Our first stop was to be the Galleria dell'Accademia, but we found our arrival slightly delayed by the fact we frequently had to stop and look in all the shop windows. We found this area to be much nicer than the area north of the Canal as it seemed to concentrate more on small art boutiques and bookshops. Upon arrival at the Galleria, we were amazed to find no line. There was not even the hints of a line forming. We were a little surprised because the Galleria only lets a limited number of people through the gates at any one time. Where were all the art lovers in Venice?
It turns out that you need to be a big fan of one particular bit of art if you are going to truly enjoy the Galleria dell'Accademia. While we enjoy a good Madonna with Child or biblical scene of mayhem, death and destruction, an entire museum full of nothing else is a little much. You could easily see and appreciate the talent and skill of the artists, but after the 100th appearance of St. Sebastian, walking around with a smile on his face and his body full of arrows I was almost begging for a Renaissance portrait of an old Dutchman or a lush landscape just to break up the monotony. We did find pieces we quite liked, including a gorgeously detailed silver cross, an odd panorama with mass crucifixions and a couple whom I originally thought to be Antony and Cleopatra, but turned out to be someone else. But by the end there were too many depictions of mass slaughter, typified by the horrors of The Martyrdom of Ursula, and we left the museum a tad more depressed than when we went in.
After a quick stop on a little terrace to soak up some sun and revive our spirits, we made our way to our next stop on the day's art tour - the Peggy Guggenheim museum, or as our tour guide called it, Crazy Peggy's place. If your paying particular attention, you may already be pointing out that Peggy Guggenheim is not really a typical Venetian name. Peggy was a niece of the very rich Solomon Guggenheim and she bought this unfinished Venetian palazzo after falling in love with the city. She spent the rest of her life in Venice, collecting art. She left her collection and the palazzo to the city when she died. This woman really was all about art and supporting modern artists. She married an artist, twice. Her daughter became an artist and she also married an artist.
Her collection was much more to our liking than that of the Galleria. Immediately upon entry there are two Picassos. Many more hang in the hallways. Fiona found herself spending a good amount of time in front of the Kandinskys and some of Jackson Pollock's stuff, while I found myself drawn to a Rothko and some of Max Ernst's less weird stuff. We both admired the Dali's, not for the subject matter, but for his incredible skill in producing such fine, clear lines. There were also a few pieces of modern sculpture that caught our eyes, including one piece that made you feel like you were staring at a physical impossibility inside an Escher painting. The museum is well laid out, well maintained and absolutely well worth the effort. I would definitely put it on the must-see list of any art lover in Venice. Way to go crazy Peggy!
We decided to make one last stop before lunch at the church of Santa Maria della Salute, a large domed basilica built as a gift of thanks to the Virgin after Venetians prayed to her to end one particularly bad episode of the Black Death. It is absolutely massive and covered in statuary on the outside, but a little more plain-Jane on the inside. You get the idea they sort of ran out of steam during the many years it took to get it built.
The next thing on the agenda was lunch, but we were naturally a little gun-shy following the dinner experience the night before. We walked past quite a few trattorias before settling on one recommended by a merchant who sold me a nice Venizia Birra beer glass. Ai Cugina turned out to be an absolute treat. The service was stellar and the food outstanding. Fiona started with a lasagna bolognese while I had some fish stuffed ravioli in cream sauce. We then shared a plate of fried seafood. The calamari were probably the best I've ever had, even with their simple preparation and presentation. The shrimp and langoustines were even better than that. It was a total success and completely erased the bad memories of the day before. Befitting our new state of mind the sun was high and strong as we walked back to the hotel, taking the long way along the outer part of the island and stopping, of course, for a mid-afternoon gelato.
After a quick pit-stop at the hotel to ditch the camera and some of our heavier stuff we decided we would pass the rest of the afternoon off at bar that had been highly recommended in one of our guide books. It turned out to be poorly situated so we changed the plans and made for a large sunny square where we found two terrace seats and ordered the first of a few mojitos. We whiled away the afternoon commenting on the flow of tourist traffic and the magnificence of the locals' tanned skin. While we have picked up a bit of colour here and there, there is still no mistaking us for anything but what we are - refugees from the sunless climes of northern Scotland. We've also tried to increase our use of Italian, but we are having difficulty with local dialects. The modern Italian language is, in essence, the language of Florence. It's what we we took lessons in and studied at home. In places like Venice, the locals all speak in their Venetian dialect, which makes communication with people like us much more difficult.
Our afternoon passed in exactly the way we wanted to and as the sun started to dip we made our way to one of the restaurants on the square. The food wasn't as great as that afternoon, but was better than other places we had tried. The service, on the other hand, really started to suffer as the crowds drifted in around 9pm. We have found this with quite a few places. They seem to be adequately staffed for the 7pm-9pm crowd, but the rush after that tends to leave them undermanned. If you happen to eat with the tourists or families with small children that means you'll probably get your entrees in good time, but trying to order dessert or get the bill can take ages. I guess you need to take it all in its own good time, as the Italians seem happy enough to do.
Having accumulated a few more things and spread our original items quite willy-nilly over the hotel room, we spent some time arranging stuff for the next morning's pack-up and move-on agenda. I think we had hit every thing that we had wanted to when we put Venice on the itinerary, plus quite a bit more. Would I return? Perhaps, but not in any great hurry. We've seen a lot and there are a lot of other interesting places to go. Would I recommend it to someone else? Absolutely.
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