Another night of poor sleep and weird dreams for Bruce. Last night’s adventure featured his Dad (who was never into high finance) being accused of insider trading and tax evasion, and the other night it was being a spectator at the assassination of Frank Sinatra. Others in our party have been afflicted with visions of similar weirdness. Perhaps there are spirits here. But we normally manage to get it together by mid morning, fortified with a couple of cups of espresso and some pastries from the local bakery. Our apartment is well stocked with espresso makers, and Cathy added to the collection by purchasing a 3-cup model yesterday (the smaller one in the first picture) in a tiny kitchenware store. She successfully tried it out today. Bruce and Sue Anne are holding out for a larger one and expect that they’ll find one at a hypermarket somewhere along the road in the next part of our trip.
Karin and Dan passed on the morning adventure, which was a walk to the Internet shop. Nothing too much in the e-mail department. Published the blog. Sent back our review of the house listing to our Realtor, pointing out a few ambiguities and overstatements that needed to be cleaned up in the interest of clarity and honesty. We wanted ‘backs to trees’ deleted. It backs up to a house. With a few trees between.Buy a few souvenirs at a store that specializes in cat figures and images. Finally found an English language newspaper, the familiar International Herald-Tribune, at €2.20 = a bit over $3! Then back to the apartment, pick up Karin and Dan, and off to the Vaporetto. Buy 24-hour tickets for 2.5x the cost of a single ride. We’ll get our money’s worth out of these. To atone for our misdemeanor of yesterday, we probably ought to imagine an additional ride that we could take today-and then not take it!
One Vaporetto ride to San Marco and then switch to another route that took us to the nearby island of Murano, home of Venice’s glass industry. (Sign we recently saw in a store window: “We sell only Murano glass. Those who sell Chinese glass kill Murano.”). We caught the non-express boat that stopped at a lot of places including the island cemetery. Lunch at 3 PM. Bruce's memories of Murano from 40 years ago included walking past some rather rustic glass factories, but this time we stayed along what appears to be the main canal. Window shopped, wandered, bought a few trinkets, and carefully walked through other stores that were closer to art galleries than trinket shops. Hands in pockets, elbows tucked in.
Express Vaporetto back to San Marco and walk back to the apartment. Pasta and salad dinner, followed by gelati from the corner shop. We are really enjoying our little kitchen.
No scenic pictures today. It's not as if “You've seen one canal, you've seen them all.” Or “You've seen one glass shop, you've seen them all.” But there is a certain sameness of today’s pix to those of the previous days, so we’ll just let you imagine what it was like. Sue Anne has created a photographic record of our apartment, which we'll put together and post here when we have a bit more time.
Tomorrow we head out of here. Rent two cars and drive to Radda in the Chianti country of Tuscany. It’s about a 3-1/2 hour drive by the toll road (autostrada). Wine will feature in our upcoming adventures. There is also talk of chocolate. We’re renting a house in the country, so we don’t expect to find it wired for Internet access, and we have no idea what we’ll find in town. But there will be some city activities in our adventures of next week, especially in Florence, so stay tuned. We’ll be back.
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