There are somber areas to the main square, commemorating the events of World War II. The bas relief below is quite a powerful statement; others nearby struck us as too powerful to photograph. But there is now indeed a lighter side to the place, illustrated in part by the glass shop on the other side of the square. They create all their work there in the shop, combining Jewish tradition and humor with classic Venetian glass technique. All the ladies in our party left with lovely pieces of glass jewelry. Among the objects that we didn’t get pictures of were glass candies (for display purposes only, of course), offered in both Kosher and non! The shop appears to be a big attraction for visiting American Jews, as evidenced by the number of American business cards they keep on display.
Ghetto is out near the western edge of the city, so we kept walking till we came to the end. Looked across at the railroad causeway, walked along the edge for a while, then along a canal heading back toward our part of town. Light lunch at a sidewalk establishment. Then we found ourselves at ‘Ben Franklin Square,’ so we jogged over to the Internet shop. There’s nothing to eat or drink there, so we’ve stopped calling it a café. Everything went very well this time. Yesterday’s unreachable e-mail account came up just fine, yesterday's blog posting did indeed get posted at the very last second before time ran out, and today’s blog posting went very well now that we’ve learned to upload video at the very beginning and then do other stuff while it’s taking its time getting there.
E-mail brought us the news of Dan and Sarah’s schedule for a trip east just before Christmas and the news from our Realtor that our house has been listed. And his compliments on how nice it looks. You should be able to see it at http://matrix.mris.com/Matrix/Public/Email.aspx?ID=21622211840
Back to our apartment for siesta. And amusing ourselves by watching the traffic on the canal from our living room window.
Then we headed off to the nearest Vaporetto stop. There was no ticket window at this stop and the boat was extremely crowded, so somehow we ended up with a free ride to the Peggy Guggenheim museum of modern art. A woman well ahead of her time, she accumulated an impressive collection at the rate of about one piece per day, which she housed in her impressive home along the Grand Canal. We didn’t take pictures inside, but here’s a shot of the view out toward the canal.
Picasso, Dali, and Calder were among those represented here. No touching, of course, but Bruce did get a Calder mobile into motion by blowing on it. There was a brief talk by a young English docent/intern whose voice sounded identical to that of our teen-aged next door neighbor when we lived there! She gave insight into the more scandalous aspects of a few paintings by Peggy’s ex-husband Max Ernst, who was at that same time the lover of her mother.
Back to home on an even more crowded Vaporetto, paid for this time. Dinner was mostly pizza, large and flavorful (4 pages of pizza in the menu) at a neighborhood place. Bruce, Sue Anne, and Cathy wandered off to get gelati, and Karin and Dan headed out on the town claiming that this time they’d be back before 4 AM. More canal watching from the living room window. Tonight’s highlight was a party of a few gondolas, complete with accordion and song. One of the tourists took our picture as we leaned out the windows.
Tomorrow we go to Murano, the island of glass.
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