Venetian Problems

The reopening begins

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This is promising: Two men from some disinfection agency preparing to get Bar Mio ready for show time.

The big day is at hand: Monday, May 18, a whole slew of heretofore closed, locked, stashed-in-a-trunk-in-the-attic businesses will finally be allowed to reopen.

Reading the not-so-fine print on the terms and conditions, though, reveals a huge number of rules that most businesses are racing to accommodate.  Even so, it’s going to be extremely hard for them to make up for the lost two and a half months, not to mention begin making something like a profit; lack of tourists is going to be a challenge to overcome, fiscally speaking.  I say this in the sense of Mount Everest being a challenge to overcome, physically speaking.

Let’s take these in no order whatsoever.  No, let’s take them in the order that affects or interests me.  I’m leaving out all sorts of details bearing on gyms, second homes, beaches, and more, each of which carries its own payload of regulations.  And bear in mind that these rules may change between towns and regions — national regulation-making seems to have broken down.

General joy breaks forth because now you are allowed to see your friends, but only in the open air, NOT at anybody’s house, and NO PARTIES.  You still have to maintain distancing and avoid clumping together in groups.  From what I’ve seen in the past few days in the neighborhood, those rules might as well have been promulgated in some Manchu-Tungusic dialect.

The late morning crowd has returned to its usual ebullience, even though everybody has to stand outside — no tables or chairs.  The one-meter rule is being observed, of course it is.  Also the masks — yep, we’ve got ’em.  They’re supposed to cover the mouth and the nose?  They do just as well covering the neck.  One woman in Rome was stopped by a policeman because she was wearing her mask as a necklace and fined 400 euros.  This would be a cautionary tale in most places, but sunshine and spritzes blot out any thought of danger, whether from friends, police, or the virus.
Morning coffee is great even if you do have to stand outside on the street to drink it.

The sign on the docks is simple and straightforward.

Public transport.  You must wear a mask and gloves, and maintain one-meter distancing.  That’s pretty simple.

Where it has already started to become complicated is the fact that the passenger limit on the vaporettos is now 55, as opposed to the astronomical number of people — I read “400” somewhere, but maybe that’s an exaggeration? — that used to cram themselves aboard during high season.

So seats have been taken out of service, so to speak.  You have to manage your own distancing if you’re standing in the aisle, but the seats leave no room for debate.

Your eyes do not lie — out of six seats, four are forbidden. It is the most extraordinary sensation to have to stand amid all those empty seats.  Yes, I realize that the man reading the newspaper is not wearing gloves.  He must be invisible, or just come out of the autoclave.
Out of four seats, three are blocked. I have been known to get up to offer my place to an elderly person when there were ten empty but forbidden seats.
They’re really serious about this “mask and gloves” rule.
The view from the vaporetto is no less astonishing than the panorama seen from the dock. The Grand Canal in the late morning.

Let’s say that we might be dreaming to have tourists come back.  Maybe not ALL of them, but a good number.  Will distancing be abandoned and the vaporettos return to their former fall-of-Saigon ways?  At the moment, the #1 is scheduled every 20 minutes, so that’s obviously unsustainable if you have any more than the current amount of locals riding.  For one thing, the lines that would form in order to board would be unspeakably long.

And the lines would function only if everybody continued to obey the rules.  A few days ago a small riot was on the verge of breaking out at S. Maria Elisabetta (Lido) when the vaporetto captain halted the boarding process because the maximum number of passengers had been reached.  Everyone left on the dock released all that pent-up lockdown tension, and the Carabinieri were called to restore order.  And — I repeat — those were only locals.  Shall we add a few hundred tourists to the mix?

Fun fact:  There are eight vaporettos on which a place can be booked, to ensure that you (or more to the point, the commuters) don’t get left ashore because the vaporetto is full.  (There is also an app for booking, but I repeat, only on certain vaporettos.)

Not-so-fun fact:  If you have an urgent need to take a vaporetto and it’s at its maximum capacity — as happened to a child in pain heading to the hospital with his mother for an urgent treatment — you still might not be able to board.  Even doctors going to work have been left on the dock, waiting for the next boat.  The ACTV explains that the staff isn’t permitted to decide who gets to ride and who doesn’t (this makes sense, because otherwise there would literally be no end to it).  They say that if a passenger decides to disembark to give his place to someone else, the other people waiting on the dock have to give their approval.

