My Lost Day

Time is moving way too quickly here. One forgets how you can easily lose an hour or two, just sitting in a campo and staring into space.

I am staying in an apartment on a main calle in Rialto and every morning I hear the click-click of heels, all the Venetians going to work. I love looking down at all of them. I think I recognize half of them. At night there are happy voices and laughter in the calle.

Today is a beautiful Saturday. Especially beautiful, because yesterday there was the most insane storm here. I had no idea it was going to storm. At around one in the afternoon, I was walking up through Dorsorduro to go to the train station to buy a ticket for Rome. All of a sudden, the wind kicked up, and I looked at the sky. It was green and black. I love the summer storms in Venice, but this was no summer storm. And I was wearing capris and sandals. No umbrella. Uh oh. Everyone, tourists and locals, started to run.

I was thinking I would go and have some lunch, but I was not really hungry. So I ducked into the wine bar Vinus Venezia. A minute later, the sky opened and massive water fell. The bartender and I just stared out the window. Vinus Venezia would be my home for the next two and a half hours. I sat in the window and listened to good jazz, played loud. The calle started to flood. Across the way, in the Osteria Al Pantalon, many happy people ate pasta and drank wine and I watched them eat. A guy with a striped shirt kept coming from the restaurant, to the wine bar. He would have a wine, then run back. He would have a sandwich, then run back.

This whole time I am thinking about Luke and Lisa, the British couple I showed around Thursday. They are getting married at 3 PM, in this storm! I had talked to Roberto at the Pizzeria Accademia, for Luke and Lisa to have the best patio table to drink Prosecco and look at the view, but surely they would not go there with this weather.

Finally I knew I had to make a run for home. It was freezing. At home I read for a while and then thought I might try for the train station again. It had stopped raining, but it was still freezing, and windy. I think at that moment I thought “I don’t think I am going to Rome.” I flipped a coin and it said, go to Rome. But I cannot leave Venice. I just cannot do it.

I had only eaten a tramezzini at noon, but I wasn’t really hungry until about 8. I went downstairs and ate a great meal at Osteria Vivaldi. I ate pasta with shrimp and lemon zest and cream, then fegato alla Veneziana. I could not finish all my liver but I finished enough that I felt sort of like a overstuffed piggy at that point. I walked over to Il Sole Sulla Vecia Cavana, because I knew Luke and Lisa were having their wedding dinner there, and I wanted to see how it all went. Plus I really needed to walk.

Luke and Lisa had just finished, so it was good timing. They looked great. They had actually WALKED from Rialto to Piazza San Marco for pictures, and then WALKED to the Pizzeria Accademia, even though there would be no sitting outside. They said everywhere the Venetians were coming out of the shops and congratulating them. Roberto and his crew were waiting (probably surprised they even showed up.) So it all worked out.

So who is at Il Sole Sulla Vecia Cavana, but the guy with the striped shirt from Al Pantalon! He owns it now. He tried to tell me he saw me in Vinus Venezia and I tried to tell him I knew. So now I am going to have to try Al Pantalon.

Anyhow, this is the story of my lost day. I am off to meet some Irish friends I made the other night… I am taking them on an afternoon bar crawl of Dorsoduro and San Polo. They are very good at helping with the research.