Another gorgeous Spring day! And it’s two holidays in Venice. First it is St. Mark’s Day and second it is Italian Liberation Day which celebrates the end of fascist rule at the end of WWII in Italy. Consequently lots of shops, even the supermarkets were closed and there were booths all over town selling cellophane wrapped roses. It is the local tradition on St. Mark’s Day to give roses to your loved ones.

We started out and, I’m not sure if it was in conjunction with the holiday or not, but there was a small parade of communist party flags gathered in Campo SS Apostoli and they marched down Strada Nova singing the workers folk song, “Ciao Bella”. Interesting.

I got this shot of the campo from the other side of the always crowded bridge but I had a moment of sapce:

We were heading over to San Polo and campo San Giacomo dell’Orio. So, just to make it interesting, we took a right off of the ruga and started wandering around San Polo. Everything looked so familiar from the time we spent a month over here. We happened on a collateral exhibit called Peter Pan and went into it. One video had a man speaking a profound poem while another screen, in the same room, had the word TIME in ice. During the whole video the ice melts until there is nothing left but droplets of water. Not too subtle but I found it interesting to watch.

Towards San Giacomo dell’orio I found a scarf shop and went in but didn’t buy anything. We had a really nice sit in the campo watching the kids play. There were lots of little children and parents because of the holiday. From there we worked our way back to Campo San Polo and stopped into an exhibit of four Spanish artists. I had it in my head to go to Estro for tramezzini but when we got there we discovered that they no longer make them–just a fancy menu for lunch and we did not want that. So we headed back. We stopped at Ciaks for the sentimental value and the chance to enjoy the scene in the pretty campo. We each had a spritz and some really pitiful cicchetti. Crossing Ciaks off the list.

We wandered a bit more towards the Grand Canal side of San Polo. We loved this empty little spot:

Just after we got over the Rialto, Ken realized we’d left his backpack at the restaurant so we walked back as fast as we could and they had it there. Ken was really worried about his Tide to Go and his MSNBC hat. We walked super fast back home and were both sweating when got back. Somehow we never made it out again. I cooked us a nice dinner and the day was done.