Thursday morning:  Local food market at the Arsenale.  It’s interesting that yesterday we had been stopped to sign a petition to save the Aresenale building from commercial development and the future of this market is an unknown.  Just like Tallahassee!

the market is actually behind this building

We had to cross over the wonderful Scalgeri bridge (Ruth!) to get there.

The Scarpa Garden just outside of the bridge

Anyway, we really enjoyed the market.  My pictures aren’t good, I think because it was a very overcast morning and, although it’s a small market of about 20 stands, it is quite crowded.  We bought some sausage, eggs, vegetables and local oil.  The oil booth was very entertaining as the vendor had us taste the different kinds.  This is the very fresh, just bottled oil, and it’s delicious.

We had to go right home from there to put the groceries away, but we didn’t stay long.  We picked up my ring and went to Dolce Locanda for coffee.  I had a fabulous little apple cake there–it was so yellow, I thought it had corn flour but they assured me it was just from the egg yolks.  Here are their panettone hanging upside down to cool:

Some new Christmas decorations are up in town:

In front of a small jewelry store, these are all crystals.

The Palazzo della Ragione is a building from the 11th century just around the corner from Piazza Erbe and now it houses a modern art museum.  We both really enjoyed it.  Many of the artists had come through the Ca’ Pesaro in Venice.

View down to the Christmas market from the Palazzo

Door at the Palazzo della Ragione

We came home and I made us a nice cheese omelette for lunch.  The egg yolks were very yellow!

In the late afternoon we walked to Corso Cavour to find a shop where I had seen fresh pasta.  We found it easily.  On the way home, we stopped into a glasses shop and after trying a few million pair, I got some new Italian glasses. Hurray!

Then we went to the wine and candy store just next door to our apartment and got both.  I’m still not used to being out, doing errands in the dark.  We got back home around 6:00 and it was fully night.

We made the sausage and pasta and veggies for dinner and drank the unexpectedly delicious Valpolicella.  The candy guy really knew his wines.