Traveling Johns

Winchester

And the ship sailed on.

8’ long wall hanging – Palace Montreal

Roman host – not a flattering pic, but I like the hat.

Puglia fantasy

Whether because they were repetitious, didn’t tell the story, or just tasteless, these are some photos that were not previously included in the blog. But Big John could not let these go into the cloud unnoticed. They are in no particular order. More to come.

Urban Rome

Art school in an old slaughter house

Rainy evening Lecce (find John)

You can’t get there from here – Isernia, Italy

 Cafe in Ascoli Piscena – Roman nose and fading beauty.

Accessorize 

He said I didn’t want to know – Wales

Ancient ruins – near Roma

Stolen shot – Wales aerial aqueduct

On Rails to Wales – Simpler times

Once again, we woke up early. Our friend from the previous morning was not outside our kitchen window to greet us today. So we had a quick cup of coffee and set out for an early morning hike. This was the last full day of our vacation and we were determined to enjoy each moment of it. 

We did see quite a few sheep on our ramble but we were able to determine if any of them was our sheep. They look remarkable similar! But this one did seem to have less fear of us. 

We bid a quick farewell to the lovely village of Llangollen. 

On our way out of town, I set up the route so that we would go by the aqueduct and I could get a better look at it. It is an amazing accomplishment for its time. 

It is a manmade river suspended about one hundred feet above a real river. 

I wanted to walk along the edge of it, but John and Vicki preferred a little less vertigo and stayed on a less impressive bridge.

Our path took us next through the lovely Shropshire countryside. Our next destination was Hawkstone Park, one of England’s most historic – and peculiar – gardens. In the late eighteenth century, Sir Rowland Hill, whose Protestant family had been granted the lands of three enormous abbeys after Henry VIII confiscated the lands of the religious orders, decided to create a large garden on their extensive lands. One of the odd features of this property were a group of sandstone outcroppings. In the American West, we would call these buttes. In the medieval period, the outcroppings were ideal for fortifications. But after the gradual decline of feudalism, castles were unnecessary and the rocks were more or less just land unsuited for farming or grazing. But the movement we call “pre-Romanticism” gave the Hills a new appreciation for this useless land. 

Oxford Reference defines pre-Romanticism as

A general term applied by modern literary historians to a number of developments in late 18th-century culture that are thought to have prepared the ground for Romanticism in its full sense. In various ways, these are all departures from the orderly framework of neoclassicism and its authorized genres. The most important constituents of preromanticism are the Sturm und Drang phase of German literature; the primitivism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Ossianism; the cult of sensibility in the sentimental novel; the taste for the sublime and the picturesque in landscape; the sensationalism of the early Gothic novels; the melancholy of English graveyard poetry; and the revival of interest in old ballads and romances. These developments seem to have helped to give a new importance to subjective and spontaneous individual feeling.

The sandstone cliffs of the estate seemed both sublime and picturesque to Richard Hill, and he decided to turn this area into one of the largest gardens in Europe. The garden would not be geometric like those of continental Europe, but in the English style would be an enhancement of natural features. He decided to lay out a path among the cliffs and to install features like caves, grottos, and fake ruins. In the parlance of the day, these little attractions in the landscape were called “follies.” The arch in the picture below is not the remains of an old building, but it is made to look as if it were. 

Looking upon such sights, particularly in set amide the stunning natural countryside, was suppose to arouse a sense of awe or melancholy or rapture in the viewer. 

The pre-Romantics were not particularly obsessed with the accuracy of their historical details. Nobody seemed to ask whythere were Greek funerary urns on the border of Wales. 

All that mattered was the feeling you had when you saw such sights. The Hills even installed a fake hermitage on the property and hired a local man to be the “monk” who would greet visitors who came through the garden. 

However, the Hills could never forget that the family fortune depended on their embrace of Protestantism and there is a large red sandstone tower on the highest point as a monument to an earlier Rowland Hill, the first Protestant Lord Mayor of London. 

The “follies” were one of the most famous attractions in England at the end of the Georgian period, and people traveled there from all over the country and from Europe as well to have profound feelings as they looked at this sublime and melancholy landscape. But when tastes in literature and art changed, the garden fell into disrepair. It was more or less allowed to decay for about two hundred years. But in the 1980’s, English Heritage designated it as a priority for restoration and after a decade of work and a great deal of money it was finally reopened to the public. There were some advantages to all this neglect. The Hills had planted exotic trees throughout the park and they had been allowed to grow undisturbed. So today Hawkstone is one of the few places in the United Kingdom where you can redwood trees. They appear to like the climate there. 

Our next stop was the market town of Shrewsbury. If was early afternoon at this point, and all of us were a little hungry. We stopped at a French bistro there and had a surprisingly good – and inexpensive – meal. After that, we set about exploring the town for a bit. The center of the town is nicely preserved. 

At the center of the old town is Quarry Park, a large open area on the river.

Saint Chad’s Church, in the background, is one of the few round churches in England. Supposedly the design was approved by the local council without actually looking at blueprints and they were outraged when they discovered its unconventional shape. We found it fascinating.

Our final stop on the way back to London was another famous church, Coventry Cathedral. The Germans firebombed Coventry, a small industrial city near Birmingham, and the old cathedral burned to the ground in 1940. 

But when the war was over the people of Coventry decided to build a new cathedral in the ruins of the old one. They felt that keeping the burned shell of the old building would help them remember the horrors of war. They also preserved the remnants of a charred cross found amid the ruins. 

The new building looks out on the old cathedral.

Not everybody appreciated the modern style of the cathedral. 

The striking tapestry behind the altar, with images taken from the Book of Revelation, still is not universally loved. 

But the modern stained glass is striking

and the statue of Saint Michael on on outside of the building is certainly iconic.

Other than the Cathedral, Coventry appears to have no other attractions. I had always seem pictures of bleak Midland towns in modern British films, and Coventry looked exactly as depressed and depressing as any of them.

It took us a little over an hour to get back to London as traffic was light on the M40. Tomorrow, we have to get up early to catch a flight from Heathrow back to Los Angeles. It has been a good trip and I will remember it fondly.

When we awoke this morning we discovered that we had a visitor outside our kitchen. He seemed a little annoyed that we were disturbing a good quiet early morning cud chew. We tried to say that we were sorry, but really needed some coffee. 

While Vicki slept in, John and I walked into town.Along the way we passed the ruins of a twelfth-century Cistercian Abbey. 

The carefully edited picture, however, obscures the trailer park adjacent to the ruins. As it was still early in the day, I did not accept the invitation in the sign below.

But we could hardly resist this wonderful sign.

We arrived in town after walking about forty minutes. This part of Wales was famous not only for coal mining, but for quarrying slate. The local stone is everywhere in town, particularly on the roofs. 

One of our tasks on this part of the trip was to return a friend to this part of the world, one of the last places he had visited. These are the rapid waters of the River Dee. The bridge in the background, built in 1345, is one of the most historic structures in North Wales. 

Vicki met us a short time later at a cafe by the river. John and I had a bite of breakfast and she had some tea. We went off to look at the village some more. We particularly wanted to see Plas Newydd, the house of the two ladies of Llangollen. 

Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby were perhaps the two most famous unmarried women of the early nineteenth century. Eleanor was youngest daughter of one of the most important families in Ireland. But in 1780, when she was 39, her family, deciding that she could never be married, decided to send her off to a convent in France. She ran away and met up with Sarah, 13 years younger than her, but about to be forced into a marriage with a man she despised. The two women bought a small cottage in distant Wales and remodeled it in the fashionable “gothic” style. 

The planned to live quiet lives there, but much of Europe became fascinated by these two “celebrated virgins” and before long people as different a Shelley and the Duke of Wellington were coming to visit them. People marveled at two independent women who chopped their hair short and sometimes wore men’s clothes. We they something other than “virgins”? Nobody knows, although words they chose for their memorial stones in the churchyard certainly suggests a very intense relationship of some kind.

Alas, we did not get a chance to visit the house as it was closed on Mondays. So instead we decided to check out the steam railway. 

It runs to Carrog, a nearby village, and then comes back again. As far as I can determine, Carrog’s only claim to fame is that Paul McCartney’s brother was married there. 

The railroad kind of an aunt and uncle tourist attraction, but its still kind of fun. And, the old guys who run it are so happy to show off their steam engine. They like to show just how versatile it truly as. Why, it even can make tea!

And it is nice to see little bits of old England, the place we came to love in old Ealing Studio movies, is still there.

After the our train excursion, we stopped by Saint John’s church on the edge of the village where an Australian choir was giving a free concert.

They were not bad, and since it was raining, it was a pleasant place to spend an hour or so.

After the concert, the rain let up and the sun came out. And that was perfect timing because the parade was about to begin! The Llangollen festival likes to say that it is “Where Wales Welcomes the World.” Young performers, mostly choirs, come from all over the world to this festival, and it always begins the performers walking through town in their native costume 

and carrying their country’s flag. 

The locals came out to watch. You can tell that this is a highlight of the year.

For such a low-key event in a small town close to nowhere, there was a surprising number of police officers, all quite well armed, too. 

There were a couple celebrity participants. One was Terry Waite, the Church of England representative who was held captive in Lebanon for four years. Another was Wynne Evans, the Welsh tenor who played Signor Pirelli in Sweeney Todd.

After this we had a couple hours until the evening performance. I wanted to walk along the Llangollen Canal and find the celebrated aqueduct where the canal crosses over the river. We saw many barges on the canal. Renting a boat on the canal seems to be a popular summer activity around here. 

The barges were originally pulled by horses, and there was one firm there which had excursions in a horse-drawn boat. John noticed one of the lads who tended the horses carrying a big tub of vaseline and wearing blue surgical gloves. John asked him what he was doing. “You don’t really want to know” was the cryptic response.

After about thirty minutes, John and Vicki decided they wanted something to eat and decided to go back to town. Feeling stubborn – and not particularly hungry – I decided to walk on some more. I passed through some beautiful countryside.

And I finally did catch sight of the aqueduct. But by then it was already seven o’clock, and I had a feeling that I would probably not make it back to the festival by the time the evening performance began. I was only about 10 minutes late, but I had to wait until intermission to join up with John and Vicki. Fortunately for me, the performances this evening were hardly as memorable as those the night before. It was sort of an international variety show with this pudgy Welsh man as a kind of bilingual Ed Sullivan. Vicki really hated the Italian jugglers, and I have to agree, they were not particularly good. John thought that the Chinese dragon people were the worst. So maybe walking the length of the canal wasn’t a bad choice after all. But I think I may be sore tomorrow. I already feel a bit stiff tonight.

We all went north today. Jerry had to leave for Leeds, and John, Vicki, and I were headed to North Wales. Before we left John walked around the neighborhood a bit. It was a lovely morning.

Vicki drove all the way. I do pretty well at driving on the left side of the road until I have to take a left or right turn, so I think it was just as well we had an expert behind the wheel. We headed through Oxfordshire and headed towards Birmingham. We then turned to Shrewsbury and went through Shropshire. Before we knew it we were in the small town of Llangollen. It took a bit more time to find our accommodations. But after stopping to ask some directions – always so hard for us men – we finally located the Horseshoe Pass Holiday Lets. We had a huge two bedroom cottage.

The cottage was located a couple miles outside of town. The scenery could not have been more classically British.

The village of Llangollen is quite cute. We will have to explore it some more tomorrow. For this even, we only had time for a quick supper at a tea shop. We sat outdoors. We were a trifle bored waiting for our meals.

The reason we had come to Llangollen was for its celebrated eisteddfod or music festival. The name of the town, by the way, sounds something vaguely like thlanGOCHTHlen. You have to be Welsh to be able to say it. But you do not have to be Welsh to enjoy the music here, and amateurs and professional musicians and performers from around the world come here each year to compete. The festival officially opens tomorrow, but its first big event was a concert performance of Steven Sondheim’s masterpiece, Sweeney Todd. 

