Ingredients:

3 large eggs

115 g flour

1 heaped t baking powder

140 ml milk

pinch of salt

First separate the eggs into two mixing bowls.

Whisk the egg whites with the salt until they form stiff peaks.

Add the milk to the yolks, whisk, then add the flour and baking powder little by little, mixing it to a smooth batter.

Fold the egg whites into the batter carefully.

It is now ready to use.

Heat a good non-stick pan on a medium heat. Drop some batter on the pan.

When bubbles start surfacing, they are ready to turn over.

At this point sprinkle your chosen flavouring onto the uncooked side before flipping the pancake over.Ilse didn't add flavourings, but think about this: fresh corn from the cob, crispy bacon, banana, stewed apple, cinnamon, blueberries, grated chocolate....

Voila! Beautifully served with Greek style yoghurt and fresh berries! Thanks, Ilse!

Great idea: Apple Mac in hotel rooms

On it you could access all info on sightseeing in Paris, the weather, maps, Google, etc., plus download your mail… Ilse established that it costs 20Eur to go up the Tour Eiffel, and it was misty and rainy, so we decided no, not worth it, we’ll go and be charmed by the construction. We emerged from the metro practically under the Tower, so the full impact of the edifice struck us as we saw it for the first time.

Tour Eiffel

Ilse had never been there, and we both loved the curves and lines, but make no mistake, this is a meccano-like steel structure, and really nothing beautiful! As we used to say, “mooi van ver maar ver van mooi”….

Mooi van ver

I actually love the Eiffel Tower, for we have a unique set of brass candlesticks in the form of the Eiffel Tower which we inherited from Rudolf’s mother. Her parents had bought them at the Universal Exhibition (World Fair) in Paris in 1889, so we have had the Eiffel Tower on our table for 37 years.

Under the Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower was erected in Paris alongside the Seine in 1888-9 for this very Exposition Universelle, marking the centenary celebration of the French Revolution. There were MANY people in the arts community who were vitriolic in their opposition to the Tower. They slated it in the press. Guy de Maupassant dined in the restaurant on the Tower every day. When asked why, he said it is the only place in Paris from where you cannot see the miserable Tower! It had permission to stay put for 20 years, after which it would become the property of the city council. Council originally intended to dismantle it, but decided to keep it for practical reasons: radio mast in times of war, and certainly now for the annual tourist revenue! It is the most visited paid monument in the world.

Peace memorial

At the end of the Champ de Mars, the long lawn on which the tower stands, we found a peace memorial with poles mirrored in the puddles of rain, and all of a sudden there were about a dozen people riding through the puddles with their strange motorised wheelies called Segways. Quite a novel way of seeing the city, if you ask me. But most of these people looked as if they feared falling off any moment! All they could do is concentrate on staying on board and following the one in front of them…

Eiffel at a distance

The last thing up our sleeve was the Musee de Cluny or the Musee National du Moyen Age, just down the street from our hotel. We took the metro back, and were intrigued by the unusual interior of the underground at Cluny-Sorbonne.

Les Oiseaux

It is called Les Oiseaux, and is an artwork in mosaic, consisting of two or three birds in flight and the signatures of dozens of the famous alumni of the Sorbonne.

Alumnus signatures

But first a bite. We had not had any breakfast, so we stopped at a little side street cafe near the metro and had a croque-monsieur and coffee, something very Parisian. They call it Welsh Rarebit on the menu translation, but I beg to differ. The croque-monsieur is made with a thick bechamel sauce, smoked ham and grated Gruyere or Emmental cheese. A slice of bread is spread with white sauce, topped with ham (don’t be snoep!), grated cheese, then another slice of bread, more white sauce, and cheese on top, then baked for about 15 mins @ 200 degrees – grill it right at the end till golden brown. Granted same ingredients as Welsh Rarebit, but just not the same. It originated in 1910  and is still a firm favourite on cafe menus.