Everybody squashed together in a doorway?  We won’t be seeing this again any time soon. As of Monday you will be allowed to stand at the bar to slurp your cappuccino or your spritz only if it’s possible to maintain the by-now ironclad one meter (three feet) of space between you and the next human being.

Bars/cafes:  As is clear to everybody, customers have taken matters into their own hands in terms of buying and consuming (outdoors) the usual products of these indispensable establishments.  A bar’s indispensability may have many definitions; to one person, it may mean the double espresso cappuccino they can’t make at home but without which life is not worth living, while to another person (me) it means the fabulously dependable places all over the city where you can count on finding a bathroom.

Feel free to snicker, but it’s going to die on your lips when you realize, as I did on the first morning of lockdown, that there was no Plan B for dealing with my first morning coffee’s progress once I was more than ten minutes away from home.  We were going to our favorite butcher, a trip that requires 20 brisk walking minutes.  And back.  Plus the wait-time (unknown) to enter the shop, and the time in the shop.  As we set out, I suddenly realized that if I had to go to the bathroom at any point, my only option was some nearby canal.  I have nothing against using canals, but they don’t come with many secluded corners.

Not to dwell on this, but the total absence of cafe’s suddenly took on cosmic significance.  How to sketch out an itinerary that takes into account that I will have to hold it till I get home? We all know that having to think about it makes it all much worse.

I will conclude this little meditation by saying that yes, we did walk to the Rialto market last Saturday for the first time in two months, and yes, after an hour and a half of travel (we were stopping for me to make photographs) I realized that the return trip was going to be a problem.  Our favorite bar/cafe was open for takeaway!  Our favorite barista/owner told me that nobody was permitted to enter!  The wild look in my eyes inspired compassion and I snuck inside like some criminal who already hears the heavy tread of the penitentiary police.

I have the deepest respect for the owners of bars and cafes, but never realized till now that their supreme value isn’t in the beverages and snacks, but that they provide a link in the chain of civilized life without which all life has to stay within ten minutes of home.

Goodbye to all that. Except for the cell phones. They’ll always be the guests of honor at any gathering.

Restaurants:  It’s not clear to me if the current system of takeaway will continue, but there is a s*#t-ton of rules for normal restaurant operation.  Tables must be spaced four meters (12 feet) apart, and diners at the same table must be seated one meter (three feet) apart.  Patrons must make a reservation (I’m not clear on how stringent that will be as time goes on), and the restaurant owner must retain the list of reservations for 14 days for possible tracing of customers.  Diners must wear masks except (perhaps obviously) when eating; waiters will be wearing masks and gloves.  No more printed menus.  No buffets.  Only credit cards will be accepted, to avoid contagion via cash.  The locale will be disinfected daily, more than once.

There will be fewer customers because so far there are only locals around, but even if the customers are tourists there will be fewer tables due to the shrinking of available space to seat them.

Arrigo Cipriani has stated that he isn’t going to reopen Harry’s Bar for the foreseeable future.  If he were to space out the tables in the famous bar according to the law, not only would he be left with something like a mere four tables in that small space, but the atmosphere would be deathly, and I don’t mean because of the virus.  Also, it’s preposterous to think of making any money with so few tables, even though the upstairs restaurant is somewhat more spacious.  The geometry is ruthless.

To sum up: There are some 336,137 restaurants in Italy employing 1,200,000 workers.  It has been estimated that under anti-contagion regulations, 80 per cent of restaurants will not be able to reopen.

Hair salons/barbers/beauty treatments: This is really going to be fun (oh, I sincerely think not.  Not for anybody).  There is an infinity of new decrees for the providers and purveyors of beauty.  Here is a clip that circulated on WhatsApp showing somebody’s fantasy of how your average salon will have to operate under the new distancing/disinfection rules:

 

So much for joking.  From now on, hair salons will accept customers only by appointment.  They will be allowed to open on Monday and even on Sunday.  No more magazines or newspapers lying around to be leafed through by thousands of contagious fingers.  Single-use capes.  The towels may be reused, but before washing they must be kept in a closed, impermeable bag, then washed for 30 minutes at 140 degrees F (60 degrees C).

Shops  Owners must guarantee cleanliness, disinfecting the store at least twice a day.  There must be gloves, as well as disinfectant gel, available at the entrance.