This was absolutely wonderful. The lead role was played masterfully by the Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel. 

He completely captured the manic intensity of “the demon barber of Fleet Street” as well as singing the difficult role perfectly. The rest of the cast ranged for decent to quite good. 

After our theatrical adventures last night, Vicki and Jerry to give us an adventure. They asked us where we had never been in the area. John and I have been the to the England many times, and we have done just about all the major tourist attractions – and some oddball ones, too. But I did say that we had somehow never managed to make it to Winchester. So off we went.

Winchester is one of the oldest cities in England. There was once a Roman settlement on this site. Although historians argue a bit about whether it was the capital or not, most agree that Winchester was the most important city of the ancient kingdom of Wessex. King Alfred the Great’s ruled from here. After the the Norman conquest, London became the capital and Winchester became just another cathedral and market town. But that helped preserve a remarkable historic center. The city was absolutely mobbed with people when we arrived. We never could quite figure out if this was typical of summer Sundays or whether there was some special event tang place. 

The cathedral is the most important of all the historic buildings. It has the longest nave of any Gothic church in Europe. The vaulting is particularly light and airy. 

Most of the services are held at the crossing in front of the rood screen. 

But evensong is held in the choir where you can admire that beautiful reredos. Notice how lacy the carvings are! 

In medieval times, people came here to the shrine of Saint Swithun. He is still buried there, but a much later Winchester resident is the real attraction for modern pilgrims.

Yes, Jane Austen is buried here on the north side of the nave, not that far from all the ancient kings of Wessex. Not bad for a girl who grew up in a small country parsonage. 

Jerry knew a small hotel nearby that had great food. We had a wonderful lunch.

As befits the country of “beef eaters”, John had a large plate of meat.

It was maybe a little too rich for him, and as we left to go to the seaside he started to feel a bit of motion sickness. Plus, it started to rain a bit. So went went back to London a little early. Once he felt better, he went outside for some fresh air. The canals are filled with swans and cygnets this time of year. 

I sat up in my room and just admired the lovely rainbow.

Tomorrow Jerry has to go to Leeds, and Vicki and the two of us head off to Wales. 

When we usually arrive in London, we have a long list of things to do and places to go. But this morning we just wanted to sit around, drink coffee, and talk to our friends. Vicki and Jerry live in Brentford, not far from Kew Gardens. Their house is part of a redeveloped industrial area on the old Grand Union Canal. There is no longer any commercial traffic on this waterway linking Birmingham and London, but there are many pleasure boats and some people who live in old barges. 

Jerry lovingly tends his garden. His job is in Leeds, so he often just gets to spend long weekends at home. 

Vicki is an amazing photographer, and we admired some of her work.

We wanted to do something special for our friends, so when we learned they had never seen War Horse we decided to take them to see this play. We had seen in in Los Angeles, but the Ahmanson Theater is so large that I am never feel like I have seen a play there. So we were more than happy to see it again. 

The staging of this play is what is truly amazing. The horses are operated by three men. Despite all the wires and pulleys, after a few minutes you completely accept them as actual horses. 

Tomorrow we head off for some adventures on the south coast. 

Today was our last day in Italy. Even though we still can only say about 10 words in the language, we have felt surprisingly at home here. We had booked a tour of Milan before we left Los Angeles because this is usually the only way to get in to see the Da Vinci Last Supper. We had a fine guide who spoke excellent English. She walked us first over to the cathedral. She explained that there had been a ancient Roman basilica on this site, but this building had been torn down for the current cathedral. She pointed out the lines on the pavement where the baptistry of the old cathedral had been. I had to place myself on the very spot where Saint Ambrose had baptized Saint Augustine on Holy Saturday in 387 AD. I am sure that I am the only person on that square who cared about that.

Our guide pointed out the bronze portals of the cathedral. Although done in a gothic style, the doors are quite new. Oddly, the Milanese believe that rubbing the legs of Jesus or his Roman tormentors brings good luck. 

Milan’s Duomo is one of the largest churches in the world. 

