A beautiful spring day!  I’m wearing long sleeves but not Ken.

Coffee at the Puppa Bar and then we set out over the Rialto to Mascari.  I wanted to bring home some dried porcini and some olive oil from Lake Garda.  We accomplished that and walked through the market—purple artichokes are everywhere!  People were eating and drinking wine and spritzes everywhere, too.  At 10:30 in the morning. Venice is really staring to fill up with people.  Behind Campo Beccarie is a tourist shop where they sell ceramics and the Neste Dante soap, from Florence, that I like so we went and got one.

We sat for a while in Campo Sand Polo.  Here’s something I haven’t previously mentioned.  Venice is much cleaner because there’s a new rule about garbage.  You can no longer leave it out on the street where the seagulls inevitably pick at it until it’s a big mess.  Now there are assigned refuse collection points on boats, for each neighborhood.  The garbage collectors, with carts (one for garbage and one for recycling) come by our window and Elisa, above us, sends down her stuff on a rope with a hook.  If I see garbage flying by, I lean out the window and toss it to the waiting men.  It’s quite a system but Venice is much cleaner for it.

We had a nice “picnic” lunch at home.

For the afternoon we decided to do something we hadn’t done yet, in all these years.  We took the vaporetto to San Michele, the cemetery island.  Below are a bunch of images from there: (you aren’t supposed to take pictures there but I only did it when there was noone else near us)

Ezra Pound

A collection of pointe shoes at Diaghilev’s grave

For a splurge, I had reserved Anice Stellato for dinner.  It was almost wonderful.  Well, sitting there with Ken was wonderful but the food was just short.  We started with prosecco and a little amuse buche of fish in a fresh tomato jus.  We shared an interesting scallop antipasto.  Scallops cooked nicely with a peanut cream, candied lemon and cocoa nibs on top.  Almost wonderful but the scallops had no flavor to speak of.  I had fish, dentice, with beautiful grilled veggies and Ken had pork in a port wine sauce with different vegetables.  Dessert was a very crunchy and delicious, large cookie with yogurt cream and raspberry sauce, playfully plated and the best dish of the night.

Walking home, happily, we passed this little canal with a view out to the lagoon.  All the shades of night–navy blues and grays; just stunning: