First...it's the mystery of knowing you can't be lost because everything eventually ends in water and then you Are lost. So you wander and wander until you find something familiar. And so goes our first day and a half.
But of course first Ami, Kathy and I land in Venice exhausted from trying to sleep in teeny tiny seats They let us through customs with no body searches. Our luggage arrives ...... miraculously. Penny and Chari arrive a couple hours later. With their luggage lost. Our greeters meet us and drive Penny et. al to the Water Taxi. Sky is dark and threatening, the water roiling and the taxi bobbing up and down in grayish green waves. Somehow Penny is hoisted onto the taxi on a platform which then lowers her and then we take a long bouncing trip to Venice proper to some little canal stopping point where our Apartment landlord meets us and we are taken through the usual labyrinthian narrow calles to our digs on the backside of the Fenice Opera House. Twenty long marble steps to the apartment. She makes it. What a trouper!
And then later semi-recovered, Chari and I go out to orient ourselves. Where are we in relation to St. Marks? We come upon Chiesa di Moise. And then I feel I'm really back in Baroque Italy. The altar startling with stone carving of active figures. At first the lower figures look like they are having a great time at some bacchanalean picnic. I think, what kind of church picnic is this? Then Chari points out Moses at the top ready to throw the tablets down on the sinners. It's all in that nano still second before the action...or in this case before all hell breaks loose.
We do come upon the San Marco Piazza now dry of the flooding earlier in the day and in spite of the crowds and the construction site and the familiarity you find yourself catching your breath as if you never saw it before.
Today (Tuesday), again to San Marco meeting up with Kathy and Ami who are staying in separate hotels near the Academia Bridge. Kathy's teeny tiny room looks out on the Canal. Ami's place is a large apartment with sleeping loft. Both are very happy. Across from Kathy is the Instituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti where there is an exhibit of Photographs by Stanley Kubrick. A nineteenth century building, elegant with an interior of molto ceiling decorations. Gloriano!
Tomorrow .... To Burano eating at al Gatto Nero on the recommendation of our brilliant friend, Eda.
Then to Torcello on the recommendation of many friends including my new landlord whose father-in-law was one of the last people living there who was born there. A Venetian historian.And so to bed.