Museum of the Middle Ages

Now time for the Cluny museum. It transported us to a feelgood space of warmth and awe, the space of the middle ages. Wood, stone, mail armour, swords and spears, beautiful interiors, gold and ivory jewellery, and then the amazing French tapestries. Besides the many covering the walls of the rooms, there are the famous tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn,  a series of 6 large tapestries, wonderful. Here is a sundial which states

Sundial from 1674

Nil sine nobis – Nothing without us, the sun speaking in the royal we. Well, now the time was there for us to get our cases and leave for Gare du Nord. A last entry into Hotel de la Sorbonne to fetch our baggage, and off we were.

Hotel de la Sorbonne foyer

At Gare du Nord we found ourselves very early, so we settled down for a VERY thirst-quenching beer each.

Beer at Gare du Nord

Ilse walked around to take a few shots of this international station – not at all in the same league as King’s Cross St Pancras, but a large station nonetheless.

Gare du Nord, Paris

After customs and waiting a little while in the international hall, we found our seats on the train, this time to my delight facing the way of travel, and soon we were on our way back home after a truly enjoyable weekend in France.

My take on this experience is that it was such a surprise to me! I found the energy in the French capital so relaxed, but alive. To me it was a total surprise that they have connected the dots in the electronic age that there’s no way you are going to stop people taking sneak photos in the large museums with point and shoots or cellphones, so you might as well give up and allow it. So in the Musee d’Orsay everybody is taking memory shots of all the beautiful Renoirs and Manets and Van Goghs and Toulouse-Lautrecs. Openly and with permission. It is, however, not allowed to bring an SLR on tripod and take photos which could be used to make money. Fair enough. But nowhere else have I encountered such a practical stance. Bully for the French! Vive la France!

Fromagerie

At one spot there was a deli shop where you could buy any kind of bird off a rotisserie, complete with roast potatoes done at the bottom of the roasting machine in the drippings!!

Anyone for roast duck/pheasant/quail?

I learned there that the French are serious enough about fresh coffee that they have bruleries – coffee roasting boutiques, and you smell the roast coffee up the street.

Brulerie, Rue Mouffetard

At the bottom of the street we found a lovely place to eat a late breakfast, La Salle a Manger (the Dining Room). We got a lovely table outside, not too sunny,

La Salle a Manger

and soon we were savouring freshly baked breads, croissants, rolls and even a pain au chocolat (choc croissant). But the jams, man oh man! Indescribable!

Breads, jams & fresh coffee in a bowl

Strawberry jam, lime marmalade (my favourite, best in the world!), white chocolate vanilla spread (white nutella) and mimosa honey. They even provided a choice between salted and unsalted butter! Gosh, how can anyone rave so much about a mere Continental Breakfast??!! We congratulated ourselves the whole time on being so blessed with good happenstances! Across the road was a vegetable hawker who called out his specials on local cherries non-stop,

Market scene

while behind him the church bell pealed every halfhour. Local housewives hurried past with wheelie baskets filling up with fresh produce for the weekend, children wobbled past on their scooters, and the whole lively scene charmed us no end.

Market day

Now we wanted to go and see Palais Royal and the Louvre – not the inside of the museum, just the outside. The glass pyramids weren’t there yet in 1970.

Palais Royal with pyramids

Yes, it is awe-inspiring to see an old building and a modern edifice married so successfully! And I just love this B&W photo that Ilse took! Here is my try:

Louvre

As we moved further and further from this busy square, no doubt as busy as this through the Da Vinci Code book and movie, and the fact that it was a few days before the next movie would be released, we got a better view of the grand palace which now houses France’s best and oldest art treasures.

Louvre precinct

This took us to another beautiful grand park of  Paris, the Jardin des Tuileries, past the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel, a smaller version of the real Arc de Triomphe down the road. Then left over the bridge to the side of the Tuileries, to the Musee d’Orsay, the art museum we chose to peruse on this visit. It is the museum where Paris’s art treasures dating from 1848 to 1950 are housed, including the Impressionists, probably the biggest draw card for us!

