Venice, day 3

Wednesday 30th September

We visited the Academmia D’Arte, which houses an amazing collection of art from 12th Byzantine icons to works from 17th century – more Tintoretto, Titian, Bellini, Veronese, Tiepolo etc etc etc. There was an enormous painting by Veronese, “Dinner in the House of Levi”, which was very controversial when first presented. It was supposed to have been the Last Supper, but Rome was outraged by the dwarves, lapdogs, drunkards and general debauchery and ordered Veronese to change it. A typical and fiercely independent Venetian, he refused to change anything but the title. Veronese was Tiepolo’s master and you can see several similarities with this painting and the “Cleopatra’s Banquet” in the NGV.

In the afternoon we took the vaporetto to Murano and strolled through the glass shops and made a couple of purchases. One of the “challenges” I set myself was to find some gorgeous Murano glass beads. Mission accomplished. That just leaves shoes, bags, gloves in Florence, something fabulous in Rome and heaps of gold in Dubai.

We had dinner with Michael and Karol, sampling local Venetian cuisine and wine. The local drink is “spritz” which may well become a new signature tipple.

Observations of Venice.
· Vaporetto drivers and conductors are selected for their good looks.
· There are more handsome men in Venice than in all of France.
· Three days in Venice is nowhere near enough
· Everywhere you look in Venice you encounter another perfect sight
· The light is soft and filmy
· There are millions of pontes but you rarely have to climb a thousand steps to see anything fabulous
· If you lose something (like my glasses) the helpful advice is “Look in the water”
· Venetian polizia are also very handsome, and are selected for their ability to stand provocatively by the canal and look romantically into the distance, probably transfixed by the beautiful scenes
· There appears to be three types of police here (all handsome) – perhaps to bamboozle everyone - there are three different authorities to handball the problems to, so they can go back to standing by the canal
· I Think I’m turning Italiano, turning Italiano, I really think so