La Libreria

While wandering around today we stumbled upon a really cool bookstore that puts Barnes and Noble to shame. It is covered in stacks and stacks of books, postcards, old prints, and random knick knacks. I don't know how the old gentleman who owns it keep track of anything whatsoever. There are so many books that he ran out of shelves and started piling them all in anything he could find: plastic cartons, bath tubs, boats, barrels, and a gondola.

Although, safety does come first, and every good bookstore has to have an emergency exit. This one happened to have a brilliant plan. In the event of a fire or other emergency, jump into the adjacent canal:

My Neighbor

This is Campo dei Mori. (a 'campo' is a small piazza, and 'Mori' is Moors, so this is where the Moors used to hang out and live.) It is right behind my building, well, across a canal from my building. This is one of the relief sculptures in Campo dei Mori. I call him Il Naso.
This is another Moor relief sculpture. Notice the exotic turban:

Now I'm going to show you yet another Moor relief sculpture in a turban, but this one is special.

See the green door to the right of the Moor? Well this is the little white square next to the door:
That's right, Tintoretto lived and worked about 25 feet from where I am now living. Take a minute to let that sink in because when I found out my mind exploded.

This last picture was taken from my kitchen window.

Two canals away is the church where Il Furioso himself is actually interred. Of course, keeping with all the churches/museums/anything important in Venice, there is no photography allowed. So I cannot show you his grave or his paintings. But I have heard of a magical device called Google that stores many pictures of his paintings.

This post is getting extremely long, but I have to add that inside Madonna dell'Orto is a photocopy of a Madonna and Child painting that was done by Giovanni Bellini. The original was stolen in 1994, so if any of you come across it, let me know (ok, the Italian Government first, but then me).

La Prima Giornata

I arrived in Venice, fairly easily, the only problem was my plane was delayed an hour on the tarmac in Newark because another plane had landed in distress. (Although I have experience being trapped in a plane just sitting on the runway. Ask me about my trip to Texas sometime.) This caused us to be late getting to London, where I had my connecting flight. I got a little taste of what it's like to be a business class flyer because I had to be rushed immediately to my gate. Getting patted down and all your luggage searched before everyone else is not much of a luxury though.

Marco Polo is a small airport so it was easy to find the bus that goes into the city to Piazzale Roma. That is where the road ends. No cars, no streets. Just boats, and canals, and bridges. I had to cross a lot of bridges to get to my apartment, but luckily my landlady was there to show me the way. Who knows where I would have ended up and/or where I would still be wandering, if she hadn't.

This is my canal and street: Fondamenta de la Misericordia

I live in Cannaregio, which is in the north of the city and the museum is directly to the south. The problem is that there is a huge body of water that snakes through, called the Canal Grande. Asking for exact directions in Venice is impossible. So is mapping out a long walk. It just can't be done because of the winding nature of the streets and the various positions of the bridges.(Also the taxis are boats and one ride can cost upwards of €50) You just have to look for landmarks such as a piazza or a church and when in doubt, just follow someone who looks like they know where they're going. So on Wednesday morning, which was my first day at the museum, Maria offered to walk me there because she had to go in the same direction. It took us less than 30 minutes to get there.

I had a full day of tours, training, and meeting the staff. Then it was time to walk back to the apartment. Alone. I impressed myself by walking about 15minutes in the right direction using my memory of the morning walk. Then it got dark and it all went to hell in a handbasket. All the streets looked the same and I just chose random alleyways, some of which worked out but more often just lead to dead ends or creepier streets. (The family I'm living with assured me that Venice is a safe place and is really just a small town at heart, but when you're lost in the dark on your first time there, one cannot help but think of how easy it would be to be knocked into a boat and dragged through the canals, then cut into pieces and thrown into the Lagoon.) I had to consult my map by the dim lights of the shops that were still open, pretending to be looking at the merchandise as to avoid being targeted by would-be canal kidnappers. I finally made it back to the apartment, with all my limbs, after about an hour and 20 minutes. Do you know how many bridges that is?