Ca' Rezzonico

Today was the day of palazzos so we took the vaporetto down to Accademia and walked back to the Guggenheim to be there when it opened. It's a simple design, one floor palazzo, very different from it's neighbors but I found out that's because the people who built it a few centuries back ran out of money so put a roof on and called it done. Peggy Guggenheim lived there for years and threw pretty amazing parties throughout the house, the front piazza, and the back gardens where she and her 15 Llasa Apsos were eventually buried. The art collection was narrow, mostly concentrating on 30's and 40's icons of the day. I most liked the small photos of Peggy in the rooms and displaying the art as she lived with it.
NTS: Get a Guggenheim bio.
Next we trotted back to Ca' Rezzonico, a grand recently restored palazzo where Robert Browning died (his son Pen was the owner at that time- there are plaques all over the place that 'Robert Browning lived here'!) The place contains amazing collections of renaissance paintings, it seemed, arranged chronologically as well as subject- so you would enter a whole room full of one particular saint doing his saintly thing in all sorts of variation.

Took the vaporetto to the end, got out and found one going the other way and rode the whole way back. Pictures, I got pictures! Here is an eggplant floating in the Grand Canal- bet you didn't expect that.




There was just no end to scenic here! I found myself taking pictures of all the different poles as we went by so there are lots more where these came from.

At night we had found a Vivaldi concert in period costumes and with 200 year old instruments and bought highly overpriced tickets to a concert that was OK, certainly not great. How bad was it??? Well, even I could pick out the skipped and missed notes! Had dinner in San Angelo at Aqua Pazzo that friends had recommended, a short distance to the hall. (I had simple pasta with fresh tomatoes, Ralph ate squid and anchovies in copious amounts) We found out that there were Vivaldi concerts in just about every open building just about every night! The great thing about this concert was that it was short and we could walk from the Rialto area back to San Marco by moonlight listening to just clicking footsteps and sloshing water.

An aside about the bathrooms: They didn't charge for the use, but to use the WC you had to queue up on a stairwell- seemed they only had two toilets and someone must have been taking a friggin shower in them because it took forever. But this was the first time I didn't have to pay-to-pee!