The one where things get marginally less exciting

April 18, 2006
Tuesday

Up bright and early to go meet our tour guide over on the Giudecca in front of Redentore – one of Palladio’s churches. The guide is a lady of some eminence, who’s name I can’t remember, and she is the expert on Venetian gardens. She also wrote a book "The Hidden Gardens of Venice".
We started off, as I had said, at the Redentore church on the Giudecca, and scurried round the back to sneak into the monastery. Our guide is also a lady of some amusing personality, so we were in hysterics half the time at her turns of phrase and manners of speech. She has the habit of grabbing your arm in an iron clawed fist, and thrusting you forwards to look at something – all the time referring to you as "child". To be honest, she reminded me of a wackier version of my grandmother, Nana Olive.

The monastery was cool, a monk in a brown robe thing led us round and the guide translated (all the time they were arguing about her cigarettes too). The first thing we saw was their olive tree that was supposedly grown from a cutting of one at Gethsemane. Next was a miniscule olive bosque, and then some turf-and-trees arrangements along the shoreline. Guess life is pretty hectic as a monk, and sometimes you just need a nice spot for a picnic? Next stop was the main garden area with some grape vines, lots of artichokes ( this is artichoke country – they have an island in the lagoon that does nothing but grow artichokes and strawberries this time of year), and a nice view of the back of the Redentore church.

After that we wandered down the Giudecca and wandered in and out of some lovely, but unremarkable villa gardens. Two deserve special note here: One had an altana, like a deck that is suspended over the roof. It was nice up there, as the owner let us cavort our grimy selves up through her lovely house to allow us access to the views and breezes. It gets quite muggy here in the summertime (duh, it’s a swamp), so the precious few people with these altanas are very very lucky.

The second garden of note merely has the ‘a famous person was here’ notoriety – it’s the very unremarkable garden in a court of apartments where Elton John stays when he is in town. Yes, I took a picture. No, he wasn't in town.

Next we went to the excellent church of San Giorgio Maggiore, at the eastern end of the Giudecca, and went up the belltower at precisely noon to have a look at one of the best views of Venice. How do I know it was precisely noon? Well, it did at noon what belltowers are supposed to do at noon – scare the pants off increasingly deaf tourists.

We then got a hilarious retelling of the building of the church. It was designed by one of the Mr. Famous Guys of Venice, Mr. Palladio. He based his measurements for the church on a bit of wood that he lost, then promptly died. They build the church basing their measurements on a similar piece of wood. They started building the church from the front with the intention of meeting up with the remnant of the old church at the back that was to become the choir. Then, because of the different bit of wood that they used for measurements, they ran out of room for the belltower – so it got shoved off to the side. Heh.

Afterwards, we had an unremarkable afternoon in the Studio, then off to our respective homes for a variety of nice quiet evenings.

April 19, 2006
Wednesday

I have neglected to mention that Lynn has what seems to be a variety of illnesses. She has been largely absent from any and all activities that do not involve sleeping and sweating for about three days now. She has just about had enough, so today is the day that she has decided to go to the hospital and find out what variety of the Black Death, the Bubonic Plague, etc. that she has.
We have also, in other lovely news, had a stopped up loo since last Thursday. Since it was Easter weekend, no plumbers were available to come help us out, and they just didn’t seem to get it together enough to stop by yesterday. Yet another phone call to our landlord resulted in the instruction that we were to have someone waiting at the apartment at 2:00 this afternoon to let the plumber in.

After frantically working through some stuff in studio, I took off to come back and meet the plumber (with tourists clogging the corridors, and vaporettos – it takes nearly an hour to get from the rowing club where our studio is, back up to the Rialto, where our apartment is). We had been instructed to have somebody waiting down by the gate to our apartment building – so there I stood looking eagerly at every man with a wheelbarrow who walked by. After a while I realized that I was getting some raised eyebrows, and must have been looking like the world’s most unsubtle working girl. At this point I ran back upstairs to get a book so I could read while standing and could cut down on the leering I was doing.

2:00, 2:15, 2:30, 2:45… no plumber. Shrug. I was helping people find their hotels nicely, and when the same family walked by four times, I helped them find San Marco (back that way, over the bridge, straight straight straight – at the Disney store go left, follow the signs). I at least got them lost in a different direction and did not see them again.

At 2:45 I called the apartment office – they promised to have someone there by three. At 3:30 I called again, and they promised to have someone there by four. At 4:30 a very cheerful pair of plumbers came by and solved our problem for us. What joy! Two flushing loos! The luxury of it all.

An hour later, an exhausted Lynn came staggering back in with a nasty infection, and a fistful of medications. She had had an exciting time not speaking Italian in a hospital where they spoke no English. Apparently you can communicate a lot by pointing, gesturing, and sweating.

April 20, 2006
Thursday

Big day! I get to see Roman in a month! This was enough to put me in a good mood, so I got up early and went to go check email and get to work in Studio. Worked there all day, but as the weather was stunningly gorgeous (for the first time), we all cleared out fairly early (about 4:00) to go and sweat on our balconies at home. Well, I went present shopping, but I could imagine sweating on my balcony, and massively preferred that to the sweating on tourists that I was already doing.

April 21, 2006
Friday

Got into studio fairly early again since we have presentations to give yet again this afternoon. Had a brief and sunny lunch out in the boat yard, then back in for a 5 hour series of presentations. What joy. Lynn got to take off early to got meet her husband who was flying in for the day from home (in Friday evening, going home Sunday morning)

April 22, 2006
Saturday

Slept in today, as I woke up with the plague… the Disease! Over the course of the day it manifest itself in the form of a cold – so I spent the day finishing up the present shopping, then came home to groan on the couch. Sandra and I made a steak and artichokes dinner (it was outstanding) and finished up with liquorice gelato and strawberry coulis. Yes, that *is* as weird as it sounds, but it is good.