Unlike many of Italy’s Renaissance or Baroque churches, there is an abundance of stained glass in the cathedral. Some of it is original, while much of it are nineteenth century restorations and replacements. 

Although the white marble is quite stunning, it discolors easily and the cathedral needs constant renovation. Milan is preparing for a big exposition next year, and there were half a dozen cranes inside the cathedral scrubbing the stone back to its original color. 

The highlight of the cathedral is this statue of Saint Bartholomew by Marco d’Agrate. This apostle had supposedly suffered martyrdom by being skinned alive by the Armenians. The statue, which utterly repulsed Mark Train, shows him with only a small flap of skin. The detail of the musculature is astonishing. 

There was a lot of other weird stuff in the Duomo. The signs of the Zodiac are in the pavement by the west entrance, and the light from a hole in the ceiling shines on the current sign. Above the high altar, near the ceiling, in something that looks vaguely like a pillow, hangs Milan’s most famous relic, one of the nails that that pieced Jesus’s hands or feet. I have my doubts about that one. And the strangest thing of all has to be the cathedral gift shop in this plexiglass space ship. 

From the Duomo we went over to the Galleria. Versace is paying to have the famous structure cleaned and restored, and the city decided to expel one of its tenants, McDonalds, because it was not the right kind of store for the Galleria. McDonalds sued for breach of contract and received a prime space just outside the historic arcade. 

One of the tenants allowed to stay is the Campari shop. This has been here ever since it opened and the drink was invented here. 

There are mosaics on the floor dealing with Milan and Italian history The coat of arms of the city of Torino is there because for a while it was Italy’s capital. It’s emblem is a bull. There is a belief that if you put your heel on the bull’s privates and spin around three times you will have good luck. Hundreds of tourists do this daily. As a result, there is a big hold in the floor that has to be repaired frequently. 

Our guide then took us over to the Teatro della Scala. She admitted she had never been to an opera there because it was so expensive. Another American couple on our trip had been there the night before and had paid nearly 400 dollars each for tickets. They were so jealous when they learned we had spent one tenth of that amount – and we had a better view of the stage!

We continued on to Milan’s Castle. The guide gave us a lot of background about this structure, but it really was not particularly interesting to look at even if a lot of battles had been fought there. I think she was trying to fill up time until our appointment to see the Da Vinci painting. 

Last supper is at the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The church is supposedly interesting, but since it was close to lunch time it was closed. We walked around the outside. 

The church was originally a Dominican monastery, and Da Vinci painted his masterpiece in their refectory or dining hall. It is not a real fresco because it was painted on dry plaster instead of wet plaster. This makes is less durable, and the painting has been deteriorating from the time he finished it. It has been carefully restored, and the dining hall is now carefully climate controlled and only a handful of visitors are allowed in at a time. 

It is strictly forbidden to take pictures there. Given the fragile state of the painting and the problems people seem to have turning the flash off, that makes sense. John took a couple pictures of some reproductions. 

Once we were done with the Last Supper, we went back to the hotel and picked up our luggage. We took a cab to the airport.

We had a two hour flight from Milan to London. At Heathrow, our friends Vicki and Jerry met us and took us back to their house in Brentford. This is my birthday and they had a special birthday apricot tart for me. It was delicious!

After our romantic evening last night, we had to get up early this morning and catch a train to Milan. He had another so-so breakfast with a lot of attitude at the Avogaria hotel, and John paid the bill after we ate. He did not hate it as much as I did, but I do not think he would choose to stay there again. Our vaporetti passes had expired, and I wondered if we would meet up again with the fare inspector on our short boat ride to the train station. Thankfully, we did not.

The train station on the island of Venice is a lot nicer than the one on the mainland. We found our train with no particular problem, and thankfully we were once again in first class. This time, however, the train was a full. John and I had seats opposite each other, and after we stopped in Padua we both had somebody sitting next to us. After a while, the young lady sitting next to John asked if we could double check her English spelling on an email, and pretty soon we were having a great conversation. Her name was Sylvia and she lives in Milan. 

