Happy New Year from Venice!!

Today was absolutely my favorite kind of tourist day. The sun was shining in the morning and the vaporetto was not at all crowded, so we had a Grand Canal ride with great weather and great views. Then we took another across the lagoon to San Giorgi, a church designed by Palladio (the Italian architect whose name has been given to McMansion designers' favorite type of window). Amazing views from the bell tower.

Then an hour or so walking in the main square area, and realizing how lucky we are that our hotel is not in this part of town. We are in San Stae, well located between the train station and the Rialto/San Marco area. Still lots of tourists, but nothing like the crowds closer in town.

After a decent lunch in a little trattoria (when in tourist landia it pays to raise your budget a little and go for a white tablecloth place), we got back on the vaporetto and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the neighborhood named Canareggio. No more than 4 tourists on any bridge we crossed! In fact there were lots of streets adjacent to canals where we saw no gondolas, no trinket shops, nothing but regular people with their laundry hanging from the line outside. We saw a couple of beautiful churches, two in particular, both named after Mary, both gothic but radically different styles. We saw Tintoretto's house, and the churches had lots of Tintoretto and Titian paintings, so even though we didn't go to any art museums today we had our fair share of art.

Surprising factoid of the day -- We went to the first Jewish ghetto and learned that the name comes from the Italian word for forge, because the Jews here were forced to live in an area of Canareggio that was the site of an old Italian forge.

Well, tonight is New Year's Eve. We were kind of on the fence about braving the crowds to go down to the square for fireworks, but then our hotel owner gave us his opinion about the crowds and the fact that it will take hours to walk back in the throngs. And then to top things off, we saw the weather forecast is showing possible rain. So after Joe "rests his feet" (code for "takes a short nap") we will go see if there is any food to be had in any place in our neighborhood. If not, we have a bag of clementines and a bar of chocolate, which will hold us till tomorrow if need be.

Happy New Year to all!Read more