Venice: I am not making this up

Venice goes to the dogs

Venice used to be famous for cats, but they have somehow relinquished their mythic stature. When I came to Venice back in 1804, there were still scattered outposts where old ladies would leave food for the stray cats, near makeshift little huts. Now the only place I can be sure of seeing a feline is [...]

Venice goes to the dogs is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Venice and the floating Alps

The catastrophe of the Costa Concordia two weeks ago today has been a good thing in at least one (sorry, I mean only one) way: It has given a turbo-boost to the local opposition to allowing big cruise ships to slide past the Piazza San Marco like floating Alps. By now, images of these behemoths [...]

Venice and the floating Alps is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Ripples from the Costa Concordia

As you might imagine, during the past almost-week the shipwrecked cruise ship has taken over everybody’s thoughts and conversations here (as is probably the case in the rest of Italy). Yesterday I got what I hope may be my final dose, as I sat in the doctor’s waiting room. Because he only comes to [...]

Ripples from the Costa Concordia is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

The Befana was here and she took the lagoon with her

January 6, as all the world knows, is the Feast of the Epiphany in the non-Orthodox Christian calendar. Here in Venice, as most of the world by now must know (if it’s been following my bulletins), the day is personified by a grizzled old woman with a broomstick. This cheerful hag is known as the [...]

The Befana was here and she took the lagoon with her is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Winter sunset

The Befana has been and gone, the Christmas decorations are stored or lost or thrown away, and only a few hardy addicts are still eating panettone, making the most of the two-for-one discounts the stores always offer in an effort to get the things off their shelves and make room for the galani coming up [...]

Winter sunset is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Christmas spirit

Venice at Christmas – it sounds as if the entire city ought to be refulgent with gleaming and sparkling, as if every fragment of its shattered splendor should come together and shine in an unearthly and glorious way. Yes, it does seem that it ought to be that way. Instead, scattered efforts at decoration all [...]

Christmas spirit is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Venice, starring me

Every person who has come here in the last hundred years — and there have been a lot — has almost certainly said that the city looks like a stage set. This realization comes immediately after noticing there are canals instead of streets. And if they haven’t said it, they’ve thought it. Venice makes the [...]

Venice, starring me is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

The unexpected is always expected

Each day in each week in the so-called most beautiful city in the world often feels like a loaded coal cart which I am pulling along a rusty track. Instead of coal, however, which hasn’t been burned here for quite a few decades, my daily cart, so to speak, is loaded with the same detritus [...]

The unexpected is always expected is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Racing Saint Barbara

Last Saturday I went to watch one of my favorite Venetian rowing races: The regata of Santa Barbara, an annual contest on six-oar caorlinas organized by the discharged sailors’ association in honor of Saint Barbara, patron saint of seamen and, by extension, of the Navy. For every Regata Storica, there must be ten races held [...]

Racing Saint Barbara is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Happy Clamsgiving

While the rest of you were lolling amid the wreckage of flightless birds and tangled NFL teams last Thursday, we went for the mollusks. I suppose we could have gone fishing, but considering that the tide was going to be unusually low at a convenient time of day, plus the fact that a few calm, [...]

Happy Clamsgiving is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up