Beaches, swimming pools, etc. will be opening with another batch of spacing rules (umbrellas, group sports on the beach, space between swimmers).  There has been some excited comment about not requiring lifeguards to wear masks.  Important?  Not?  I can’t decide anymore.

Mass  Finally the priests will be celebrating mass.  The number of persons allowed in church will be limited (think tags of tape on the pews to indicate spacing).  Masks and gloves required.  Communion wafers distributed and accepted only with single-use-gloved hands.  It says in the newspaper that entrance will be forbidden to anyone with a temperature above 37.5 degrees C (99.5 degrees F).  It doesn’t say who is going to be checking these temperatures.

In conclusion: We’ve been told a million times by now that this new phase is experimental; if any of the virus numbers begin to increase, back we all go to square one.  “The virus hasn’t disappeared,” virologist Dr. Andrea Crisanti told La Nuova Venezia.  “And with the reopening, we hope for the best, but we need to prepare ourselves for the worst.”

The rule has been that shops or vehicles must have a clearly marked entrance and exit. At the Rialto Market, the spaces have been delimited by fences and there are only two ways by which a pedestrian can enter the precincts. Here is the Campo Bella Vienna, and the other is at the Pescaria.  Two of the local police (vigili) are stationed to check that anyone entering is wearing mask and gloves.
All of the side streets leading into the market have been blocked.  They’re serious about checking people and the only way to do that is to limit the options.  Lino’s gloves are in his pocket.
Unhappily, in this spot the fence isn’t what you’d call a serious barrier.  I saw a woman easily slip between it and the wall, but at least she was coming out.

One of the two entrances is in the Campo de le Beccarie.
If you don’t have mask and gloves on, you don’t get in.
I appreciate that they’re taking no chances, but I can’t quite grasp why two fences were necessary.
Cat, oblivious to masks, gloves, and disinfectant gel.  Perfection.
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Eating out at home

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The restaurants lining via Garibaldi are opening up — at least as far as they can, which is summed up in a word: “Takeaway.”  I hear that the coronavirus-adaptive procedures at restaurants here are essentially the same in the U.S. these days, but still thought I’d show how the local places, and a bar and a pastry shop, are starting to make do while awaiting the next directives on their future.  A hint has already been released that restaurants and hair salons may be allowed to open before June 1, to universal rejoicing.

Here is a look at ViaGaribaldiWorld and environs at the moment, as seen through hungry eyes (those of the customer, as well as the proprietor).