Musee d'Orsay

The museum is an old station building from 1900, expertly restored and converted into a worldclass art gallery between 1980 and 1986. What a beautiful space this is!

Station Clock

We absolutely loved this outing. Ilse studied art, and she learned all about these painters at school. She told me how whe had been to Paris in Std. 9 with the Andersons, and how she had wanted to see this museum. None of the Andersons were remotely interested, so Oom Geoff took her to Musee d’Orsay and left her there with 2 hours to browse. This time, however, we had time, and we decided to see only the Impressionists (from early to late). Early on we saw Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, then on through many rooms filled with works of all the Impressionists, and we ended with Monet’s Dejeuner, an attention-grabbing juxtaposition of a huge square canvas and a tall oblong one forming a whole. By this time our energy was flagging a bit, so we went to the museum restaurant to get revived. It is on the top floor of the building right behind the clock, with a fantastic view over the Paris skyline.

Sacre Coeur on the hill

After quiche and salad we could take up another challenge, this time to Sacre Coeur and Montmartre.

Sacre Coeur

We got there by metro. The metro entrance at Abbesses is the oldest in Paris – it still sports the original art nouveau sign.

Abbesses metro entrance

Just here we found something you don’t read about in the guide books: an authentic Art Nouveau church.

Art Nouveau

Neither of us can remember what its name was, but we do remember how intrigued we were.

Art Nouveau church

Somehow I had gotten my memories crossed. I had the idea of an artist colony in Montmartre, a bohemian area around the hill on which the strange white church stands. But this turned out to be a seedy area, not at all nice to browse in, moreover it was raining and not at all pleasant to trudge up the hill. We got to the church after a hefty climb. It is a spacious and interesting church. A service was in full swing, so we didn’t stay. As we started the descent it started raining hard and we had to find shelter. After the downpour we looked at life going on around the carousel.

Merry-go-round in the rain

As we wondered how we would survive this seedy area, we stumbled on a street of fabric shops.

Fabric shops

What the heck, let’s go in, we said. Our mouths fell open, and we struggled to close them again! Here were the most amazing fabrics in cottons and linens and voiles, other natural fabrics, and such an array of beautiful materials you have never seen!! Upholstering fabrics galore, the one more beautiful than the next! This was the last cherry on a full and enjoyable day.Now we were cold and wet and tired, so the idea of going back to l’Ecritoire Restaurant for a small supper was very inviting. It was such a nice place we didn’t even want to try something new! Ilse had Soupe a l’Oignon again, and I had a dish with duck – very good! And the hotel 2 steps away was of course the best of the deal…

Two happy wanderers

Rental bicycles

Now that we could breathe freely again after the stuffed air of Notre Dame, stuffed probably through my inability to deal well with throngs of people, we saw on the square in front of the cathedral a HUGE marquee placarded La Fete du Pain. And in spite of another prospect of throngs, we entered to see what this was about. Very interesting!

Bakers at the Bread Festival

There were dozens of chefs from every conceivable patisserie or restaurant in the city strutting their stuff, demonstrating and baking every kind of breadstuff the French make.

Bread for the French

Then we saw croissants being made, and you could see these bakers could do this in their sleep, it’s everyday stuff…

Croissant factory

Out en plein air again we glanced back at the Notre Dame, but we were still going to see it for awhile…

Front view Notre Dame

Across the River Seine by bridge we came back towards the famous landmark, and there right on the opposite bank is the quaint oldeworlde little shop Shakespeare and Company that Ilse knew about and wanted to go and show me.

Shakespeare and Co

A real antiquarian treat this is! Stacked up to the ceiling with English books, and full of browsers, a piano in one corner, played on by the occasional pianist booklover,

Books to the ceiling

a crooked creaking staircase that leads to more of the same, a wonderful view from the 1st floor window, a little cubicle with a typewriter, creating a little writer’s museum, and so on.