One of the many endearing traits about John is how much he loves to talk to strangers and how comfortable he makes them feel. Sylvia not only told us a lot about Milan, but also walked us a few short blocks from the train station to our hotel. 

This time we are staying at a more normal – though perhaps less interesting – accommodation. The Best Western Hotel Galles is a business hotel just off the Corso Buenos Aires in one of the cities many shopping districts. After we checked in we decided to take a nap as we had a big evening ahead of us. We then went off to use the hotel’s lovely spa. We had it all to ourselves! Feeling refreshed, we decided to head to the historic center of town. 

We took the subway four short stops and when we arrived at the central square, the Piazza del Duomo. There was  a man there doing some strange routine with a puppet and a CD player. 

We walked a few feet further and we we were facing Milan’s magnificent cathedral. The Duomo is architecturally unique on many levels. It is basically a gothic design, but done in beautiful white marble instead of the usual limestone or granite. And many neoclassical elements have been incorporated into the design as well. 

Right next to it on the piazza is the cathedral of commerce, Milan’s famous Galleria. 

One of our guide books suggested eating dinner on the roof of a department store. The food was not that interesting, but it had amazing views of the Duomo. 

On our way out, we went through the store’s food court. We loved these shoes. Made of chocolate and other sweets, they are completely edible. The Milanese are famous for their love of shoes in any form. 

Our big adventure for the evening was going to La Scala, possibly the most celebrated opera house in the world. John and I had stayed up until two o’clock in the morning a couple months ago to get tickets to tonight’s performance the moment they went on sale in Milan. 

Now the tickets were selling for up to 240€ – that’s about 300 dollars – for this performance. We managed to get some cheap seats, only 28€ each. We knew that they were up in the gallery. We did not know just how cramped it would be there. Even sitting down, I think John’s head hit the ceiling. But we had unobstructed views of the stage and the sound as absolutely perfect. 

We watched a production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. All of Mozart’s operas are a little weird, and this one is may be the strangest of them all. It is all about two young soldiers who believe that their fiancees are utterly virtuous. The older Don Antonio tells them that all women are unfaithful and suggests a scheme where they will pretend to leave for war but then return in the disguise of Albanian soldiers and woo the women. The girls finally surrender their virtue, but instead of being angry about it men simply accepts that this is just the way women are. 

The production we saw was originally done in Salzburg. It tries – maybe not altogether successfully – to use a contemporary setting. 

These are, by the way, publicity stills. I was not gauche enough to try to take pictures during the opera, and even in the gallery I would probably have been hanged if I had tried. The Milanese take opera seriously, and the people sitting up in the cheap seats are the real music lovers. 

There is a real class system still at work at La Scala. We poor people had to enter through a separate staircase, and we were not allowed to enter the main lobby at intermission. Of course, it being Italy, most of the people went outside to smoke anyhow. So we could look at the fashions on display. 

And even if we did not spent time with the most stylish people in northern Italy, at least we could say that we were there!

Tomorrow we have a tour of the city and then we take off for London. 

We arose early this morning to try to see Venice without tens of thousands of tourists. We had an audio tour of Saint Mark’s Square, and we figured that six in the morning was the only time we would be able to do it. And indeed the square was quite deserted at that hour.

There were only a few locals around like this delivery man. 

The only other tourists we saw were this Chinese couple determined to have their Venice honeymoon on a budget. Instead of the retinue of photographers the other couple had, they were taking advantage of the timer feature on their camera. We liked them.

The Doge’s Palace opened at 8:30, and I was the first person in line for tickets and we were the first tourists of the day to enter. I do not think I would have enjoyed it so much if there had been a lot of people. 

I liked the ostentation of the Doge’s chambers a whole lot more than the pointless decor of our own accommodations. 

Surprisingly, I found the prison quite fascinating. Here is the view of the city from the famous “Bridge of Sighs.” 

Here is a typical cell. I looks like the walls were painted at some point. I rather wonder if artists were commissioned to do this, too.