Majer was the first shop I noticed that was starting to spread its commercial wings, so to speak. Once a small family bakery, it is now a local chain that sells bread, cookies, pastries, and some modest additions (small pizzas, soup, sandwiches) as well.  The outside tables are always full in the summer, but obviously we can’t be waiting for the jeunesse doree’ to come back.  I’m not a frequent customer — the space is awkward, the staff apathetic and disagreeable, the prices unreasonable even by Venice standards, but hey — after ten weeks of your own cooking, I could see the appeal.
Mostly finger food is available, which is what you’d expect from basically a bakery.  Bread, pizza (those would be small pizzas, the size of a flattened baseball), first courses (meaning pasta or rice, which can also be served cold), “salty cakes,” more like pies,that usually involve a crust and a cheese or other filling, and arancini, or fried spheres the size of unflattened baseballs made of compressed rice, sometimes with a filling.
This is the sort of pizza (called “pizzette,” or little pizzas) I am referring to, although these aren’t from Majer, but from the window of “El Forner,” a bakery near campo San Giovanni e Bragora.
“Take-Away” needs no translation, but they just want to make sure you’re not imagining you can have your sacred spritz at the bar.  “Bar Service Closed.”  Then the usual terms are listed:  The opening hours and days, the requirement that only one person enter at a time, the wearing of mask and gloves.
“Nevodi” is Venetian for “nipoti,” which means both “nephews” and “nieces” (the preposition tells you which it is) and also means “grandsons” and “granddaughters.”  (Don’t blame me.  Evidently the word-coining machine broke down and everyone decided just to make do with what they had.)  Speaking of coining words, the yellow sign introduces a new one: “Nevodita’.”  Interpreting the suffix in the usual way, it indicates “state of being of.”  (“Venezianita’,” the quality or essence of Venetian-ness,)  So they’ve created a word for the special state of being that their cuisine inspires.
When Nevodi was preparing its transformation to takeaway, some explanation was in order.  For several days before May 5, this helpful sign was posted at the door: “On Tuesday May 5 we’ll start takeaway,” they wrote in Italian.  Then, in Venetian, they added: “Che saria el Porta Via” (che sarebbe il Portare Via) — “that would be take away”).  The sign continues: “During the next few days I’ll explain to you how it works.”
This is the procedure, here and at most of the other restaurants:  “For reservations, please send a message with your order, the time and your name for pickup.  Once you have received our confirmation, all you need to do is come by at the agreed time.  For anyone who doesn’t use WhatsApp, you can telephone at both of the numbers on the little card here.”  They have added a glamorous extra feature: “If you want to receive the daily menu via WhatsApp, send a message on WhatsApp to (number and name and surname). “
Nevodi: Ready with the list of wines taped on the bar.  There is a prohibition against drinking outside these establishments, so I don’t know how to interpret the bottles and glasses.  But the barista is happy.  “I’m smiling,” he said behind his mask.  “I can tell,” I answered.
People began to stop, and orders undoubtedly followed.  Maybe they’re waiting to pick up the orders that they had already made.  But I also saw people stopping in front of restaurants seemingly  just to talk to each other, whether or not they were customers in the common sense.  It would seem that places with food and drink magnetically draw people to each other.  An industry expert said openly that one of the purposes of the takeaway phase isn’t just to try to scrape up money for the light bills (my phrasing), but to create and maintain links with their customers.  Jump-start the instincts that send you out of the house in search of something different to nosh, an instinct that has been dormant far too long.
Most places make it clear that you are not allowed to consume your purchase anywhere near the establishment.  Outside Hopera the instinct to stand around with your drink is just too strong, but there would have been fines if any roaming policeman had seen this.

“Strani” bar has been offering delivery of kits for making your favorite aperitivi, neatly packaged in little glass flacons.  Mojito, Caipirinha, Caipiroska, Americano, Negroni, Long Island, Sex on the Beach, can be yours starting at only 3 euros each, but the minimum order is 20 euros.  (It’s not clear whether they include the ice or not.)  They deliver anywhere in Castello, which is impressive, considering that Castello is the largest sestiere in Venice.
Gelato is a special challenge for takeaway — it’s one thing for your hot food to arrive at your home cold, but it’s another for something cold…you see my point.  It is absolutely forbidden to eat gelato, like any other food, on the street, so takeaway means employing special styrofoam boxes that  manage to keep the gelato cold for a reasonable time.  The Gelateria Crystal is offering the most basic, fundamental flavors AND home delivery (yes!).
A gelateria at Sant’ Antonin makes the terms very clear.  The chalkboard shows the hours, mentions gelato and crepes, and “DA PORTARE VIA!” (to take away).
“Just Take Away — Only takeaway boxes.  No cones, no cups.  Please maintain the security distance and use the protective devices stipulated by the current regulations in force.”  Impressive, as long as you know what those are.  Do we have a failed law student here?  The same amount of time and energy, and perhaps even individual letters, could have produced the much simpler and more common “wear mask and gloves.”
The Bar/pastry shop Chiusso, in Salizzada dei Greci, has managed to keep going by selling some of its products in the fresh-pasta-and-expensive-condiments shop on the other side of the street. They’ve used a few other stratagems too, such as home delivery. They have a clientele (including us) that would require an hour on the rack to reach the point of renouncing their pastries.
They too are now surviving on takeaway business, as per the sign: “From Monday May 4 the shop will be open from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM for your order pickups.”  The sign above it is also reassuring:  “Seeing the appreciation that you have shown us we have decided to continue with home delivery of the products you can order by calling 333-236-9322.  Heartfelt thanks.”  (That would be “Grazie di cuore,” with the heart symbol.  Sweet.)
The Trattoria alla Rampa is getting ready to start takeaway.  The signs on their window, from left to right, are:  The standard list of conditions issued by the Venetian association of public services.  Then the set menus, which I will let you practice your Italian in translating.  The third sign states: “We advise our valued customers that the takeaway menu will be offered starting May 11.  We ask that you book your meals at this phone number 041-528-5365.  We ask that you book on the preceding day from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM.  From Monday to Saturday.  On Friday and Saturday you can book for Monday.  Thank you for your kind attention.”
These are the rules as laid out by the Venetian Association of Public Services: “Selling for takeaway:  Only via booking.  Phone, or write us a message on WhatsApp, or email.  Agree on the time to come pick up your order.  Wait your turn respecting the distance of one meter.  Enter one person at a time, maximum.  Always wear mask and gloves.  Eat at home or in the office what you’ve bought.”
Notice to our Clients: To guarantee a rapid and safe takeaway service: Respect the distance of interpersonal security of at least one meter.  Use the mask inside the restaurant.  It is not permitted to consume the takeaway products inside or outside the restaurant.  As soon as you’ve concluded your transaction (i.e., got your order in your hands), we invite you not to stop near the restaurant.” That’s a rule in general, but it has survival connotations here, because the trattoria is in front of the fruit and vegetable boat, where people have already accumulated, on a stretch of fondamenta that accommodates the fish market and the wine shop.  As everywhere, customers, and their dogs and children, are lined up outside awaiting their “one person maximum” moment to enter, which would leave exactly zero space for standing around eating.  There’s barely space to get through the scrum as it is.  However, I predict that the broad balustrade at the end of the canal will be everybody’s go-to table.  At least until the vigili show up.
I rest my case. On the balustrade.  I predict that this will become a table in five seconds.
On this morning’s walk, I saw something I haven’t seen since quarantine began: Trash — specifically, the enticing, fragrant, food-related trash that seagulls cannot resist. Conclusion: Not everybody who takes food away brings it all the way home.  I don’t know where they’re eating it, but this is where the remains are being disposed of.  It may be a shock to the garbage collectors, who essentially had nothing to do on this fondamenta for two months.

