Pétanque & Pastis

More Neighbors – Torcello & Burano

We bid a joyful farewell to the Michelangelo this morning, and to our first (and last) cruise.  We checked our bags into the luggage storage area at the train station, stopped for breakfast at a sidewalk caffè, and then hopped onto a vaporetto headed for the island of Torcello, another one of Venice’s 33 neighbors in the lagoon.  From the Fondamente Nove (F.te Nove) vaporetto stop in Venice to Torcello took about 55 minutes.

Torcello, which is Italian for “Tower and Sky”, is a small marshy island toward the northeast end of the salt-water lagoon.  It was the first settlement in the lagoon back in the 5^th century, and was considered a very important center of trade and commerce in the 14^th century, with a population of more than 20,000 inhabitants.  Nowadays, the island is largely abandoned with probably no more than 20 permanent residents.  It was a short walk, along the canal toward the campanile, on the town’s only street, to reach Torcello’s main piazza.

We found all the important tourist sites congregated together in the main piazza:  the 11^th-century Church of Santa Fosca (pictured above), the 7^th-century Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta with its campanile, the Museo dell’Estuario (a small archeological museum), and Attila’s Throne.

A five-minute vaporetto ride from Torcello got us over to the colorful island of Burano in time for lunch.  Actually, to say that Burano is colorful is an understatement.  And, it is for this reason, that it is always flocked with tourists.  The story goes that the houses on Burano were painted in different colors so that the fishermen could recognize their houses from their fishing boats out on the lagoon.  While the male population consisted traditionally of fishermen, the women were traditionally lace-makers.  It was the lace-makers of Burano who invented the famous “punta in aria” (stitch in air), which gave their lace a reputation for quality throughout Europe.  Our Venice Museum Passes (Musei Civici Veneziani) got us into the Museo del Merletto (Lace Museum), where we saw examples of the famous Burano stitches, as well as the interesting tools they used to create their works of art.

The 40-minute vaporetto ride back to Venice from Burano left us plenty of time to continue our favorite pastime in Venice, which is strolling around and searching out the small alleys and canals away from the crowds at Piazza San Marco.

It turned out that we got a lot of use out of our 3-Day Vaporetto Cards that we purchased upon our arrival for 25€ each, at the vaporetto station in front of the ferrovia (train station).  Your 72-hours of travel begins as soon as you stamp your card in the yellow stamping machine just before boarding your first vaporetto.  This was our third trip to Venice, and we had never been asked to see our vaporetto tickets … until our very last trip today from Burano to Venice.  You can be fined if you do not have a valid ticket.  Fortunately, we still had a couple of hours remaining on our cards. 

After a leisurely dinner at Vini da Gigio, Fondamenta del la Chiesa, Cannaregio 3628/A – tel: +39 041 528 5140 (reservations are essential), we climbed aboard our 11:00pm overnight train for the return trip to Nice.  The anti-CPE demonstrators have convinced SNCF (the French Train System) to resume their strikes, so there will be another complete shut-down beginning day after tomorrow.  For some reason they like to begin their strikes on Tuesdays, at least for this particular cause.  We're hoping the trains will be running tomorrow, so that we can get from Nice to Antibes.

Venice’s Neighbors in the Lagoon – Chioggia & Lido

After cruising all night on the Adriatic Sea, we woke up to find the Michelangelo at port in the serious fishing village of Chioggia, just a short vaporetta ride toward the south end of the lagoon from Venice.  After breakfast aboard, we headed over to the main part of town and walked past the caffès and shops, and through the open-air produce market, and then strolled through the much more interesting fish market, which is really the heart and soul of the city.  Chioggia is a real fishing village with hard-working fishermen with serious-looking fishing boats, and some of them sell the fruits of their labor here at the daily fish market housed in the 14^th-century Granaio (municipal granary).

We decided it would be more interesting to take the vaporetto (water bus) over to the island of Lido than to cruise back to Venice aboard the Michelangelo.  The vaporetto from Chioggia went as far as Pellestrina, where we hopped onto a land bus which drove along the narrow Litorale di Pellestrina until it reached the end of the strip of land, where the whole bus (with us on board) rolled onto a ferry which took us over to Alberoni, at the other end of the same island as Lido.  The bus then rolled off the ferry and transported us directly to Lido, about 1 ½ hours after our adventure from Chioggia began.

The narrow island of Lido has the Venetian Lagoon on its west side and the Adriatic Sea with 12 kilometers of wide sandy beaches on the east side.  It was extremely quiet this time of year – almost too quiet really.  The beach-side restaurants seemed to be closed and there just didn’t seem to be very much activity outside, while in Venice the sidewalk caffès were bustling and very lively.  I imagine it’s a different story in Lido once June rolls around.

Lido also has picturesque canals scattered around the island.  And it has one thing that Venice does not have – land traffic.  Cars can be brought over by ferry, but we found walking to be sufficient.  Of course, if you need to cover more ground, I think a bicycle would be a more interesting way to get around on the island.

The vaporettos run often between Lido and stations near the Piazza San Marco in Venice, and take only about 15 minutes. 