John was rushing through to get back to the hotel by ten thirty for breakfast. The prison really was quite a labyrinth, and he hit his head a couple times on his way out. Being short, I could concentrate on the interesting details instead of the ceiling. I found the toilet interesting. I guess on booking.com they would describe this as a “shared bathroom.” 

After a pretty uninteresting breakfast, John was content to rest his injured head for a bit. So I went off to explore on my own. I intended to go back to the piazza to one of the museums there, but I accidentally took the wrong boat and ended up on the island of Giudecca. It proved to be serendipitous. Giudecca is like Brooklyn, the part of the city on the other side of the water. 

During the nineteenth century this was a largely industrial area. Now, the former factories have been converted into apartments, and it is a place where ordinary Venetians live. It is not as rich in art and architecture as Venezia itself, but there are nevertheless a couple churches by the great architect Andrea Palladio. And it has stunning views of Venice. I found a storefront with a marvelously reflective window and took this picture of myself. 

As I wandered around, I found myself close to a rather drab church. There were a cluster of people in front. Glancing at the canal, I understood why they were there. 

I suppose the body was being taken to the mainland for burial, but somehow I liked the idea of burial in the ocean for this seafaring city.

Adject to Giudecca is the island of San Giorgio. The island is small, and most of it part of a large Benedictine monastery. The abbey church, also by Palladio, is remarkably uncluttered with the usual side altars and monuments. Although the choir is large, I think the community is not. As I was leaving about eight or nine monks, most quite elderly, were chanting the noonday office of Sext. I wondered if they were all that was left of what had once been a large foundation. 

Like the Duomo, San Giorgio has a bell tower. It has stunning views with no fencing to block the view. 

From the bell tower, I called John and asked if he was up for more adventures. He suggested I come back and we could find the Frari church. We had an audio tour of that church. I met him, and guided by Google Maps, we went off to find this large and somewhat less visited Franciscan building. Along the way we saw the Venetian version of a farmers’ market. 

The Frari church is the only example of northern Gothic in Venice. Make of simple red brick, this large building is really not that interesting. What makes it important is the art inside. The apse is dominated by a fantastic picture of the assumption of the Virgin by Titian.  

The bright colors and lifelike features were considered avant-garde. The depiction of the Virgin as young and beautiful seemed erotic to people at the time. And even today there seems something a little disconcerting about seeing the Virgin in bright red.

This picture really marks the beginning of the Baroque style in Venice. One of the more recent additions to the church is the funeral monument to the sculptor Antonio Canova. This is done in the high neoclassical style of the mid-nineteenth century. 

See how the lion, the symbol of Venice, is crying at the death of her favorite artist. John immediately thought of The Wizard of Oz.

Canova we learned from our audio tour, is actually buried somewhere else, but his heart is interred in this monument. You are supposed to be able to see in through the open door, but it seemed a bit gruesome for us.

We jumped back on the boat to do our final audio tour, one of the Grand Canal itself. We did not particularly learn a whole lot new from this, but it did make us aware of just how much the city is imperiled by rising seas. This house, for example, would originally have had three or four steps leading down to the water. Many of these houses are empty, and none use the ground floor rooms any more.

After our trip down the canal, I suggested that we jump on another ship and go over to the Lido. We had recently watched parts of Death in Venice, which takes place on the Lido, and we wondered how much of the palatial homes and grand hotels of that era were left. As it turned out, not much of it is still there. But were rented bikes and rode up and down most of the length of the island. This is the only place in Venice where people have cars. 

I suggested that we return to Giudecca for dinner. I showed John some of the places I had found earlier in the day. 

We stopped outside of Il Redentore to watch the boat traffic and to enjoy the afternoon sun. This is still Capuchin church, and one of the friars came out from time to time to walk around. He twirled his cincture endlessly and I could not figure out if he was just bored or waiting for somebody. 

As the sun went down, we had dinner right on the water at a small ristorante. 

For once, we absolutely savored the glacially slow service. It gave us an opportunity to enjoy our view. 

Back at hotel, I edited photographs while John took some more. 

We leave Venice tomorrow for Milan.