Another beautiful spring day!  I had signed up for Pilates at 11:00 so we made our way over to Campo San Luca for coffee.  That bar is always so crowded!  Pilates was not good.  I was in over my head with the language and the work and I left there feeling pretty frustrated, trying to just pat myself on the back for having done it.

A few streets later we passed this which lifted my spirits; I am in Venice after all:

Heading for Dorsoduro, we passed  the back of La Fenice, Santa Maria del Giglio and the “violin museum” and found a door open we had never seen open before.  We stepped in to find this:

There were offices around the center but still the old cistern and courtyard.

Somewhere near San Stefano is this contemporary art gallery with a small sculpture display.  This time it had a big red plastic gorilla but also these pretty butterflies which reminded me of Kathryn:

The Accademia Bridge is under major construction:

Over the bridge we turned left, stopped for a tramezzino (tuna and olive, my favorite) and went into the Punta della Dogana museum.  The show was about self portraits and included a lot of photography.  This piece was particularly interesting.  It is totally made of wax so as the candles burn the work self distructs.  You can’t really see but the head had been a candle which was already melted and flames were buring inside the neck and one shoulder:

We walked around to the back of the museum, to the beautiful point and looked back:

I did not have the energy to walk all the way home so we hopped onto the #1 vaporetto.  It got really crowded so we got off at San Toma, stopped for a gelato and walked the rest of the way, over the Rialto and home.

The artichokes were on my cooking agenda.  These are the slow food endorsed violet artichokes of Sant’ Erasmo.

I had fun cleaning them and cooking them.  They really were delicious.  We had some pasta with a spicey tomato sauce Elisa had brought down for us and drank a very nice Dolcetto with it all.

Ups and downs… it’s real life.