Son of a Beach, Where The Hell Is it?

Friday. Jim's friend is back and they harass each other through breakfast. It's DHL day. After estimating the size of box we need we head to the DHL office. They are very nice there but speak almost no English. We procure a box and tape and head back to pack it up. Giuliano the hotel owner loaned us a pair of scissors and nodded saying " if you come back down with out your wife I won't say anything!".... he had Jim covered! Everything fit so we taped it up and headed back...another successful shipping adventure. As a reward we head to the Nono Risorto for a celebratory pizza...our only frame of reference for the location is the Venice fish market....exactly what it sounds like...an open air market with each vendor's fish displayed on tables and buckets (to hold the live ones) and at the end of the day the seagulls fight over the scrapes. After the well deserved, and very tasty, pizza we went to find La Fenice, the opera house about which The City of Falling Angels was written. It was fun to see it after having read the book. For dinner we walk to the Mascaron, another cichetti bar...a swear it was Jim's idea! This time, with Gigi's help ( I point and he say ..e buono..it is good) I pick out our cichetti ...that is not to say that it was any more identifiable than last time....except for the potatoes. It is a loud, lively place and the food is good. In addition to, cicchetti we share spaghetti and clams....again I stress this is Jim's idea!! It's late when we finish eating....loud and lively but not necessarily quick! We miss having our evening ride on the Grand Canal so we hop on a vaporetto out to Lido..we have it perfectly timed...we'll arrive on the line 1 at 11:59 and jump on the 5.2 at 12:02.... Couple of issues with this plan...aren't there always issues?....the line 1 docks at one end of the building and of course the 5.2 departs from the other end of the building....we run, we can make it, wait you need the tickets to open the gate...dig those out of Jim's wallet as we run ...ok we got this ..wait our ticket won't open the gate! But then it isn't opening for the nice Italian girl and her boy friend who are in front of us either, she is yelling....finally she gets one to open and all of us enter on her ticket....whew...we can actually get back to our hotel and we won't have to sleep on the dock of Lido until the boats run again in the morning...disaster adverted. Bed looks good about now.

Saturday. Jim is searching for a particular calendar for his mom. We head back to Cannaregio. We are distracted by a used book store and venture in. It is packed with used books...in all kinds of water resistant containers...bath tubs, gondolas, various other small boats and buckets and plastic containers. Out towards the garden there are stairs built from stacks of books; if you climb up, you get a beautiful view of the canal. Through the back ( towards the "fire escape" the water laps right up to the door opening. Jim begins to panic...how does he know what he has here? Does he audit the inventory each year? These stacks are all helter skelter....I buy a used book and Jim finds a calendar and as we prepare to leave Jim asks how he knows what he has and the owner shrugs and says he doesn't! We had planned on a picnic today but it's raining so we duck into a little bar and have a sandwich. It's really crowded and Jim offers some of his bench to a girl that is part of a group of 6 young people (with a dog...here they can come practically everywhere...including restaurants). It turns out they are from Lake Como and just visiting Venice, they take bets on where Jim is from, ask the English word for the sound you make when you sleep (snoring!) and we making friends with the dog (who had his own sandwich by the way). The rain has stopped so we take a walk down to the park (Pam, you were right very pretty and quiet). There is a beautiful statue/fountain to Garibaldi...(there are lots of statues in honor of Garibaldi...if in doubt it's probably for Garibaldi)... It raises up out of a fish pond and has moss and plants growing amongst the figures. We decide to take the boat to Lido..Jim thought perhaps it deserved a longer visit than 2 minutes at night! We boat over and head into town, after a couple of blocks we decide we would rather see the beach ( while all of Venice is surrounded by water, Lido is the only part that has a beach) so we head back they way we came and walked for about 15 minutes...no beach in sight...guess we should check the map...there's the beach at the end of the road we had been on in the first place! We finally arrive at the beach and wander for a bit (sadly there was no Venetian sea glass to be found). We decide to head back and jump on the 5,2...ok the 5.2 line runs in a circle starts at Lido goes around the island until it"s back at Lido. Jim, the son of the son of a bowler decides we should not get off at our stop (3rd stop) but instead ride it full circle ("that should take about 45 minutes by my calculation") and then just stay on until it passes our stop again. Brilliant plan! It is a beautiful ride; we get a great seat outside, in the back of the boat and an hour and 35 minutes later when we are told to get off the boat at Lido, we find the line 1 and go back to our hotel. We have our last meal in Venice back at La Madonna. When we return to the hotel there is a package of cookies from the owners with a thank you note for staying with them...this room was so wonderful and they have been so sweet we should be sending them cookies!