Day 14 – Monday August 23rd

We woke up around 8:00 and had breakfast, I had a croissant, I had a roll with brie, hard boiled egg and smoked meat, and orange juice. We left our hotel in Dorsoduro and headed east to Piazza San Marco.
We spent the day looking around and then walked along the waterfront to Harry’s Bar and got a world famous Bellini aperitif where Ernest Hemmingway used to hang out. It was opened in 1931 by Arrigo Cipriani but named after an American who funded the enterprise.From there we walked in a North and then Westerly walk to Cannaregio into the Jewish Ghetto. The word ghetto originated in Venice, derived fro getto (casting) due to an old iron foundry here. In 1942 many jewish refugees reached Venice after expulsion form spain and in 1527 were obliged by law to move to this landlocked island. Subject to curfew to prevent fraternizing with local women, they slept behind locked gates, their island circles by an armed patrol boat. Today 33 jews still live there, while 450 reside in other parts of the city. In the ghetto Denise and I split the Ghetto panini, just grilled vegetables. It was alright, but the LemonSoda we had was great.
After lunch we walked west and looped around south past the train station and back to our hotel. We then walked south of our hotel to Santa Croce area. The are is a peninsula like area on the south side of Venice. We walked out east and stopped at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Its home to more than 200 works of art focusing on the avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Futurism, and Surrealism. The museum is set up somewhat in her old house and throughout the show you can see photos of her living in her house with the various art pieces in her different rooms. Outside in her sculpture garden is a wishing tree where people have attached wishes to the tree, gifted by Yoko Ono.
The gallery was strange, there is a whole segment on her daughter’s art and a story of an untimely death yet you don’t know it’s her daughter until your done and read it in the café afterward. The whole thing was very un-cohesive to a degree but she had works by Chagall and Picasso and Marini and Klee. After the museum, we rounded out eastward to the tip of the area and circled back and up northwesterly towards are hotel. We ate pizza at a recommended pizzeria called Pizzeria ai Sporivia. We got Proscuito pizza with mushrooms and artichoke and a spinach and ricotta and onion pizza. They were good, but by no means life changing, and a bit thicker. We tried to go the a geloteria down the street known for having a specific dessert but they now longer had it. After having had quite a bit of wine, we walked home and went to bed.