At 5:00 pm yesterday, we went to a concert at La Fenice, one of the world's most famous opera houses. In 1996, it burned to the ground, but like its name, which means "The Phoenix," it has arisen from its ashes, maticulously restored through a process that took many years and an extimated 90 million Euros. (Today's Euro is worth about $1.30.) The result is stunning. It's a relatively small jewel box decorated with murals, ornate gold gilt, and red plush carpets and seats. Stunning.Sadly, the concert itself was not stunning. It began with a brief antipasto of Ravel followed by a Mozart piano concerto for the primi. The young man who played the piano, Leonardo Pierdomenico, and the conductor, Diego Matheuz, were as limp and lifeless as wilted lettuce, but a mostly tourist audience lured the pianist back to play an encore solo that resembled a lullaby. Aroused by a brief intermission, we returned for a secundo course of Tchaikovsky Symphony # 6. Its hugemungus drums roused us from our torpor and left us ready for a hearty dinner.
Our concierge had reserved a table for us at Acqua Pazza in Campo S. Angelo, only a few hundred yards from the theater. It being a relatively warm evening, we dined al fresco on a hearty round of delicious appetizers--fried zucchini flowers and a sampler of bruschetta. Then came a series of dishes with pasta, some with clams, one with half a lobster. Dessert was a series of ices served in scouped-out husks of the fruit they were flavored with, such as tiny bananas, peaches, and walnuts. All this along with prosecco, wine, coffee, limoncello, some other after-dinner drink, and a bill that made me think of the renovation of La Fenice made for a stylishly enjoyable evening on the town.
The next morning we did lots of walking around the San Marco and Dorsoduro sections of the city. Even with a map and Bob, who has amazing skills of reading them, we often ended up at Calles (Streets) that led to a dead end at a canal, or sometimes, if we were lucky, revealed, at the very end, a tiny ally that burst open onto a piazza large enough to make it onto our fairly detailed map. What we were looking for at first was the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo, but when we located where it *should* be, a kindly shopkeeper explained that we'd found a private house by exactly the same name as the one we wanted which was in a totally different section of the city.
Next stop was the very tip of the Dorsoduro section of the city where we saw a couple of police who seemed to be guarding a Ray Charles statue, "Boy with a Frog." We also snapped a few photos of ourselves with St. Mark's Square in the background across the lagoon. What we did not photograph was a gigantic Carnival cruise ship edging its way past us toward a dock further up the lagoon. It dwarfed all the buildings it passed by, and its decks and balconies were crowded with two or three thousand tourists that would soon flow into the city that was already clogged with them. Including us.
On Karin's must-see list, in addition to the Guggenheim Museum, was the Questura or Police Station where Donna Leon's fictional Commissario Brunetti has his office. It was, of course, way over on the other side of the city, so, for two Euros each, we took a traghetto or gondolier-like boat that ferries a few passengers at a time across the Grand Canal where there are no bridges. That saved us lots of time, and we made it to the Questura for a few photos followed by a light lunch in a restaurant where the skilled detective and his trusty sidekick, Vianello, must have passed hundreds of times.Tonight, we are joining Jean and Mike Brady for dinner. Bob, Gary and I came to know them on our last cruise, since our dinner tables were next to each other. We've kept in touch by email since then and discovered that they're cruising on the same ship back to Fort Lauderdale with us. And their hotel is about three doors down the street from ours. Small world.
This blog is the last of our daily ones, since tomorrow Karin flies to Frankfurt en route to the Denver, and we board our ship.
