Buon giorno, oggi e Venerdi!

Good morning and today is Friday. How has nearly a week sped by?

Yesterday, after a morning of taking care of business and, well, yes, shopping, I finally made it to Ca' Rezzonico, the city's 18th century museum in a palazzo on the Grand Canal. Grand, indeed. Sadly we could not see the facade, which is masked with plastic as renovation work proceeds. Renovation is a perpetual state in Venice; just as something is finished, something else needs work. Ask any Venetian. Or ask my friend Bonnie, who was at a Biennale exhibit yesterday when water suddenly began pouring down a wall, engulfing the painting she was looking at!

Travel tip: Use the Internet or phone to check ahead on any attaction you particularly want to see; it may be under renovation, affecting hours, or the availability of certain exhibits or features.

Ca Rezzonico's three flours of exhibits, well-kept gardens and colonnade, book shop and cafeteria are a must for anyone who cares about putti (winged cherubs), ornamentation in general and gilt and ebony in particular (don't stand still too long or some restorer will come and cover you in gold or black) but also chinoiserie and the 18th century. Having read a great deal in 18th century English literature and history, I was interested to see what my English 'friends' would have seen when they visited Venice on what was then called the Grand Tour, de rigeur for upper class men after university and before marriage. A lot of naughtiness if the sketches of everyday noble life are to be believed: My favorites, besides the portraits in the Pastel Room, were a pair of famous paintings, one depicting a ridotto (a masked ball) and the other a visit by gracious ladies to a nunnery. In the one, every domino'd figure appears to be smirking at or spying on another, totting up, no doubt, who is flirting with whom from behind their hooked noses and black face coverings. And in the other, the ladies behind the grill are not, as one would expect, in habits, but dresses just as are the ladies in the salon where guests are received; these are, for the most part, superfluous women — widows, the one-great who have been disgraced or impoverished, homely spinsters — who opted for, or were forced into, the convent. They took no vows but simply turned over whatever assets they had and lived respectably under the care of worker-bee nuns, a sort of Christ's zenanah, buzzing with intrigue and gossip about their visitors with as much relish as those at the maked ball.

Afterward, I ventured out a side door and along a rio with no fixed purpose other than to find a late lunch (it was already 2) and wander by myself. Following my nose, as the English say, I stopped at a cicchetti (snack) bar called Caffe Vergnano 1882 in the Fondamenta Gherardini in San Barnaba, the neighborhood we had visited the other night at dinner and a most pleasant place, indeed. According to popular Venice writer Donna Leon, the best bread in Venice is to be had on the Campo S. Barnaba, at the gourmet shop, Pantagreulica. I intend to go back there. (As you will recall, you pay a cover if you sit down in a ciccheti establishment; IF there are even seats offered. Most stand around the walls, perching their plates on narrow ledges provided, nibbling and sipping. In general, Venetians are a stand-up lot. The other day, at Rialto Market, we ran into a political rally after which all the beautifully suited, mobile phone-equipped politicos stood around the public courtyard sipping and eating. Standing up.)

Refreshed by fried polenta squares topped with roasted peppers and prosciutto, polponne carne (meat fritters) and a vegetable rice dish, I continued wandering, taking pictures, turning here and there, stopping to see a couple of smaller Biennale installations, until I reached the Zattere, from which wide lagoon-front pathway, it's a straight shot back to Palazzino di Schio, where we're staying.

Ducked into Billa, one of an ubiquitous grocery chain and the only full-scale supermarket in the Dorsoduro, about the size of a small neighborhood Foodland. I was looking for finely milled polenta to use in experimenting with almond cake when I get home (see my Honolulu Advertiser blog, My Island Plate) and just generally browsing.

Billa in some ways makes its compatriots in Honolulu look backward. For example, when you buy produce, you take it to a weigh station, tap the corresponding led display and find out just exactly what it will cost; a label spits out, speeding checkout later. And every grocery store, not just Whole Foods-type specialty stores, offers a very wide range of high-quality convenience foods, from pre-prepped fresh vegetables to complete meals made in the deli kitchen. Each has at least a small, and busy, deli area for fresh formaggio (cheese) and salumeria (preserved meats) and meats. In general, despite the press of space, the range is impressive with everyday eaters and "buongusti" (gourmets) served equally well.