 

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Problems

Phase 2 begins

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In my last post I insensitively described small-business owners (shops, restaurants, hair salons, etc.) as “howling” to reopen.  If I were in their place, I would be howling too.  And the same anguished cries are being heard throughout Italy — in Florence, Rome, Milan, in hill towns and beach resorts and places you’ve never heard of — as the bills and “Overdue Rent” notices continue to drop through the slot in the locked doors of shuttered stores of every kind.  But the reopening is planned in stages, and belonging to a category whose stage has yet to arrive is heating up everybody’s atmosphere.  More on that in my next.

At the beginning of the quarantine in Venice, when silence fell and motion ceased, a few people wrote to me expressing variations on “You must be enjoying the peace and quiet!”  I know they would never have written that to a widow just returning home from the funeral, but it seemed similarly inappropriate.  I understood that they meant that compared to the chaos and unpleasantness of being overrun by tourists, the opposite extreme ought to be a welcome relief.  It wasn’t, it isn’t, it can’t be.  One extreme is a bad correction of another extreme.  Even on the first day of quarantine I realized that the quiet did not signify peace — au very much contraire.  We have listened for two months to a silence that might have been that of the world underwater when you’re trying to see how long you can hold your breath.

But the non-essential small-business owners and artisans and their colleagues and cohorts and conjunctions have been living in a world of -3,000,000 per cent peace and quiet because they’ve been closed for two months — and in many cases, it will be three.  And many of their businesses depend on tourists, which apparently have gone extinct.

Please note: No more tourists isn’t a problem just for Venice.  This is a European, even global, phenomenon.  A recent report by a group of analysts estimated that in the month of March, the tourist income in Europe shrank 68 per cent relative to that month last year.  ENIT, the Italian national tourist agency, reports that bookings for Italy from April 13 to May 24 are down 84.6 per cent relative to the same period last year.  (For the record, bookings to France are down by 82.9 per cent, and to Spain 80.3 per cent.)  ENIT predicts that tourism to Italy won’t be back to pre-2020 levels till at least 2023.

High season?  Where?

What can there be in Venice but tourism?  This is a question that people have been struggling with since before I came here in 1994, and have continued to struggle with as the monster grew and grew, like Audrey in “The Little Shop of Horrors,” constantly bellowing “Feed me!”  I hope somebody has been spending their stuck-at-home time studying whether anything else can keep Venice going, because this is the moment to step forward.

