Hot girl summer begins. Athens.

I arrive outside of Venice and stay near the airport, meeting up with the adopted one and enjoying and Asian meal (there is no Asian restaurants in Auronzo) Then we are off to Athens!

Have to admit Aegean Air was very quick, whilst we’d heard of issues in England and Germany with flights being cancelled, here there weren’t even queues. We arrived in the Athens heat and were whisked off to our hotel. We lunched at a colourful Mexican place and later we looked in the churches. I love Greek churches. They’re tiny, ancient, hidden away between all the new buildings and full of paintings of saints in frames of the most beautifully worked silver with celestial curved and painted ceilings. The candles are handmade and perfumed with myrrh and frankincense and you leave some money and light them for many reasons. I light them for those who aren’t with us any more.

I spy an unusual cafe and bar across from our hotel and have my first Greek coffee for the day. It’s expensive after Italy when there would be an uprising is coffee was this expensive (same price as Australia). Cafe Tazza is crazily beautiful. It looks like an old house from the 1930’s. I can imagine visiting a Greek Aunt here, who has been collecting tasselled, embroidered lights, velvet seats and gilded everything and sitting down to a coffee with her and a chat. The waitress tells me to go the bathroom just to looks and so I wander through two other rooms that are set up like dining rooms and go downstairs to another room of curiosities for some selfies.

We met our girls for drinks that night in a very cool bar and then dined in one of the oldest tavernas in Athens. The food was wonderful. We had zucchini fritters, Greek salad with slabs of fetta, oregano and capers and that quintessential but elusive Greek vegetable, Horta. When you ask Greeks in Australia if they have seeds they say they have but somehow they never appear. When you look it up it says it’s dandelion but it’s nothing like it. They serve it boiled with lemon and olive oil and it’s wonderful. On the way home, we pass a square lit by the fading sun and there’s the Acropolis hill, the Parthenon turning pink as we watch.

We go the Agora the next morning. The heat is palpable, even early in the day. We wander through the fields, ruins all around us, ancient statues, crickets in full chorus, our sandalled feet covered in dust. I feel like an ancient Greek, toga clad, walking and discussing philosophy. There is such a small gap when you walk here, from past to present that you can feel them merging.

We lunch and dine on such wonderful seasonal foods. Tomato fritters, zucchini and feta ones. Big plates of the horta, oiled, salty and with a squeeze of lemon. The bread is rustic and at the end of the meal they bring us big triangles of the pinkest, sweetest watermelon when you ask for the check.

They build around the tiny churches here, they look incongruous in the porticoes of modern hotels but inside they tell their story and keep their beauty. Old ladies tend them, growing pots of basil outside. Sitting inside as us tourists gaze at the silver encased icons, as we light the beautiful thin candles and place them in the big bronze bowls of sand, for our loved ones who’ve departed.

After I find an amazing shop of weird and wonderful jewellery and crafts, many of them nautical based that an old man who has the look of a sailor, produces. And I buy beautiful little ancient boat earrings in wood and bronze. And then we move from our hotel for just the two of us, the adopted one and I, to another place to meet up with the daughter and her partner. We find the place and I wonder what I’ve done. There is street art everywhere, it looks totally derelict but the daughter said it’s close to a lot of things so we leave our bags in our shared room that looks like a hostel when we open our bags everywhere and head off to see where we are exactly. And she’s right. There are cute cafes, boutique shops and interesting restaurants abound. Athens reminds me of Thailand, slightly dilapidated, it gives post WW11 like Naples. Many of the buildings would have been destroyed. There are empty sites or dilapidated ones that haven’t been touched, the domain of the cats. They’re starting to put tourist accommodation in the quite ugly modern apartment buildings and they’re beautiful inside. But it’s a shock to realise you still have to put the toilet paper into a bin in the bathroom and although you can drink the water in Athens, you can’t on the islands. But certainly the pandemic has bred a range of beautiful cafes and bars and the craft and art is still stunning.

The heat is exhausting though, walking out the door after a shower, you are warmed to a sweat instantly. We decide to go to a beach not far from Athens (well a rocky bay really) but it’s welcome to our hot bodies. The water is just below warm. We eat at a taverna on the cliff, admiring the azure blue of the sea.

That night we chose a Mexican restaurant and have chilli margheritas. This place is again so eccentric and wonderful, colourful and alluring. The waitress is giving Frida Kahlo vibes with her headband of roses. The toilets are also worth a visit. Then on the way back home, we discover the crazy Little Kook cafe and bar, done out with an Alice in Wonderland theme. This is over the top and even though we feel we should venture in, it’s a bit too much.