Later in the day, at my request, Bonnie bequeathed to me the techniques the Contessa had bequeathed to her as to how to make a rich cafe in a twee little stovetop coffee pot provided. The device employs three chambers: the bottom for water, a filter above it for finely ground coffee and the top, in which the coffee makes itself by means of condensation: boiling the water forces air and moisture up through the grounds, depositing a strong brew above.

The secrets: NO TAMPING; use a small spoon to lightly drift the fine grounds in the filter basket. NO WATER TO TOUCH THE GROUNDS; make sure the water level is below the bottom of the filter. Bring to a boil, listen for the cheerful sound, a trilling bubbling rather like pigeons courting (but not really), and in a couple of minutes, it's brewed. The one we have makes about two demitasse cups and I'm giving it a workout.

I'm off to sketch and paint. Today, I have promised myself a day off — no extensive sightseeing, no shopping, just living the good life in Venice, as though I were a respectable retired lady.

Swimming the stream

Think "stream of consciousness," my friend advised when I said I had been assigned to do a blog at work (honoluluadvertiser.com, go to Taste link, look for My Island Plate).
Today, my stream of consciousness is flowing toward the Rio della Fornace and the Fondamenta Soranzo in Venice, where I will arrive Tuesday calling out to the Contessa, "Ciao, Mama, io sto a casa!" (Which, I hope, means, "Hi, Mom, I'm home!"). And if I get it wrong, I think Il Cane Webby (Webby the Dog) is bilingual and I speak passable dog.
One of the joys of traveling is leaching the pleasure in either direction from the itinerary — in advance and after the return — by means of the printed page.
My first choice was James H. S. McGregor's "Venice from the Ground Up" (Belknap/Harvard University, 2006). It's an architectural, anthropolical, cultural and social history of the city that begins with the frightened Mainlanders who fled to the protection of the Venetian islands in advance of the barbarian hordes in the sixth century, and brings the reader to the current day.
Being an 18th century kind of gal, my most profound impression upon closing the book was, "Napoleon has a lot to answer for."
I've long been rather a conflicted fan of Napoleon. His wife, after all, inspired the empire waist, whose (as Georgette Heyer always termed them) "clinging draperies" flatter us rounded curves type women. I've read much of the Battle of Waterloo (I'm a Wellington junkie, too).
But what his defeat of Venice did, stripping La Serenissima of its singular power and of many of its most important works, which McGregor says formed the heart of the Louvre's art collection, that, I cannot readily forgive. (And when he was done, he left it to the Austrians to finish the job. Many of the works have never been repatriated.)
I look forward eagerly to touring Ca' Rezzonico, the art museum of the 18th century.
Reading about the history of a place, and in particular its cultural and social history, always adds depths to the colors and shapes around me as I travel. I recall looking up from a book as I glided down The Thames for the first time in a hotel boat, realizing that the water meadows, stately homes and historic places I was seeing in real time would be familiar to people who had lived in the times of which I had just been reading.
The alpha and omega of my travel experiences came when visiting Castle Howard in York (setting for the original "Brideshead Revisited"), standing on the eastern steps of the Temple of the Four Winds and looking out over a rolling landscape of tilled fields and woods. "Quick!," I said to my best friend, another 18th centurian, "which century is it?" "I. Don't. Know," she responded in tones of wonder. Due to peculiarities of the landscape, no paved roads or other modern structures were visible. There was no modern machinery in the fields just then. We might have been in any time since agriculture was invented.
For the history-minded, a consummation devoutly to be wished, and one that cannot be planned, only courted.
I'm courting such moments in Venice, and recalling a few I experienced in 2007 — laughing as my friend's hair flew out behind her as we clung to our hold on a speeding water taxi and distant Venice took on shape at the far den of the lagoon; listening to the slap of the waters against the greasy stones or the sound of my footsteps' echo in a dim sotoportego (a tunnel in which the building above are joined over a narrow passage); breathing in the scents of butter and vanilla in a bakery in Murano while my excited friend, who had trained in patisserie, spoke to the baker in halting Italian; kneeling at Mass in a church off the Zattere on a Saturday night, bathed in prayers in (to me) unintelligble Italian, knowing that others were listening to the same words in their own language the world over.
"We read," a character says in "Shadowlands," "to know we're not alone."
We travel, perhaps, for the same reason.