Writer's museum

There are two shops cheek by jowl, and the next one is just as quaint, the one with Shakespeariana or literary collector’s items.

Antiquarian next door

Just behind this jewel we found a church with a lovely leafy garden, St Julien le Pauvre (Saint Julian the Poor).

St Julien le Pauvre

There were quite a few people lounging about in the garden so I sat down there as well – the green of spring is so very soothing!

Resting in the garden of St Julien le Pauvre

We could still the bulky figure of Notre Dame towering into the skyline..

Notre Dame

Down the lane we found the Church of St Severin, not anything outstanding

Eglise de St Severin

inside as far as I’m concerned, but on the outside really outstanding gargoyles!

Gargoyles with attitude

Now  we walked into cinema land, and they looked like retro moviehouses.

Retro entertainment

Which reminds me that Paris is full of corners looking like cake slices, something so inimitably Paris!

Paris cake slice buildings

Paris city doors have a charm of their own - many remind of the French golden age of Louis XIV and Napoleon III – and they act as a street facade which belies the sometimes spacious and beautifully landscaped courtyard behind it. When a door like that opens and you get a glimpse inside, you could easily be stunned speechless.

Gateway to paradise

By this time our feet were telling us the day has been long. We still had a lot of daylight hours left, and so we wandered along to the Jardin du Luxembourg, one of the great parks which Haussmann, the 19th C city planner created in the city of Paris.

Jardin du Luxembourg

This is one of the Paris spaces I remember best from my stay here in 1970. I used to come to the city by metro every weekday from Sceaux to Luxembourg, cross through Jardin du Luxembourg to Boulevard Raspail and go for my lessons at the Alliance Francaise. And back the same way. There have always been people sailing toy boats on the pond, and there have always been children feeding the ducks.

Some scenes never change..

The ducks have always had a nest in a little wooden house in the middle of the pond. Strange how some things never change!

Now we were ready for a nice meal, and we were thinking along typical French cuisine lines. At a wonderful street cafe on Place de la Sorbonne, l’Ecritoire,

L'Ecritoire

we sat in the riches of a wonderfully evocative ambience and had Soupe a l’Oignon, or as the menu stated, Gratinee a l’Oignon, with a glass of red wine.

Cafe interior

At the end of that we knew this was the end to a fabulous day in Paris! We repaired around the corner to our hotel, had a WONDERFUL shower,

Sorbonne shower

and struck the bed, dead.

Jardin du Luxembourg

One of the things Ilse and I have in common is a love of well-made things, whether they reside in the domain of food or interiors or jewellery, makes no difference. Another common passion of ours is our love of languages. And both of these were fed amply by this uncategorisable but lovable city, Paris.

At 07.00 we left home to get to “King’s Cross St Pancras International” – what a mouthful! – with time to spare. Ruislip is situated very well for this trip, for we didn’t have to switch tubes. Ilse told me that King’s Cross has been revamped in style in the past months, and what a fantastic result! Both of us are fascinated by good architecture, and we couldn’t stop taking pictures in the interior of this huge station building.

King's Cross St Pancras International

We got ourselves a snack for the train before we started our journey of around two and a half hours, stood in the queue for customs, found the train

Ultramodern station

and there we went. The Chunnel took 25 minutes to cross through. I tried to read en route, but the cushioned, gentle swaying of the Eurostar soon had me fast asleep, and I woke up when we emerged in France. It is totally impossible to try and take photos out of a train moving so fast through countryside where the railway verges are mostly planted with shrubs and trees to minimise train noise in the occasional villages, so it must suffice to say it is very much the same as the English countryside, flat, lush, all the shades of green with every now and then a shocking yellow canola field, dotted with painterly, picturesque villages. It made me think I would really like to explore the French countryside. Ilse told one of her French colleagues she was going to Paris for the weekend, and he said “Oh, but remember, Paris is not France.” And she countered that the Parisians probably maintain ONLY Paris is France…

Soon we arrived at Paris Gare du Nord and the adventure began. First of all to Hotel de la Sorbonne, where we were booked for 2 nights. The Paris tube is called the metro, short for metropolitain, and I couldn’t help thinking this oldfashioned tube, not renovated in ages, made me feel as if I was in a war movie.

