The trip of a second lifetime

Leaving Venice today.

Last couple of days swept by like aqua alta flowing swiftly into a canale.

We ate, of course: a couple of mediocre meals, an exceptional spread at formal, pricy, worth visiting Veccia Cabana in Ca' d'Oro, an aborted attempt to try out Harry's Dolci (sister to Harry's Bar, but cheaper, more casual) on La Giudecca across the water (closed despite guidebook assurances).

Best last-minute things:
• Chocolate shop Vizio Virtu Ciacolatteria (www.viziovirtu.com), which smells like God's antechamber. A tres chic cocoa-and-caramel-colored place just off the Sao Toma' vaporetto stop. Purchased a dozen tiny, perfect handmade chocolates — tiramisu, which a cocoa-caffe filling and a plain chocolate truffle sprinkled with shaved sea salt. Only got to eat one as we ended up taking them as a hostess gift to our landlady when she invited us up for farewell drinks last night. She and our fellow guests enjoyed them. Had a sip of Bonnie's cold chocolate (like hot chocolate, only..well..cold), very intense, not too sweet — nectar!
• Visiting some neighborhoods where we hadn't venture before, including the aforementioned island of La Giudecca, very non-touristy, a bedroom community of Venice, down-class a bit, where many large, brick former factory buildings have been turned into condominiums, often quite charming with courtyards and the odd small canal. Quiet, populated mainly by residents going about their daily lives and as uninterested in tourists as a fisherman on a Windward side reef.
Other neighborhoods worth checking out for nifty shops, pretty campi include San Polo where the University is. I really meant to get to Burano, the one-time lace island (the local hand-made lace industry is mostly gone; much of what you find here is manufactured in Asia) with its brightly colored homes, beloved of photographers. And we talked about going out to a fishing camp on one of the islands where the owner serves multi-course meals from his catch to select groups of visitors, but we never quite got the nerve up to try making the arrangements, fearful that our Italian would be inadequate. (Actually, KNOWING that our Italian would be inadequate.)
• Saw a couple of Biennale installations.
Q. How do you know it's a modern art installation? A. When you can't tell a) if anything lying around is part of the exhibit or just happens to be something a workman forgot, b) (in the case of performance art or video or music work) you don't know when it's over. We sat through a film of a man huffing and puffing his way up a Welsh hillside, the shale crackling under his feet, and I left mightily perplexed. In another place, they were exhibiting abstract works made by a horse. Yes, horse. Paintbrush in mouth. Even Bonnie drew the line there. I rather liked the colorful splashes myself. But I'm a cretin. On the whole, Bonnie has found the work at this Biennale safe, uninteresting and disappointing. On the whole, I've found it, as I said, mightily perplexing.
Today, we leave La Serenissima who, I'm sure will miss us not at all. But we will miss her!