We awoke to real rain—not just a drizzle, but a hard constant rain.  Frankly, it was welcome by me.  I really needed some plain old down time.  So, we just hung out and relaxed and read and watched the rain out the windows. Just the morning I needed.

April 25th is a very big day in Venice.  Not only is it the Liberation Day, celebrating the end of WWII for Italy, but also Saint Mark’s Day.  In the piazza San Marco hundreds of Venetians will wear red and green costumes and form a huge rose bud called a bócolo.  Men will give women a single red rose.  The shops and supermarkets were closed and there were sold out vocal concerts in many of the Scuola sites all over town. The state museums were free and the Italian flag was on display:

Finally, the rain cleared in the afternoon so we headed out. We enjoyed watching this seagull, who let us get really close. He had caught a sepia/cuttlefish and was having a great snack.

We walked through Giovanni e Paolo where a knitting group was selling red roses of yarn as a cancer fundraiser. I got one and teared up telling them I am a survivor.

We walked through Santa Maria Formosa to Palazzo Grimani for the Inge Morath show. This trip has been a wonderful immersion in photography! Palazzo Grimani is recently restored and a wonderful space to show art. The permanent collection is of large colorful paintings by the German, Georg Baselitz. We had seen his work with Donna last year and I loved it again.

These panels, which seem to be inspired by Baselitz, hung in a room by themselves:

On to the Morath. We had seen a show of her work a few years ago in Trastevere, but the focus of this show was her work in Venice. Apparently Venice, in 1955, is where she began her groundbreaking, photography career. This large print was on a big wall; when we first started coming to Venice, overwhelmed San Marco visitors, as captured in this picture:

I loved this one of the Campo we had just walked through:

I also enjoyed the mostly 16th century sculpture on display and Ken watched a stop action film of the reconstruction of one of the rooms.

We walked back, slowly, enjoying the sun. Sat in Campo Santa Maria Nova for a nice while and headed home.

I did get one random canal shot that is pretty:

We had two large meals from Bisiol and our refrigerator. Pasta and meatballs for lunch and for dinner, stuffed rolled faraona (guinea hen) and a very rich asparagus lasagna full of luscious bechamel sauce. And some leftover broccoli and cauliflower. Now we are all out of food and wine.

One more week to go. I’m ready!