Nobody stops San Marco

Yesterday, April 25, was the feast day of San Marco, who is, as all the world knows, the city’s patron saint.  Always the occasion for grand festivizing — ceremony in the Piazza, laurel wreaths on the main monuments, high mass in the basilica, and the iridescent tradition of the “bocolo,” (BOH-ko-lo) or long-stemmed red rose, that Venetian men give to the dearest ladies in their life.

Yesterday, we were bocolo-deprived.  Plant matter was represented mainly by the laurel wreaths, installed a few days early.  As for the bocolo, there were and there weren’t.  Of course we knew that the usual freelance vendors staking out via Garibaldi and environs would be nowhere to be seen, that was to be expected.  But don’t be downhearted: The Gazzettino published a little article on Friday saying that a few florists were not only going to be selling roses, they’d deliver them to your doorstep.  Wonderful!  But the article did not publish any names or phone numbers of these florists.  Saturday — the day itself — an article appeared repeating the plan, with the names and numbers of the participating florists.  Lino immediately called to order one for me (and to discover the heretofore unknown cost, which I estimated would be 3 euros for the rose and 40 euros for the delivery), only to hear “Oh no, you had to book them.”

So this little misadventure will be filed under “You had one job!”, for the florists as well as for the Gazzettino.

But no matter!  We had a fine day, sunshine, breeze, empty streets, sepulchral silence broken by the occasional bellowing and screeching of dogs passing in the street or on the bridge outside our house.  (If you don’t believe that a dog can screech, you haven’t met that long-haired dachshund who evidently can’t stand anything about life, and whose owner must be deaf.)

We took our usual early-morning walk along the waterfront to the end of Sant’ Elena and home again (2.7 miles, for the record), plus our ten crossings of the bridge outside — our personal stone Stairmaster.  And we feasted on little kidchops — removed from young goats, not the usual lamb.

We then “went to the beach” after lunch, which is what I call our hour of sitting on the edge of the canal a few steps from our front door.  We’ve had two straight weeks of sunshine, so this interlude is a high point of the day; even though we aren’t tanning in any meaningful way. we’re stoking our Vitamin D.  And we look at our little boat tied to its pilings directly across the canal, and the lush greenery that is growing on the bottom of the hull, and wonder when we’ll ever row her again.  The easing of some restrictions are expected to begin on May 4, but we’ll know only on May 4 if that will turn out to be true.  Or, if the Gazzettino is really up to speed, we’ll find out on May 5.