A little early for restaurant traffic, but you see the crowds in Piazza San Marco in the distance. (big image, small)

Third day of travel, May 26

At ten in the morning, after a nice but unremarkable continental breakfast, we set off on foot toward the place where we would be picking up our urban tour the next day. Mark was uncertain how long it was going to take for us to get there on foot (no cars in Venice, don’t forget), and we surely did not want to miss tomorrow’s opportunity. This meeting place was just a short way for Saint Mark’s Piazza, so we went directly to this tourist magnet to see what could be seen.

Big image, small	Big image, small

When I snapped the first picture at the left, we’d just started our walk from the Abbazia towards San Marco. At this hour, ten in the morning, the shopping street we were on was surprisingly empty. The next picture, I shot for I know not what reason, but it’s nice for how well it shows the pristine blue clarity of the Venetian canal waters.

As we walked, naturally we passed over lots of short bridges spanning narrow canals. I waited carefully to take the picture to the right (big image, small). But we never had any interest in taking a gondola ride ourselves. Not for lack of urging: there were gondola-men, or their shills, everywhere.

We took a winding route to Saint Mark’s Plaza—not that there was a direct one! The last step was a dark passage that opened directly out onto the Piazza (big image, small), upper picture to the left.

I suppose we were as typical tourists as all the other people there, except perhaps a little older than the average. A thousand, I suppose, milling about, just for the pleasure of being there and being able to tell the folks at home that they had been there. We decided to go into the cathedral, and got at the end of a fairly rapidly-moving line to wait. While we were waiting, we took snapshots, and gawked at the crowds of people, who were not all Americans. The lower picture to the left shows the nice part-digital tower clock facing the Piazza: if you look at the big version of the lower picture to the left, you can see on either side of the Virgin “X” and “45”: ten-forty-five in the morning. This is less plain in the small image. The clock also has a twenty-four-hour face, as many early Italian clocks do. There’s a nice article on the web about the many alterations and restorations of the clock: seems that the most recent restoration does not have the approval of all horologists.

No charge to get into the cathedral, but I think that they were holding down the number of people that would be inside at any time. They were also careful about backpacks: not allowed at all. Nor photography. So you won't see any pictures here of the interior of Saint Mark’s.

The interior of Saint Mark’s gave me my first of several opportunities to become aware of the unreliability of memory. I had been to Venice thirty years earlier, in 1978, and remembered Saint Mark’s as being much much bigger than it seemed this time. As with the Baptistry in Florence, I much preferred my inaccurate memory to the updated truth.

After we left, I took a couple of pictures of architectural details around the Piazza, like the first picture at the right (big image, small). Then we went walking in the neighborhood—the skewed tower in the second picture there (big image, small) belongs to the Chiesa di San Giorgio dei Greci (Greek Church of St. George), I believe.

We walked about a bit, and had lunch, and then had the great adventure of running into Nikki Giovanni on the streets of Venice. I’ll leave the telling of the details to Mark. But he was so excited that it took quite a while for him to calm down, after we took leave of Ms. Giovanni and her companion. No pictures of this encounter, either, since Mark did not want to horn in on their vacation.

Next picture, to the left (big image, small), just shows the typical crowd scene near Saint Mark’s. In this case, on a bridge some time before we had lunch.

The one below that is rather more interesting: I took it of a wonderful silver and glass piece in a display window, an octopus holding a bowl in its embrace. Just the thing for the web’s most famous cephalopodophile. (Big image, small.) There were a lot of wonderful and wonderfully expensive things in windows in Venice. Indeed, we found the prices amazing throughout our trip. What with general inflation, and the cheapening of the dollar, we really had to ignore what we were spending each day.

At lunch, we decided that if we were to get to Murano, the famous glass-producing island in the Lagoon, it would have to be in the afternoon of this day, since all our remaining time in this part of Italy was pretty much planned out. So we hopped a water-bus (I guess the word “vaporetto” applies to these as much as to the water-taxis) to Murano and wandered around.

Our first visit was to a glass-factory that allowed visitors to watch the glass-workers at their craft. In the picture at the right (small image only), the glass-worker is pinching off a round blob of glass from the pontil. From the explanation of the purpose of the object, I thought that the interpreter was saying that these would be doorstops; on reflection, I wonder whether I misinterpreted his rudimentary English, and that he was describing doorknobs being made. No matter, I was surprised that the wiry little guy doing the work, who surely must have done glass-blowing, was smoking the whole time that we were there.

I took quite a few pictures on Murano, but few are interesting or picturesque enough to show here. The picture to the left shows a little square by the canal. If you look closely at the small image, you can see a sculpture in glass placed on the square; you can’t miss it in the big image.

On the right, on the other hand, you can’t miss the sculpture, even in the thumbnail. (Big image, small.) Very interesting from the technical standpoint; not so, I think, from the artistic.

When we got back to our room, we realized that the chandelier there had clearly come from Murano.

The chandelier in our room at the Abbazia (slightly larger image, full-size image)

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After a nap, we went out wandering, looking for a restaurant. I had not been particularly satisfied with our evening meal the previous day, and was in the mood for something more memorable. As we walked along, a sidewalk shill asked us what kind of food we were looking for, and urged us to look at his menu.

It was a place called al Brindisi, and it turned out to be rather good. We started with a glass of Chianti that seemed a rather stingy pour, but then the primo, a scallop dish, came, and there was a refreshing difference between this and the smelly scallop dish we had had the night before: it was luscious.

I had a secondo of fried sea-bass, which was just delicious: a thin crust of—perhaps—cornmeal, and the skin beneath was wonderfully crunchy. Mark had a whole fish of some kind, with capers and black olives, very impressive in presentation. Caprese as side-order for the both of us. This was a really nice meal!

We finished off with a sampler of four miniature desserts, and coffee. But as we were ready to go, we were presented with a complimentary after-dinner drink, which I found both slightly touching and rather curious, since the American couple next to us who left before we did, and who had a whole bottle of wine, got no such favor.

After dinner, straight to bed.