thing easier to find than a church is an art museum.)
I'd show you some pictures, but once again, we were not allowed to take pictures inside, so we didn't. Instead, here is a pretty picture of Venice:
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| From August 21 Venice |
After seeing more art in two hours than we do in most months, we set out to visit the Island of Lido, which has a famous beach on it (not Venice Beach, that's in California). Byron and Shelley visited this beach, which made it pretty cool in our books.
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| From August 21 Venice |
We took a water ferry (with no crazy ladies at all) to the island, and stumbled onto a bus to take us to the beach (every bus takes you to the beach. The island is about 300 m across, 100 m of which is beach). The beach here is CRAZY. It's crazy in the sense that it's an amazingly beautiful beach, and crazy in the sense that it is the most commercialized beach I have ever seen. You can rent: a change room, a beach umbrella, a deck chair, or a cabana, all of which are arranged in row after row along the beach.
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| From August 21 Venice |
Darcy and I rented a beach umbrella, chair and changing room (which locked, so we could put things like money in it) for a measly 23 euros, and then took off down the beach (our umbrella was a ways away from the water, so the time it took to walk there could be measured in minutes).
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| From August 21 Venice |
We spent the next few hours playing around in the ocean, and I have to say it is the most pleasant ocean water I have ever been in. Anyone who has met me has probably noticed I don't have an excess of body fat, and cold water makes me very cold very quickly. Add to this the fact that I really don't float well for the same reason, and I typically don't enjoy the ocean a whole lot. But this was a pretty stellar ocean. The water was warm (although I still didn't float). Darcy kept diving down to the bottom to pick up clams and such, although she stopped when she dove down and grabbed something that bit back. She also found a school of some of the smallest fish we'd ever seen.
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| From August 21 Venice |
In the end, we splashed and played for about three hours, until we packed it in and made our way back to the hotel, so we could figure out supper.
Italians have a weird way of doing supper (for us). First of all, no restaurant is open until 7:00. They are usually closed between 5:00 and 7:00 which really confused us, because that is prime North American eating time. Second of all, every menu we have seen in Venice has two parts: a first course and a second course. Last night when I ordered, I got only the first course, and the waiter asked me if that would be enough, so I got suspicious and ordered an appetizer.
It turns out that in Italy, you don't get sides, instead you get two courses. You can eat this much food, because you haven't eaten very much for lunch, based on our experiences here so far. The first course appears to be pasta, and the second course is some sort of meat. Each one is almost enough to be a meal on their own, and taken together are a heck of a lot of food. Luckily, swimming and art gallery viewing are strenuous enough activities that we were hungry enough to polish off a plate of pasta (Spaghetti with Meat Sauce for me and Lasagna with Seafood for Darcy) followed by a big plate of meat (Liver for me and Prawns for Darcy). My liver was alright, although I don't think I'd order it again (the sauce was delicious) but Darcy's prawns came without the heads or claws taken off, so they looked exactly like they had been taken straight from the ocean, dipped in some sort of bread crumbs and then served (to be fair, this is probably more or less what happened).
Another amusing thing that happened yesterday and I forgot to mention. We were eating supper, which was playing soft rock, when suddenly Metallica came on. And it wasn't some radio friendly Metallica song, like Enter Sandman, it was one called "So What" which you should look up the lyrics to, if you feel like being shocked. Anyways, we were sitting in a restaurant basically like Boston Pizza, and suddenly metal started playing and the singer started shouting expletives at the top of his lungs. Maybe in Italy, they don't mind swears, so long as they are in English.
Tonight is the last night we have in Venice. Tomorrow we are flying back to Paris, so we can catch our flight home early the next day. I expect that I will blog tomorrow night, with the remainder of our adventures in Venice (tomorrow morning) and with what we've come away from this trip with (debt).
Until then, enjoy the pictures.
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