Happily for us, the world is coming back to life in via Garibaldi and environs; the first signs were a very sunny Sunday and the following two days.  More motorboats in the canals, more people out on the street, suddenly children were everywhere, running around and shrieking — it’s great.  It’s like some safety valve suddenly popped open.

Nobody waited for a sign to say “Unchain the children!”  But Sunday evening they were still out at sunset, racing around, having finally tired of covering the street with hopscotch boxes scrawled with yellow chalk.  There are noticeably more bikes and scooters around, too — they must have been the promised prize for not rebelling during two months spent almost exclusively indoors.

Some stores have been opening very gradually.  There were those that remained closed from the first day, and will have to remain closed till the official permission is granted (see chart below).  Others shortened their hours to opening only in the morning.  The supermarket closed early, and remained shut on Sunday.  I’ll be interested to see if that continues.

Over the past week or ten days, a few businesses (the office-supply/giftwrap/school supply store, the children’s clothes shop) were open all day, but only on Tuesday and Wednesday.  It was an adventure trying to keep track of what you could get, and when, but I was surprised at how quickly one could adapt.  The daily round just took more planning, and more willingness to wait in line.

Weeks ago, the big tobacco/toy/lotto shop at the end of via Garibaldi (the two smaller ones stayed open) posted new hours: “From Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM Monday closed.” That didn’t bother us because we don’t smoke, and the various gambling schemes were suspended, so no playing the lottery. That surprised me — I thought the lottery would be the last thing standing in the devastated national economy, but evidently the government was more concerned with other millions and billions that really would keep people going, and not the phantasmagoric winnings that are always just about to come through.
The detergent/cosmetics/housewares store also cut back on hours. Too bad if you forgot to buy your Dead Sea exfoliant in the morning, you’ll just have to wait till tomorrow.
All sorts of stuff for kids, especially glittery garb.
“Emma’s Road ships!” (This in itself is amazing, because the post office on via Garibaldi has been shut since the acqua alta of November, 2019.) The shopowner (Emma, perhaps?) may have had to stay home but she obviously rejected the idea that she couldn’t keep working during lockdown.  “We can make an appointment for a video-call for virtual shopping…It’s possible to request information (photo, prices, sizes and measures) or book the articles in the following ways:  1 Sending a message to our Facebook page, 2  Contacting us via WhatsApp at 3491089086, 3 Calling this number 3924152292.  Shipping is free for all orders that are at least 99 euros or by delivery to your home if you’re in our area.  It’s possible to pay by bank transfer or PayPal.”  She doesn’t intend to leave ANY customer outside in the rain, that’s for sure!
This is progress — the office supply store has moved past the “only Tuesday and Wednesday” phase and now is open every morning from 9:00 to 12:30, but only one person at a time may enter, and must wear mask and gloves, and maintain a distance of two meters between — well, I guess that would be between the one client and the one shopowner.
I suppose it’s good news that funerals can begin to be conducted again. The need to prevent crowds has meant that since February 23, the dear departed departed alone.  This notice doesn’t mention that only a maximum of 15 people will be allowed to attend, and doesn’t indicate who the bouncer at the door is going to be to keep the 16th person out.  No funeral mass, either — those will begin on May 11, but this is a step forward.
These are the rules:  Only up to 15 people can enter.  They must wear a mask.  Enter and leave rapidly without blocking the door.  In church observe the prescribed distance.  Be seated on the pews where there are signs.  Other directions during the religious rite.
As you see, the openings are staggered according to the type of business. The hairdressers are furious;  they’re listed to open June 1, as are restaurants.  But restaurants are making do meanwhile by offering take-away food; it would need someone cleverer than I to organize a take-away haircut.  Or are those called “wigs”?  Shops (such as clothing) and team practice recommence on May 18.  The notice says “No” to playgrounds for children, but they have no idea how via Garibaldi works!

 

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On the eve of Phase 2

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I know people have to get back to work, but I’m really going to miss seeing the water like this.
This is one of very, very few boats that have broken the water in our canal during quarantine. It enters the canal with tremendous roaring, and in reverse (because of possible difficulties in turning around?  Simple laziness?). I’m going to hope that a boat this size started out carrying more than a mere five or six crates of bread.  Considering that these are destined for the Coop supermarket just up the street, it’s possible it has delivered bread to other Coop’s around the city.  Still, every time I hear it pass I realize how unaccustomed I’ve become to the sound of motorboats, and how much I really hate it.  But it’s the sound of work, and that’s a great thing.