A Tongue and Cheek Tour of Padova

A 30-minute train ride from Venice got us to into Padova in the late morning.  The first thing we did was to head over to the Scrovegni Chapel to make a reservation for a viewing later in the day.  After securing a 17h15 reservation, we meandered through the park that houses the chapel, the Giardini Dell’Arena, and then made our way into the centro storico (the old town) where we settled into Caffè Cavour at Piazza Cavour for an alfresco lunch.

After lunch we continued our tour of Padova by visiting one of the most important pilgrimage churches in Italy, the Basilica di Sant’Antonio.  It is here that the body of the Portuguese Franciscan preacher, affectionately referred to as "Il Santo", was entombed years after his death in 1231.  Among the “miraculous” relics found here in the church, is the tongue of Saint Anthony.  Yes, the tongue !!  We have often seen body parts of saints or other important persons stored in some of the churches of Italy.  Among other things, we have seen several fingers, a nose, an ear, an arm, a jaw (or cheek), and my personal favorite, a larynx.  Most of the time we just have to take the word of the relic descriptions since they are, largely, unrecognizable.  Would you be able to recognize a 700 year-old larynx, or a 775 year-old tongue ?

Our Padova Museum pass gave us entry to the Musei Civici agli Eremitani with its mosaic fragments from the 1^st century, Roman busts and full statues, Egyptian antiquities, and treasures from the Greek and Etruscan periods.

It was finally time for our 17h15 viewing of the frescoes by Giotto, the great Tuscan artist, in the Cappella degli Scrovegni.  We were required to start our visit with a 15-minute wait in a special air-conditioned multimedia room, where the flow of visitors into the actual chapel could be regulated.  Fortunately, an informative video about the restoration of the frescoes is shown during the wait, which gives you an idea of what to look for once inside, where you have only 15 minutes to take in all the amazing paintings.  These measures were put into place in order to safeguard the precious works of art from pollution.  When you finally enter the church, you see that the whole chapel is completely covered in Giotto’s treasured frescoes from the early 14^th century, depicting the life of Christ, the life of Mary, and relating the stories of Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne.  When you get to the end of the chapel and turn around facing the entrance, you face the gigantic “Last Judgement”, which covers the whole arched end of the chapel.  It would be very easy to spend more than 15 minutes on the “Last Judgement” alone.

Before heading back to the train station for our return to Venice, we got in a last stroll which took us along the beautiful, peaceful canals and waterways in and around Padova.

Reluctant Cruisers in Venice

We were able to board the Michelangelo at 6:00pm last night.  Our home for the rest of the week is very nice, and our room is very comfortable.  What we expected was a hotel on water.  What we got was a real, bona fide cruise.  Last night we were seated for dinner at the table where we will have all our meals, along with the two other couples who will be our table companions for every meal.  Fortunately, they are all very nice, and they only speak French, so we won’t have to worry about our French getting rusty while we are in Italy.

After a morning cruise in the Venice Lagoon, the Michelangelo settled in not far from Piazza San Marco, where we spent the afternoon visiting the Basilica di San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace).  We walked across The Bridge of Sighs, which links the Palazzo Ducale with the prison, and was so named because the prisoners would get their last glimpse (pictured below) of the outside world as they walked across to be locked up.

Venice by Bus and Train

It turned out that SNCF (the French train system) decided to support the anti-CPE protestors by going on strike beginning yesterday, the day of our departure by train to Venice !  We knew the French trains would not be running, and that we wouldn’t be able to take the train from Antibes to Nice to catch our Italian train, but we were surprised when our friends dropped us off at the Nice station, and we found that not even the international trains were running.  Fortunately, SNCF put us on a bus and took us on a nightmarish ride over to Ventimiglia, Italy, to catch our Italian train.  We’re lucky to live so close to Italy - it took less than 30 minutes by autoroute.  So, a potential catastrophe was averted once we stepped off the bus, met up with our train, and settled into our private compartment for the overnight trip.

After being rocked to sleep with the motion of the train, we were in good form for our arrival into the Santa Lucia train station in Venice around 8:00am, and were able to check our bags at the train station for the day.  It was nice strolling around a very peaceful Venice, and watching the morning markets setting up their wares.

Venice 1948-1986: the art scene

We stopped in to see the Photography Exhibit at the very popular Peggy Guggenheim Collection in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on Venice’s Grand Canal.  Peggy Guggenheim made her home here in the “Palazzo non finito” (uncompleted palace) from 1949 until her death in 1979.  It looks as though the upper floors of the palace were somehow chopped off.  However, for reasons which still remain a mystery today, the construction of the building, which began in the 18^th century, was never completed.

The exhibit provides photographs from Venice’s post-war international art scene captured at the Venice Biennales from 1948 through 1986.  The << Biennale di Venezia >>, which also includes the Venice Film Festival, is an important contemporary art exhibition which has been taking place every other year in Venice starting from the late 1800’s.  Many of the contemporary artists of the day are shown in the photographs including Picasso, Alex Calder, Fernand Léger, Max Ernst, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, etc.