Le Metro

Ilse was the perfect tour leader who found the right train in the right direction, and in minutes we were out on Boulevard St Germain, around the corner from our hotel. It was raining lightly. The ruins of Musee de Cluny or Musee National du Moyen Age (Middle Ages Museum) bordering on Place de la Sorbonne became our landmark.

Place de la Sorbonne

At the hotel we could not yet go to our room, so we left the luggage and went to the Pantheon in the rain. We paid our dues and entered this famous Paris landmark. Through the ages it has been alternately a religious and a secular space.

Pantheon

It was one of the highlights of our trip! We joined the guided tour and had the opportunity to climb to the very top balcony under the cupola. On every level there were breathtaking views, inside and out.

Pantheon beauty

Pity it was so rainy – the views were never really worth while the whole weekend.

Misty view

I remembered how fascinated I’d been as a young girl in Paris by the typical architecture: three or four floors of “white” building, then a black roof which is one or two garret floors, and rows of terracotta chimneys on each roof.

Inner city living quarters

The wind was quite unpleasant, but we still managed a lovely smile!

Ilse Hoberman, Pantheon, Paris

Inside we went to look for the famous Foucault pendulum. As we didn’t rent an audioguide, I still have no idea what this is about, but here we saw the thing in the flesh:

Foucault's pendulum

From the very top of the dome a 28 kg brass ball called a bob hangs by a 67 m steel cable, and put into motion it swings across the circle over which it hangs. Richard has just announced to me that Foucault installed it there in 1851 to demonstrate the rotation of the earth. The plane of the pendulum’s swing rotates clockwise 11° per hour, making a full circle in 32.7 hours.

Foucault feline

Next to the circle there is a black cat – what for, I don’t know. Now we went back to the hotel to check in – we got room 13, but on the door it said

Superstitious?

We loved this lovely little hotel in the heart of Paris! Fabulous beds,

Hotel de la Sorbonne room 12B

designer bathroom, Apple Mac computer, aircon, but one problem: we couldn’t figure out how to switch on the lights! I fetched the chambermaid, who took the keycard out of my hand, opened the cupboard and inserted it in a slot, and voila! there was light!

Switching on the lights

After a little rest we decided it’s time for the treat of a lifetime: down to Ile St Louis to Berthillon for a chocolat chaud (hot chocolate). We loved Ile St Louis!

Ile St Louis

Quaint little alleyways, lovely houses, flowers in boxes, boutique shops, and the inimitable Berthillon.

Berthillon

As we approached, we saw lots of people eating ice cream in cones – dark pink and red ice cream! But it looked awfully tasty.

Berthillon ice cream

We ordered chocolat chaud and tarte tatin to share  – oh my word! Heaven! Tarte tatin is an apple upside down cake – yummy yummy yummy! The hot chocolate came separately: cup, jug with foaming milk, little jug full to the brim with fluid chocolate, so you made your own concoction. I definitely want to try and make the tarte tatin at home. I shall never forget this delicious cake…

Chocolat chaud and tarte tatin

Now we wanted to move towards Ile de la Cite’ with the Notre Dame Cathedral on it.

Notre Dame on Ile de la Cite'

Spent a lovely halfhour wandering through Ile St Louis.. (These are the 2 islands in the river Seine). When we reached the cathedral, we found out the tower costs you and entry into the cathedral is free, but WOW!! What a throng of people! It felt like total sacrilege that so many noisy tourists were marching up and down the church.

Notre Dame rose window

Ilse and I walked to the rose windows, looked up and down and maak dat ons wegkom!

