We began our day as usual with breakfast at the hotel. Plenty of coffee, croissant for me, fruit and yogurt. Our goal today, revisit the Biennale at Esposizione Internationale d’arte Publica located in the Giardini Pubblici at the eastern tip of the island. We’ve walking and have taken a vapporetto only once while here. Our walks to and from the Biennale usually take through or around S. Marcos Square. There are many people, especially today being Saturday, but Louise is developing a technique of casually photographing people as she walks past them or through crowds. She hangs onto my elbow as I lead her along. She is getting by good at it and the photos can be striking. On the way we saw sculpture in the Ireland Biennale pavilion and an American artist at another. We very much enjoy seeing the exhibits shown in small churches or even people’s homes (palazzos). The work at these venues has always been very interesting and engaging. Leaving these we continued our walk to the garden and the exposition. The weather has turned damp and foggy and slightly cooler so we stopped at a familiar bar for cafe maciati, partially for the coffee and partially to warm up. It was time for lunch so we decided to eat prior to seeing the Biennale at the same cafe/bar as yesterday. The proprietor remembered us and greeted us at the door. It’s nice returning to places like and where we are remembered. The waitress greeted us too and we sat down and shared a four mushroom cheese pizza with two glasses of beer, all very satisfying.
We were visiting one of the major explosion grounds of the Biennale which covered a large area of international pavilions devoted to separate nationalities of art. One of my initial impressions was of an Olympics of art at the Brookfield Zoo complete with gravel sidewalks. In fact I joked to Louise, there was the lizard pavillian next to the chimpanzee house, etc.
My wise cracks aside, the work was quite fascinating, some of it very esoteric as was to be expected. We gravitated toward what we understood. We were pleasantly surprised at seeing three large Tintoretto paintings which I liked most of all. They had more substance and were much more layered than the rest of the work there which to me consisted of simple ideas that didn’t have much longevity in concept. A work we liked in the United States pavilion was a combination pipe organ ATM which played organ notes when a debit card was inserted as if someone were withdrawing cash. We very much enjoyed witnessing the tentativeness of a woman as she inserted her debit card and pressed the monitor keys as prompted. It was quite amusing. Another work we liked that was again simple in concept was a work in the Russian pavilion where a white pedestal in the shape of a simplistic upright piano held a laptop at the keyboard showing a concert pianist playing on uTube.
The temperature was turning color or we were getting tired so e left and started walking back to our hotel. The walk warmed us up and louise took more photos with her new technique, I leading her on as she snapped. Some of the photos came out very well and were quite candid and personal of the people she caught being tourists.
By accident we came across a religious festival in the streets commemorating the Virgin Mary saving Venice from the plaque in 1630. Lots of balloon vendors and food booths. We sampled dried fruit on a stick covered in glazed sugar and pistachio pastries. Delicious.
On to the hotel where e relaxed a bit with some red wine before supper. A Little later on we ate at a restaurant just down the street from our hotel. It was an inviting looking place, but was not as good as we had hoped. We shared sardine soer which wasn’t as tasteful as other restaurants we’ve visited. Louise had colamari which was too salty. The salmon I had was good as were our salads, but dessert, a lemon cake was sweet but not very lemony in flavor.
We left for a short walk, took a few photos of Venice in the fog and are now ready for bed.
Buonanotte.
