A clear blue sky and a warm sun put a new complexion on things as we packed our bags and went for our final walkabout. It was not financially viable for us to linger here, and this seemed a shame on our morning stroll.
George had retreated, stunned at a quote equivalent to £10.50 Sterling for development and printing of a 36-exposure film on Monday. Last night we had seen an expensively dressed lady in a felt fedora hat purchase a quite useless mirrored metal fish in an overpriced emporium.
We walked quickly to the Piazza San Marco where the pigeons flew at us like swift plump missiles as we crossed to the waterfront. We followed this in an easterly direction passed a fun fair and onto a park full of busts and statues (This would have been the Biennale Gardens or Giardini della Biennale to the locals).
A macabre sculpture on the waterfront appeared to be the washed-up body of a woman. However, it is the monument to the Partisan Woman, designed by Augusto Murer (Falcade 1922 – Padova 1985) in 1961. It is a bronze sculpture representing a reclining figure of a female World War II resistance fighter amid a series of stone steps. The monument is just beyond the seawall on the waterfront and is most visible at low tide: When the tide is high, the statue is likely to be partly or fully submerged, as it doesn’t float as the artist intended.
We came across an open-air market selling fruit and fish, and imagine our surprise, we saw people who were actually engaged in the mundane pursuit of everyday living! Laden clothes lines hung across the canals and boatloads of stores were busily being ferried in and unloaded. Most of the shops here seemed to be top notch delicatessens, but once again we were amazed at the cheapness of vast flagons of wine, often in ornate basketed bottles, which cost less than £1 Sterling.
We headed back looking across at the scenic historic buildings around the mouth of the Grand Canal, one looked like St Pauls Cathedral. This was the Santa Maria della Salute (English: Saint Mary of Health), commonly known simply as the Salute, which is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica located at Punta della Dogana in the Dorsoduro sestiere of the city.
In 1630, Venice experienced an unusually devastating outbreak of the plague. As a votive offering for the city's deliverance from the pestilence, the Republic of Venice vowed to build and dedicate a church to Our Lady of Health (or of Deliverance, Italian: Salute).
The church was designed in the then fashionable baroque style by Baldassare Longhena, who studied under the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi. Construction began in 1631. Most of the objects of art housed in the church bear references to the Black Death.
The dome of the Salute was an important addition to the Venice skyline and soon became emblematic of the city, inspiring artists like Canaletto, J. M. W. Turner, John Singer Sargent, and the Venetian artist Francesco Guardi.
The banks of the Grand Canal are lined with more than 170 buildings, most of which date from the 13th to the 18th century, and demonstrate the welfare and art created by the Republic of Venice. The noble Venetian families faced huge expenses to show off their richness in suitable palazzos; this contest reveals the citizens’ pride and the deep bond with the lagoon.
A tiny tugboat was pulling a colossal Yugoslavian ship out to sea. Everywhere people were taking photographs. People queued to snap a kitten perched on the head of a stone lion which formed part of a war memorial while girls struck up poses for their boyfriend’s photo albums.
One of Venice’s charms is the amount of winged lions that you can spot about the lagoon city. The lion represents San Marco, Venice’s patron saint however you will find lions with books, goddesses women, men on horseback and even on tombs.
This particular monument seems to attract sun basking cats and is dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele II first King of unified Italy in 1861. On either side of the monument is a woman and her winged lion - one is posed as if in battle with a lion gnawing at his chains, on this side is a women dressed in royal garb and a roaring lion with his claws upon two closed books. On top of this monument is an equestrian statue of Emanuele II.
We stopped for a coffee at a pavement café writing up our logbooks as retired Italian citizens chatted around us. Boatmen in ribboned boater hats touted for water taxi customers or water bus trips taking in all of the islands.
We did some shopping on the way back to collect our bags from the hotel, gathering the ingredients for our favourite meal. We devoured the resultant mammoth sandwiches, refuelling our energy banks and boosting our spirits by packing nuggets of raw onion, red pepper, cheese and meat between crusty layers of bread.
We did this in the bright sunshine on the steps of the modern Venice Railway Station. Opposite us was the Grand Canal that separated Venice in a broad reverse “S” shape. It is 3.8 km (2.4 miles) long, and 30 to 90 m (98 to 295 ft) wide, with an average depth of 5 metres (16 feet).
The station is one of Venice's two most important railway stations; the other one is Venezia Mestre, a mainline junction station on Venice's mainland district of Mestre. Both Santa-Lucia and Mestre stations are managed by Grandi Stazioni and they are connected to each other by Ponte della Libertà (English: Liberty Bridge).
The station was a model of modern efficiency and with full stomachs we found our train on Platform 4 and settled in a 2nd Class carriage which would put most British Rail 1st Class carriages to shame. We sat sipping (understatement) fizzy red Italian wine in our luxury compartment looking at the photos of famous European landmarks portrayed opposite.
At various stops along the way we picked up further passengers and inevitably our privacy was breached. One fellow, a drunken Dave Allen look-alike (David Tynan O'Mahony (6 July 1936 – 10 March 2005), known professionally as Dave Allen, was an Irish observational comedian and satirist. Initially becoming known in Australia during 1963–64, Allen made regular television appearances in the United Kingdom from the later 1960s and until the mid-1980s. He said, “I’m an Atheist, thank God!”) was pissed as a parrot and proceeded to ruin the jovial atmosphere of the carriage by insulting us in Italian.
Our fellow passengers looked on in disgust and apologised for him when the nasty fellow staggered away. It was the shame that the fun-loving female with a soapy boyfriend took her leave as I’d become quite enamoured with this likely nurse (she was carrying medical books).
London seemed like a vortex pulling us in towards kith and kin, like water gathering speed as it poured down a plug hole, as night fell and the lights faded. The carriage emptied at Milan, leaving us the sole occupants of the compartment for the rest of the journey.
At the Swiss Border there was a perfunctory passport check and we rumbled on at high speed through the night. It had been snowing heavily in Switzerland and deep drifts covered most of the passing countryside. The Swiss towns looked modern and typically European with neon lit signs.
The writing on signs was replicated in four languages: French, Italian, German and English. Stops were brief and the stations looked clean, modern and efficient. At the French Border we were simply asked our nationality. At last, we folded up the arm rests and stretched out to grab a few moments of sleep while we were able to.
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