I wander the next day and find the antique streets, full of wonderful antiques that I long to buy but can’t afford and can’t carry back with me. From there I head towards Monastriaki to more interesting shops with fantastical jewellery and beautiful churches near the ancient Library of Hadrian.

That afternoon we meet at another wonderful bar, Juan Rodriguez, done up like someone’s house and then off to another taverna for fried Saganaki with chilli and honey, smoky eggplant salad and free at the end, thick Greek yoghurt with caramelised grated carrots on top. And then our time in Athens is done. Tomorrow we’re on the road to the islands.

Back home - Auronzo.

I’m back home. Strange how this has become that place - home. Wherever you lay your hat, that’s home is truer than you think. My hat is literally hanging on a hook as I walk in the door. The girls are there, I feel so strange walking into a Covid hotspot. Do I wear a mask, do I stay away. We gather in the kitchen to decide but what’s the point. What will be, will be. My adopted daughter has arrived with the girls and so far she is covid free. We have hope that we both will escape it.

When I got off the bus and was waiting for the taxi I had organised to take me the last half hour to Auronzo, I noticed the vaccination tent was finally active. I thought I might check re another vaccine as Covid BA….is on the rise again. I asked if they spoke English and the nurse did. He asked my age, state of health, where I came from, how long I’d be here and then asked for my ID. He looked, he typed and I said, is it possible to come back for an appointment and he said, we can do it now. I was shocked but found out later they had just lowered the age to mine so I was in. I had to think it was meant to be. I was nervous but relieved as we were going to Greece in a couple of weeks for a month as I was renting out our apartment to pay the bills here and Greece, being a party place had Covid numbers rising quickly. From being against vaccinations, here I am embracing yet another one.

For some strange reason, I never thought we’d get it, it had been 3 years and we had been in Europe during the first brutal wave but the girls had woken with sore throats and coughs and decided to test and I got a photo of the positive test. We were all in shock. I was coming back from Venice early as the heat and the crowds were getting to me but I decided to stay until the girls had got through the worst of it, especially when they had someone to look after them. And so I arrived vaccinated, knowing that wouldn’t save me that quickly but would help in the long term.

For the first couple of days they were still positive so the adopted one and I shopped and had coffee by the lake and we had aperitivo and good meals at home but then we ventured out to the outdoor tables at the lake for a much needed Negroni. A measure of freedom accorded as after 7 days in Italy, if vaccinated, you’re allowed out and about.

The girls walked up into the hills away from the madding crowds and gathered tiny wild raspberries and formed relationship with the mountain cows, horned and with bells around their necks. Whilst the adopted one and I shopped and walked back through the wild flower meadows. When we were at the lake the day before, the girls saw a couple of people dive into the now filled lake. We’ve never seen anyone swim here before as it’s freezing cold waters are fed from the melting snows high up. Then we decided to try it ourselves and so we waited till the hottest part of the day and made our way to where it wasn’t so deep so that we could slowly immerse ourselves. It was so cold that my back and thighs felt pain but the girls went fully in and so I had to do the same. I managed 30 seconds, counting quickly and emerged suddenly warmed. It was like a baptism of ice and we felt strangely energised and alert. Of course, we said we’d never do it again but the next day, we returned.

And then the girls left. They were headed to Venice for a day and then off to Utrecht. The house was mine alone. I wanted to do paintings for the empty walls where I had taken down all the strange paintings. So everyday I would walk to the lake for my coffee or an affogato and trying out my Italian with a lovely waitress who had no English. And then buy my food daily (so much less waste if you have the time like I had, and even working Italians buy daily but then shops are always close by) and paint the afternoons away. There is a beautiful oil painting of the village from the 40's that I love in one of the apartments, I decide to copy it in watercolour, the result of which is the painting at the top of the post.

Towards the end I started to clean the apartment for the tenants who come for August. I can’t believe how many people are here now, the streets crowded, people spilling out of cafes, music at night in the main squares. It is transformed from a quiet country town to full on crowds, walking by the lake and spending money in the tourist shops. On Sunday I went down to the lake in the afternoon for a Hugo spritz which is prosecco and elderflower syrup and there was a band! I spend time framing my paintings in weird old frames that I found here and hanging them. I am well pleased with the transformation of our apartment.

The next day I meet up with some of my late husband's cousins up in the mountains where his grandfather had built a cow shed where he would take the cows during the spring. It has now been converted into a lovely home. We lunch on prosciutto, gnocchi and sage butter and for dessert we eat the wonderfully sweet flat peaches.

