I was up early; I went to drop the four bags of garbage generated from our cleanup (one being entirely crushed mineral water bottles), and also to deliver a brief and I hoped not too florid fan note into Marcella Hazan's mailbox. When I returned, the others were rising. I made coffee and started bringing out the last items to eat -- some canteloupe, the plums in wine, the blood orange juice. The A/C bill came to L60000 (for 300 kwh of power).
At 8:30 the phone rang; it was the young woman who owned the apartment. She had been away on a job when we arrived, and tried calling us a few times in the evenings, but we must have been out on gelato quests. She asked if we'd like to meet her, and we arranged for her to come at nine.
We'd paid for a final cleaning, but I tidied up a little more, and N swept. The luggage was all assembled and we were ready to go when she buzzed and came up. She was about our age, and spoke English quite well. She worked in theatre management, but was finishing med school in Padova, where she currently lived (though her boyfriend had an apartment near the Arsenale, which was why she could meet us so early).
It turned out that the apartment had been vacant for twenty years when they (presumably her family) acquired it in the '80's. They cut through the roof beams to allow walking space and thoroughly renovated. She said the neighbours were quite fussy, for example not letting them remove a half-wall outside the small kitchen window. She hoped to live in the apartment someday, but had to rent it out for the money now; she stayed there when it was vacant, but the cost of living in Venice was about twice what it was in Padova. It turned out that she was doing the final cleaning; the money paid to the woman at the beginning, which I thought was optional, had gone for the initial cleaning. Whatever. We had a very nice conversation, and finally hauled our luggage down, put our sandals on, and left with much ciaoing and thanks.
It was a sunny but cool day; the children wore sweatshirts against the breeze. We walked easily up to the Fondamenta Nuove, bought tickets, boarded a relatively empty 52 vaporetto, got off at the Ferrovia stop and walked across the Scalzi bridge. A found the Hotel Marin without much difficulty (correcting N at one point) and our room was ready again, even though it was just after ten.
We had, again, a "double" bed and two singles (one a cot) in a slightly larger room with windows on both sides. This, plus the change in the weather, meant we didn't have to worry about closing the windows against mosquitoes at night; we would remain cool enough. With five of us, though, one child would have to sleep with N and I.
N had packed for the possibility that we'd have to leave luggage, so she quickly rearranged items, and we set out with my large black daypack as our main tote, plus K's small cloth bag in which he carried the water and some snacks. The kids had chosen the Frari as the next destination to take Grandpa, but when we got there, it was closed for a wedding. "Let's go to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco!" A exclaimed, and although we hadn't planned this, K was amenable.
So once again we walked through the huge hall filled with Tintorettos, and this time the kids explained what they remembered to K. I had Lorenzetti along to give us more details; for example, we learned that the wooden carvings around the base of the upper room included one of Mercury holding a long scroll explaining the allegories (the kids were much taken with this, even though it was in tiny faded Italian), a caricature of Tintoretto, and a portrait of the artist taking off a mask, signed with a foot (Pianta = sole).
We had decided to take K to the Trattoria Anzolo Raffael for lunch, and headed down through Campo Santa Margherita, past the Carmini, and along the canal. It was sunny but not too hot, yet. "This is the way to San Sebastiano," A said suddenly, and as we came into Campo Angelo Raffaele, she pointed to the west and said, "San Nicolo's over there". There was no one outside the trattoria except, as before, the chef, smoking and reading a newspaper.
The oral menu hadn't changed, but we were more ambitious. We ordered four servings of the bigoli in salsa, and one each of the four fishes (soglioli, orate, branzino, coda di raspo). They came on a large platter, and N did a stellar job of deboning them. We had a bottle (decanted) of Prosecco frizzante with it. All this put the bill up somewhat higher than before. K usually insists on paying for meals when we are together, but he was relatively helpless here; he had only a small amount of Italian cash with him.
After lunch, we made our way back to Campo Santa Margherita, and while the kids chose their gelato flavours at Il Doge, I went over to the cafe on the west side of the campo and ordered a double ristretto at the bar. It was the best coffee I was to have in Venice, but about equal to what I could produce at home with my Pavoni on a mediocre day, when I didn't get the grind right or the humidity was too high.
