Saturday 18/2/2017.
We got up at 7:45 a.m. then the two of us went to San Michele – the cemetery island. The cemetery is actually pretty small. We found Igor Stravinsky’s and Ezra Pound’s graves. Most of the graves are actually ossuaries because you rent the graves. If you stop paying, they evict your poor bones into the ossuary. This seems to be a common practice among European countries. In Norway, you rent them for about 20 years. In Paris, they moved everyone into the catacombs.
Whilst San Michele is small, there are lots of people interred there because they’re all in what essentially are chest of drawers. There were some huge tombs. We spent about an hour there then headed back. We were all set for a day of museums. First we took a detour to find more haunted places. We ended up walking past some statues we wanted. Typical. One of them, you can apparently hear his heart if you’re pure of spirit. We were too short to reach.
Walking with Dinosaurs
We found another vegan gelato/sorbet place. The server asked if we were here for the carnival. We said we were here for our birthday, so he insisted on giving us an extra scoop of sorbet for free. We found our way to the natural history museum. That was a really cool one, and probably our favourite after San Servolo. To be fair, it had dinosaur bones, and anything with dinosaurs is a winner.
Smells like Teen Spirit
We headed to Palazzo Mocenio, a perfume, textiles and costume museum. It’s furnished with 18th c furniture and numerous antique perfume bottles. That was interesting. There is a section with glass bottles filled with scents you could sniff. Some places don’t trust tourists with touching furniture, but this place let you lift glass stoppers to smell the scents inside. Cat sniffed too enthusiastically and spluttered. A woman next to her laughed. Bowls of different raw ingredients are arranged on a table and you were allowed to smell them. It’s the first time we’ve visited a museum with an olfactory section, so it was good to do something different. Our final museum was Ca’ Rezzonico, which had 18th c furniture and paintings.
Carnival of Chaos
We emerged to discover everyone had arrived for the carnival. This is officially the worst circle of hell. You couldn’t move down the streets. We got very frustrated, murderous and claustrophobic, as we’re only 5’1”/5’2” so we’re generally armpit height to most people. It’s not a place you want to be in a crowd. We’re also the perfect height for being smacked in the face by rucksacks. We could only see the back of the person in front of us as we were all jostled through the streets like parading cattle.
The police moved people along who stopped to take photos on the bridges. We’re glad we’re leaving tomorrow to escape the madness. We’ve pretty much had Venice to ourselves these past few days, so suddenly seeing how busy it can get was an unpleasant experience. Plus, we were able to photograph empty streets and canal life, without the pressure of being herded on. Though seeing people dressed in masks and carnival finery was really cool.
Model Behaviour
Tom and Amy returned to the apartment, but we stayed out because we’d spotted a glass gondola with black cats and a moon that we saw the other day, and haven’t seen since. Lots of shops sold glass gondolas, but most of them had people, not cats.
We’re starting a collection of models of the city’s landmarks we’ve visited. For Paris we have the Eiffel Tower, so we wanted a model representing Venice. Either a gondola or the Rialto Bridge. We didn’t see any, so we figured that as Murano is famous for glass, a glass gondola would be perfect. On Murano, we saw a black gondola with cats and a heart, and whilst we liked it, hearts aren’t really our thing, but moons are. We couldn’t find the one with the cats and the moon, so returned to find the one with the heart, which we saw before Tom and Amy left. Could we find it again? No. We had to retrace our route through the crush.
Crowd Control
It was so busy, the police were directing the crowds at crossroads. It’s the first time we’ve experienced that, and hopefully it’s the last. Lynx got stuck behind three women who stopped to window shop. A police officer marched them on. This is what we need! A personal police officer frogmarching slow walkers and time burglars on, as it is, quite rightly, a crime.
We eventually found the shop with the cat gondola, bought it and headed back. When we got home, we immediately soaked our feet in pans of cold water. Tom and Amy went to get pizza, and very kindly fetched chips for us, because we physically couldn’t walk anymore. We uploaded our photos, packed, cleaned the apartment and celebrated not being outside with all those people.
Read Day 4.
Read Day 6.