By Thursday when I left, the apartment was spic and span, as I know Italians are cleaning maniacs. I eat out the last night so I don’t mess up the kitchen. A last pizza overlooking the lake. I wonder as I leave the next morning, what it’ll be like when I arrive back. This place changes so much from week to week. I’ll miss the storms that echo through the valley, the rainbows and lightning and fast and furious rain and then the sun appearing again.

Back to my second home - Venice.

Back home in the height of summer. The town has transformed into a tourist mecca. People crowd the streets, the cafes have moved their tables onto the sidewalks, the mountain walks are full with people and their dogs. There are concerts in the piazza, music on the weekends at the cafes. I can’t believe it.

I meet up with a woman I met at the station in Mestre near Venice, she’s 82 and her husband and her little dog had both died not long before I met her three years ago and she has a house in Auronzo. She and her sister are here for a holiday and we meet up at the bar by the lake. Her sister smokes a pipe, having given up cigarettes years ago but still likes to smoke occasionally. Every now and then she starts talking to me and her sister in Italian and I get totally lost and then she remembers. I saw goodbye until we meet again.

I've got a few days on my own and so I decide to paint some pictures for the walls that I stripped of the weird paintings that were displayed there. The weather is beautiful, the windows wide open to a soft breeze. This is becoming home.

So I’ve arrived in Venice for a solo trip, to study my late husband’s ancestor, Titian. But I have chosen a place so far out of the centre that I feel I’m in another world. I booked an Air BNB and have never had much luck with them. This place was so weird that I thought it could work for me. Finally getting there I’m taken up two flights of tiny stairs with strange paintings and sculptures everywhere and then I’m in my room. From the photos it looked authentically Venetian but now I’m here I realise that the columns, the ornate fireplace, the frescoes and cherubs on the roof - all fake. Mostly plastic and if not, modern, made to look old. Run by a man, and a long way from anything. I’d walk in the morning into the centre and be dripping wet with sweat and then upon return, I’d stay in my room until dinner.

This was the biennale side, big wide empty streets and decaying empty buildings and then suddenly the odd apartment with washing strung along zig zagged lines across to the other buildings. This, I was told, is where the remaining Venetians live. The rest having been forced out by tourism, by people buying up properties for holiday rentals. I saw so few Venetians in the centre this time and only early in the morning with their dogs, beautifully dressed, getting out before the tourist hordes took over. There was such a change since last time I was here, just before the pandemic when all the shops were open and there were beautiful galleries and glass shops and now, so many shuttered and closed.

I found a restaurant and walked to it and discovered Venice with trees! A whole avenue of them leading into a big open parkland on the water, filled with kids, dogs and Italians. I ate the famous fried fish with polenta and a big bowl of the buttered spinach that the Italians and I are so fond of. I saw a couple of guys, one Asian, one maybe German having dinner there and the next night they were at the same restaurant as I was, closer to where I lived. We obviously looked on the Google Map review and made our way through it.

The next day I went early into the centre to look for places where Titian and his gossip friend Aretino hung out around but the heat did me in. I walked till I could walk no more and found a Cichetti bar. It was 11.30 and I ordered a Spritz as I saw another Italian drinking one and they had the best little snacks. I felt very grown up, drinking an early Spritz and eating my cichetti and then I had a pistachio and amaretto gelato in a cone cup - no waste!

Then I headed back to my out of the way accommodation and that night found a great restaurant close by where I had honeyed duck and vegetables. It was so good that I went back the next night and had the guinea fowl and duck lasagna, again, excellent. There I met two Australian girls but I wasn’t sure because when you hear accents in a noisy place, the sounds distort and you’re never quite sure. They were trying to make a decision and I told them how good my duck had been the night before and then we worked out we were all from Sydney, although they thought I was British. It was strangely good to talk to Aussies, about the rain, about why they were here (the Biennale as they both worked in art institutions and they were here for work.

Then home for me but the nights were long and so hot and humid. I had a fan and after ten I would open the windows for a breeze that never came. Even the fan just flicked around the hot air. I would lie looking at the ceilings that I knew now were newly painted, especially what I thought was Leda and the Swan until I looked closely and Leda was a man -Zeus, in the guise of a swan, coming in from behind. The next day, the only other tenant moved out and the other three rooms were open and they were all different, with queer art and photography everywhere. I reread the reviews and realised I’d stumbled on a queer hotel. One of the people I was researching was supposedly bisexual so maybe I was in the right place.

But the heat and the distance into the centre got me and I looked for a place in the centre and maybe because it was last minute but I got a cheap hotel on a canal in the centre! Halleluja! It was lovely and I settled in there for the last two days.

It was where the gondoliers hung out and close to the Libreria Acqua Alta, a beautiful bookshop by the canal. A beautiful last 2 days in the heart of Venice.