Venice Day Two

Thursday, January 17, 2008

It’s still raining muskrats and beavers today, and I was supposed to go on a historical walk through the city. However, the hotel forgot to do my wake-up call until it was too late, so between that and the rain I had a good excuse to stay back and write.


It hadn’t helped that I was up until after 2 a.m. writing, and because the noise of the rain thrumming on the metal shutters and running into the gutters kept me awake through much of the night.

I thought it might clear up in the afternoon, but no such luck. I’m not willing to purchase any other warm clothes to go out in the rain and cold when I’ll be home in three or four days time, so I guess I’ll miss my boat tour to the islands this afternoon too….it would have been hard to take pictures any way. Hope it clears up for tomorrow’s forays. (Note to self: Don’t pre-book excursions unless you will go regardless of the conditions. I discovered I'm not, necessarily.)

I’ve taken a few photos once again of my hotel and the sights I can see from my room and the nearby surroundings. I’m on the fourth floor (fourth is piano in Italian), and I took some pics looking over the roof tops.

There is a small courtyard that leads into the reception area of the hotel.

You can approach it either by the canal or by sidewalk through narrow ‘back’ streets. I wouldn’t want to be too intoxicated one night and take a wrong turn out of the hotel and end up in the canal…it looks horribly dark and dirty.

I’m amazed at the sea-battered and water-logged buildings and wharves along the canal, amazed that they have not disintegrated by the constant lapping of waves against their brick and wooden exteriors. I wonder if they get water in their basements? Do they even have basements?

Even though many of the buildings have colour of some sort or another, they look faded and worn and the old part of the city looks dreary…again I’m sure this is partly because of the cloudy skies and the rain. It’s also cold today.

In spite of my resistance at learning a few words in another language, I am coming to know the basics like bon jorno (good morning), gracia (thank you), ciao (hello, good-bye). My poor brain is a little confused now with four different types of “Spanish-based” languages (Mexico, Spain, Catalan and Portuguese), some basic high school French, and now Italian with so many words being quite similar in all the languages. I still prefer Spanish the best and one day hope to be able to speak. I believe it is right behind Chinese and English for having the most people in the world speaking it.









My hotel on ther left: the building with grey on the bottom and pink on the top...you get to it through a narrow lane.

In the meantime, I found an authentic, I think, pizzeria and had my first official Italian pizza. Quite delicious too! I could imagine the chef in the kitchen flipping the dough into the air to

make the thin, irregular-shaped crust, which extended beyond the plate. (No formed in the pan type pizzas here.) Prosciutto, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese delicately arrayed on top, cooked to perfection in mere minutes and served uncut, they are definitely eaten with a knife and fork in this country!

The cost was 6.96 Euros for mine and I could only eat half. There is what’s called a cover charge here, which is actually the tax on food here, so I must remember to add that into my total when I am contemplating an order. I still have a few more Italian foods to sample, but I may have to wait for evenings for some of them….or extend my so far short walks to more populated regions to find the foods on my personal menu during the day.

Surprisingly the weather has kept me from going to far...also I seemed to need a down day once in a while and today was the day....well, back to working on my novel.....it's only 5 pm and already dark as pitch!