Following the final arrival at the rather pleasant Hotel Splendid in the heart of the district between San Marco and Rialto, I checked in and grumbled at the receptionist about my water taxi "non-experience". In typical Venetian fashion she explained that the airport desk was wrong. Full stop. As though the airport people being wrong made my nearly two hour journey to the hotel by foot, over cramped water bus stopping at every bit of seaweed and then foot again, ok.
Well it didn't but I gave up on complaining and went in search of a reviving espresso and my colleague Cesare who, as the name might suggest, is Italian.
Espresso and Cesare both located, we set off to visit some exhibitions - including Morocco (not bad at all), Monaco (not good at all) and then down to the Arsenale area (where the militarily powerful Venetian city state kept all its weaponry in the past - and where it now appears to keep its art, with the warehousing now turned into art galleries.)
This city is just achingly beautiful. There is no other way to say it. The people are lazy and arrogant at times, everything costs a fortune and it takes twice as long to do anything here compared to anywhere else except perhaps Cairo.... But it is amazingly glorious in its fading charms... The close-up shot may not be the desirable one for the "old girl" but the right light and pose and no city is more beautiful...
A long series of excursions on various vaporetti eventually saw us ending back where we'd started and visiting the exhibitions of the UAE (hmmm), Turkey (excellent and interesting), Chile (different and also interesting) and a couple of other country exhibits I failed to note...
The evening was devoted to eating - of course. Cesare and I were to dine with three of his clients from a large Italian bank. In typical fashion Cesare's strategy was to book a minimum of two restaurants and then allow mood and which had a better table to guide us. This at the last minute in the second busiest period in Venice annually... Of course he was successful.
Now I have always believed that one should put oneself in the hands of locals entirely when planning any recreational activities in a foreign city - and especially when it comes to gastronomy. Cesare was born less than an hour from Venice and did not disappoint. A wonderful family owned traditional Venetian restaurant that would be impossible for any tourist to know about and even less likely for them to find it was our destination for the evening.
We dined on local crabs, baby octopus with an orange and balsamic reduction, a fritto misto (very traditional dish in the Veneto), spaghetti with local lagoon seafood and herbs, pepperonata and some lovely wine. I am not going to name the restaurant or even the neighbourhood as that would risk spoiling it, but it was a superior experience from the perspectives of food and ambience - although the service was lacking in that characteristically Italian way... Lucky we weren't in a rush...
A pleasant stroll across the Rialto bridge to deliver one of the female clients to her hotel and smoke a small cigar and back to the hotel for a brief encounter with a Monaco based millionnairess whose friend owned our hotel. In fact the chain of hotels. She was, as we were, most distressed to find the bar closed at 1.30, and we chatted about the world and art. It turned out she is half New Yorker and her sister lived in a condo at the St George in Brooklyn Heights - the old building of the hotel which my great great grandfather built and owned at the end of the 19th century and a well known landmark in NYC. She nearly invited me and Cesare to her suite to drink the bar dry, but seemed to think better of it and toddled off....as did we. Only in Venice does one become midnight friends with a millionnairess!
Today is about Ps.... Palestine (the country's first exhibit at the Biennale), photographs (not possible to be here without taking some pictures and trying to capture the mood) and parties (big gala event this evening at the Peggy Guggenheim museum followed by private party hosted by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage.)...
But I'm off to start with a B. Breakfast!
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