This morning was glorious, as so many mornings have been over the past two months; the shining sun and gleaming water and tranquil atmosphere — perhaps too tranquil, but that’s for another discussion — made our daily dawn walk something lovely.

We started these walks on Monday, March 9, the first morning of lockdown, sensing that we had to keep moving somehow if we were going to be housebound essentially 24 hours a day (legal escape hatch: the supermarket run).  Sneaking out under what was then the barely brightening sky, I felt like we were doing something extremely daring.

A few other people were also out, running, or walking purposefully, with or without a dog.  We avoided each other, we pretended we didn’t see anyone. Everyone seemed to be operating under the Cone of Silence.

So: At 6:30 AM it’s on with the mask and gloves and out we go.  Then nine times over the bridge outside our house (the tenth would be on the return trip).  This was Lino’s idea, and it was a good one.  Next, we walk up to the end of via Garibaldi, turn left, and walk along the lagoon-front (at 6:50 AM we pass the Giardini vaporetto stop), down to land’s end at Sant’ Elena all the way to the Morosini Naval School.

We get the Gazzettino at the newsstand at the Sant’ Elena vaporetto stop and retrace our steps toward the Giardini dock, which we pass at 7:20.  We proceed all the way to the top of via Garibaldi, then home.  A stop at the fruit and vegetable boat may be in order (beat the crowds), then home by 7:40.  This adds up to 2.8 miles, if anybody cares.

After two months of this, we have come to recognize a number of people.  Not that we KNOW them, we just know that at that point there will be the two heavyset women and one heavyset man, evidently relatives or friends (or both), walking a nondescript dog.  There’s the man with his black and white English setter and the catapult-thing that throws the ball amazingly far.  At the brick bridge we will encounter Barbara, owner of the bar/cafe “Vecia Gina” where we love to sit outside under a big umbrella in the summer, drinking and munching and cooling off.

Sometimes by the bridge by the viale Garibaldi we’ll run into Ennio, whom Lino has known forever and I somewhat less than that — he used to belong to our boat club.  There might be Bepi “Stella” out walking his old black dog.  And so it’s a mix of people we know and people we think we know by now, though I recognize them more by their clothes than their faces — logical, considering that almost everybody’s masked.  Lino sometimes whispers “Who was that?” even when somebody has just said “Ciao, Lino.”

Guess it won’t be looking like this anymore.  I realize that more boats will mean more people are working, and of course that’s what we want.  But we were living for years at the other extreme, and these past eight weeks have helped me forget how often the waves were so high from passing motorboats that the vaporetto dock would leap and plunge and people (on the dock, as well as on the hapless vaporetto trying to tie up) would hold on to each other to not fall down. Not made up.  I wonder if there’s any conceivable middle ground on this.

This afternoon there were many more people out strolling than ever before, and clumps of kids of various ages yelling in various ways.  Some people clearly were not from around here, but they weren’t foreigners, just Venetians from other parts of the city.  The new regulation says that you can go visit relatives (but not unrelated friends), so I suppose these were social visits to random family members.

But we also saw three Carabinieri walking around, two policemen (Polizia di Stato) in the Quintavalle canal on their jet skis, and not long afterward a regular police motorboat pulled up and three officers crossed the bridge and disappeared, evidently in search of someone or thing.  We both had the feeling that they want us all to know that it’s not party time yet; we all have been warned in a thousand ways that we must, MUST continue with masks and gloves and distancing.  Even the Prime Minister has implored everyone not to act like everything’s fine, because it’s not.  He has also repeated that if infections begin to increase, we are all going to be back where we started, only worse.  He didn’t actually say that we’d be locked inside our houses, but it didn’t sound good.

Tomorrow people will start to go back to work.  We will take our walk, but I think it will be different.  It won’t be a secret thing among just us anymore.

If I weren’t already a morning person, living here would make me one.
Wish my hair would do this.
Another early shopper at the fruit and vegetable boat.
This is one of the best moments in the entire year — fresh peas, the first artichokes from Sant’ Erasmo…..
… and asparagus from up near Treviso. The thicker stalks are eaten with hard-boiled eggs, the slimmer stalks are destined for risotto.
I won’t ever be seeing this again. Probably every boat in this picture is raring to go.
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