I rejoined the group, espresso being just that, before they had finished ordering, and managed to have some myself. On our previous trip we had been disappointed by Il Doge in comparison to Causin, the gelato shop on the west side. But Causin was closed for holidays, and this time Il Doge tasted pretty good to us. There was quite a selection of flavours, some pretty exotic compared to a conservative place like Paolin.
We retraced our steps back to the hotel, where A settled Z down for her nap. K wanted to go to the train station to check out the schedules; I wanted to find Le Carampane, for which I had only the sestiere address (San Polo 1911). Lorenzetti mentioned a building of note at San Polo 1940, but his itineraries are difficult to follow; there is no map, and you have to turn on streets that may not be marked at both ends, or may have changed names since the 1920's and not caught in the revisions.
We all agreed to meet in Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio at quarter after three, and K went off with A, while I headed east. At some point I fell off Lorenzetti's route, but the numbers were close enough, and I wandered around along little canals and alleys until suddenly I noticed I was on Rio Tera de la Carampane (not de la Colonne, as Plotkin had told me). Sure enough, there was the restaurant, and it appeared to open at 11:30 for lunch and 7:00 for dinner. There was no other commercial establishment for some distance in any direction.
I found my way back to San Giacomo at 3:20 and had to wait only a few minutes before K and A appeared from the west. We sat on a bench for a short while, watching kids riding their bikes around and wobbly roller-skaters practicing. "The tour guide on the boat said there were no bicycles or rollerskates in Venice, but it's not true," observed A.
We had time to kill, so I suggested heading up to the Canal Grande to look at buildings on it from a land viewpoint. We went up Calle del Megio and came out on a very short fondamenta (I exaggerate to call it that) with the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi opposite. It's the winter home of the Casino, but Lorenzetti does not notice it. Backtracking and moving west, we came out again on the Riva del Biasio; A took some photos with her disposable camera, and we then headed for the hotel.
Z was still sleeping, but the rustle of us moving into the room woke her up. We had decided to walk around Cannaregio for the remainder of the day. After crossing the Scalzi, we moved up the crowded and touristy Lista di Spagna (where both K and I stayed on our first trips to Venice, more than twenty years apart) as far as the Canale di Cannaregio, where the boats circling around from the north come down to the Canal Grande. Turning up this, we then turned right and moved into the Ghetto area. We had spent quite some time here in 96, explaining the Holocaust bronzes to A, and this time we simply strolled through.
Madonna dell'Orto was closed when we got there, but we could admire the facade, and the kids got out some energy by chasing each other across the small campo (paved, unusually, in red brick). We walked down through Campo dei Mori and showed K where we had stayed in 96, then we went down the Rio della Sensa, reaching the old hulk of the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, and reading about it in Lorenzetti. At some point we passed our dinner restaurant, Paradiso Perduto, and reserved a table out on the fondamenta, for 7:00. This left us forty-five minutes to kill wandering in north-central Cannaregio.
The canalside setting was pretty, but a bit precarious: if N or K had leaned backwards, they would have fallen into the canal. The kids and I sat on the landward side. The meal was rather disorganized: we ordered the antipasto di mare for two, two primi (homemade bigoli with nero di seppia and with a saffron and shellfish sauce), a mixed grill for two, and a frittura mista. It came all in the wrong order, the plates were huge, and we didn't get any auxiliary plates to share. Fortunately, there were enough plates on plates that we could manage. There were some unusual items throughout: cured salmon, fiery hot peppers in the bigoli con nero, and delicious seppioline (baby cuttlefish) in the frittura. We couldn't finish it all. By the time we gave up, the "Tintoretto sky" had darkened.
The kids, however, had room in their "gelato stomachs", so we walked down to Il Gelatone on Strada Nova, and they had a last treat before heading back to the hotel to crash. To N's surprise, the young man behind the counter not only explained the odd flavours to her in good English, but on seeing the kids, packed their ice cream inside the cones instead of precariously on top.