To be continued…

Puglia 1957 by Giacomelli

In this photograph everybody is half out of the picture, and what is IN the picture is NOTHING! The gallery girl said this picture drew the most attention from everyone. Mario Giacomelli was a self-taught photographer who said: “Photography is not difficult, as long as you have something to say.” Once he was given a new camera with an exposure meter, but threw it away in favour of his simple point-and-shoot model. This rawness of approach is a key characteristic of his work, and his obliviousness to accepted dark-room practices resulted in the creation of works which were completely unique in style. He left school at 13 to work as a jobbing printer and later typographer, and only after the war did he fully embrace photography to be an expression of his poetic nature. I found one of his poems on his website: 

Se vivessi almeno un giorno,            If I lived at least one day,                              

Se potessi vivere.                                   if I was able to live.

Se io vivo,                                                  If I live,

non sapro’ mai se era vero                  I’ll never know whether it was true.

Chiudero’ gli occhi                                 I shall close my eyes

e mi vedranno morire                          and they will see me die.

non ci sara’ ne’ prima ne’ dopo,        There will be neither before nor after

Lascero’ la mia porzione                     I shall leave my portion

in un chiuso giardino di sogni          in a closed garden of dreams

e in tutti i posti                                       and in all the places,

in tutte le vie.                                          on all the roads.

Staranno a raccontare                         They will be telling

in rovescio della mia vita                   the reverse side of my life

dove muore la morte                           where death dies

…                                                                  …

non sapranno mai se era vero.        They will never know whether it was real.

MARIO GIACOMELLI

Puglia 1957

Do go and google him!

I am ashamed to confess that despite having read the story to my children when they were little, and despite loving Grieg’s incidental music to the play, I didn’t know the story from a bar of soap! Henrik Ibsen wrote the verse drama in 1867 while he was on holiday on the sunny island of Ischia. It was not intended to be a theatre piece, it was intended to be read to be really appreciated. It is the story of Peer Gynt, a Norwegian boy growing up without his father, because the man had squandered his inherited fortune and left as a wandering salesman. Die appel val nie ver van die boom nie. Peer is the personification of narcissism and egotism, a daydreamer and liar, irresponsible and self-centered, making his mother sigh and weep about him. The play portrays Peer’s life from his teenage years right up to death in old age, evading everything we expect of him and want from him and living in a fantasy world of grandiose schemes for fame and good fortune, and we are privy to the vicissitudes of his psyche in scenes like amongst the trolls in the hall of the Mountain King, the Green Girl and the Button Moulder man. This play, staged by the National Theatre of Scotland and the Dundee Rep Ensemble, moves seamlessly between reality and irreality, between continents and time-frames, thus throwing us around to make sense of the whole. Colin Teevan, who adapted the play, asked himself who Peer would be if he lived today, what his dreams and longings would be, his weaknesses, his illusions of grandeur and celebrity, in order to recontextualise the play so that a modern audience could “experience the radical force of Ibsen’s vision in the present, not preserved in Nordic aspic”. He certainly succeeded in presenting the nightmare of a life Ibsen conceived of! The drinking and swearing in the first half really makes you wish Peer would grow up…

Peer tells his mother Aase of the fantastic hunt he was party to

We all agreed that the play could have been shortened radically and still have had the same impact. That would have strengthened it tremendously. It was probably so long because Ibsen’s reworked piece for theatre production was also this long. Ibsen didn’t cut scenes from the original, he merely shortened every scene by a few lines…. It is practically never performed because it is so difficult to stage. In the 1980 play ‘Educating Rita’, the protagonist formulates the challenge when asked to write an essay on the staging difficulties of Peer Gynt by replying: “Put it on the radio.”

Of the entire Grieg suite on Peer Gynt I love Solveig’s Song the best. To me she is the portrayal of the true self, always there, waiting in the wings for illusion to evaporate, and it never happens. It is probably so for each human being, forever longing to be united with truth, embraced by truth, but at the same time forever evading it with a religious fervour, running up mountains and over continents to escape facing it.

