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Palazzo Franchetti
The ceiling at this elaborately decorated palazzo was just one little thing we discovered in the past few weeks.One of the fun things about having a friend visit while we are abroad is playing the tourist. While living in Venice, it is easy to ignore the big sights and forget that we are inhabiting a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Okay, not really. Yet there are days that schoolwork, grocery shopping, laundry and other chores take precedence and the other parts of living in Venice become second nature. Even the really, really fabulous parts, like getting coffee and gelato out every day and doing all our errands on foot or by boat.
Visits from three friends--all separately--gave us the opportunity to look around once again and realize how very lucky we were to be in magical, wonderful Venice. We started by explaining how we get places: when it is more efficacious to walk, and when to take a vaporetto and when to make that calculus. We figure the best time to visit San Marco or Salute, and in the process of taking our friends, realize, once again, how fabulous it is. We take our friends to Corner Pub, because it is our neighborhood bar and because we love our local bartender, Alessandro, who knows our drink orders by heart;
then we go out and try somewhere new, because we have friends in town! We go to a tried and true cichetti place (Vini Botegon) or restaurant (Osteria alla bifora) or pizza joint (Al Volo) but then make a point to go somewhere different (Trattoria del Ponte; Zucca) because, well, we have friends in town! Gelato becomes and everyday, or twice daily, event. We make it a point to save certain museum visits for those friends, and see something new (the garden at Ca' Rezzonico, or the fabulous period dress at Palazzo Mocenigo). We take days trips (Torcello, Burano, Ferrara) because we want to show our friends a little more and it is an excuse to get out of town for a bit.
Of course we walk and walk and walk and get lost--our favorite thing to do in Venice. We rarely, if ever, do get lost anymore, but we tried really really hard and actually succeeded once or twice for our friends. This is important, you see, because Venice is like a jewel box. Each time someone visits us, we pull open another drawer, go down another street, turn another corner, cross another portal and there it is:
Beth in Venice
We saved some of the big sites for friends. Visiting San Marco with Beth and then again with Jackie made it all new all over again. another beautiful vista, a quiet part of a canal, a restaurant we haven't visited or a church we haven't seen. We will never run out of treasure in this most stupendous of places.
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