Greatly appreciated, Richard and Ilse! I LOVE theatre!

Hotel San Clemente

This is a private island, for the whole island is a five star hotel, San Clemente, refurbished out of a former monastery.

Map of the island

The meeting point for the (free) motor boat taxi is right next to the vaporetto stop San Marco Giardino.

Shuttle route to San Clemente

It leaves every 20 mins. Birgit and I met there and soon we were cleaving the waters,

Leaving San Marco

first through the channel between Giudecca and the island of San Giorgio, then past a deserted tree-studded island Le Grazie (which we were told is now in private hands and nobody knows what is going to happen to it), and then over a stretch of water to San Clemente.

Approaching San Clemente

As we passed by Giudecca, we saw the sea face of the Cipriani, Venice’s most luxurious hotel, right next to the water garages of the Police and the Finance police.

Passing Isola delle Grazie

Karin and Ryan got engaged on San Clemente, and after their wedding in the Cape they went there again on honeymoon. They told me I must go and see for myself how amazing the place is! Both Birgit and I were SO pleased that I had left this outing till the very last and that we could spend our last afternoon there. The operative word is tranquility.

Lookout point near the landing jetty

We walked around and surveyed the plush details of the hotel inside. One passage is so long, you can’t see the end of it!

Long passage

From the entrance hall you look through a series of doorways to the bar.

Doors within doors

The sumptuous staircase takes your breath away.

Stairway

Then we went to see the little church, dedicated to St Clement.

Chiesa di San Clemente

The first impression is ‘What a pity!’ – it is derelict, empty and broken down, but then you begin to see that most of it is still intact and just needs loving care.

Church needs to be restored

It seems to me they might restore the little chapel and use it for weddings. That would bring them a lot of good business!

Remains of the altar

Then we sat down on the sunny Riva by the jetty and ordered a spritz.

Sundowners on the Riva

Birgit chose the Spritz Aperol and I had the Spritz al Bitter (Campari). We got fabulous snacks with it, served in glass on a silver carrier,

Spritz with snacks

paid through the nose (one spritz costs 9 Eur), but that was cheap if you consider what we got for it! The privilege of sitting in such a beautiful setting,

Style in tranquility

looking out over the sea, the breeze lightly touching our faces, the silence and calm washing over us,

Sapphire peace

the rabble and din of Venice quickly a distant memory, as distant as the view over to San Marco…

Landmarks: Redentore, Sant'Agnese, leaning tower Santo Stefano, Salute, Campanile, S Giorgio dei Greci

and the free transport, no mess, no fuss, to and from this dream destination. A team of oarsmen on a regatta boat came to practise in front of us.

Oarsmen practising

For the rest we could just relax and enjoy. At one stage we saw a monster cruiser crossing between Venice and Giudecca and take off to sea, and we wondered how anyone could like that!

Cruiser leaving the lagoon

After a stroll around the grounds, past the swimming pool, the tennis courts and the golfing green, we returned to the taxi and went home totally exhilarated. Everybody envied us when they heard how we had spent our last afternoon….

Now: On Thursday afternoon after writing Last Post in Venice, I walked to Piazza San Marco,

The famous horses of San Marco

took more photographs of the olde worlde restaurants and the people there,

Caffe' Florian

and seeing that it was a brilliant, beautiful day,

The pigeon is the undisputed king of San Marco

just the whole piazza and its sights and sounds.

Enjoying the oldeworlde charm

I heard sounds of clapping and cheering, and as I rounded the corner, I saw a huge podium with a row of sportsmen dressed up as skeletons – couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about.

Giro d'Italia kickoff

Then I realised it was the inauguration of the 100th Giro d’Italia! They have it on different routes every year, and for this festive event it kicks off in Venice and will end in Rome. On Saturday they rode sprints up and down the Lido, on Sunday a route around Trieste, and then off on the way to Rome.

Giro ad on Piazzale Roma

Now I had to move it, because I had a date to go to San Clemente with Birgit.