Venice - Biennale.

We are going on a Xmas market trail beginning in Venice. We stay in a cute cheap hotel in a back street. I go for a wander and it’s pretty quiet tourist wise, except of course for me. The waters are still, the reflections almost perfect and the Biennale is hidden in old palazzos everywhere. I find an old pharmacy that is now a perfumery.

And then we head to an exhibition in another palazzo - From Palestine with Art but with so many different art styles and nationalities. But the palace itself is so beautiful, I don’t know where to look. The ceiling paintings, the beautiful old beams in the attic spaces filled with art. Wonderful.

We eat at a Venetian institution - Fred and Luca’s, feasting on fried seafood and grilled yellow and white polenta and then we call it a night.

Next morning we take a gondola across to the markets, the one the Venetians use. You can tell the locals, they stand with feet apart whereas the tourists cling to the sides as we cross the busy Grand Canal. . We admire the beauty of the vegetables, coloured cauliflowers abound, the local curly radicchio and tiny to large artichokes, their hearts cut and floating in water, bunches of chillis and delicate see-through scampi.

Then we head out to see more of the Biennale in various locations. One is in a place that used to be a charity building built in 1310 which is now a concert hall and showroom with frescoes and another weird art installation with hundreds of paintings on canvas by school kids in piles about the way they see the world at the moment and again one about bodies in an old church with stars on the roof as if it were the heavens.

That afternoon I head off towards the Accademia bridge to find other free biennale exhibits and accidentally stumble across some amazing ones. In the Palazzo Loredan there’s one called The Abduction of the Seraglio by a Romanian artist and then next door in another part of the Palace there’s an glass exhibition in an old library, the smell of dusty, musty books below ceilings of painted beams and walls frescoed in 3D.

I walk out and see another exhibition in a huge palace across the way and wonder if I have the strength to see another one and an Italian gentleman stops me and says you must go, it is beautiful. And so it is. It’s a music conservatorium now and an art space with ceilings and walls covered in art from the Renaiisance.

Then on my wanderings I see another exhibition at the Campiello Loredan overlooking the Grand Canal. It is sumptuous, elaborately decorated, with a window overlooking a persimmon tree that gives the effect of a tree full of hanging ornaments. There’s an exhibition by the famous painter Man Ray and his muse Lee Miller. .

Outside, I hang around just to observe the Venetians in their winter garb because they are stunning. I find an Aperol bar that just concentrates on that particular Venetian drink , a shop full of beautiful slippers in every colour imaginable, sweet shops full of Xmas specialities and gorgeous bright coloured tins. In the semi darkness of an early dusk, there’s a little hut serving Spritz to passing Italians and the lights in the buildings are flung across the rippling waters of the canals.

That night we eat at an amazing restaurant, a Prosciutteria where we dine on a huge platter of different types of prosciutto and pancetta, on a truffle fondue and cheese served with exquisite orange scented honey. The place was decorated in retro style with beautiful wallpaper and tiled walls, old bedheads and the cutest bathroom with a wine bottle that that you pulled to open the door. What an experience!

My second taste of the biennale was amazing. Venice in the winter is delineated by light, the colours heightened and thrown into relief against it's ancient crumbling walls.

AURONZO.

We return on a Sunday afternoon when all the supermarkets are closed so we decide to go to our favourite bar by the lake as it also is closing until Easter. We walk down under a full

moon to find there’s an end of year party going on with a very noisy but excellent band. Our little town is rocking!

Not only that but there’s a chestnut festival on in another square on Saturday night. Free pizza, cones of hot chestnuts and mulled wine. Just when you think this place has quietened down for the winter.

Each day we wake and look hopefully up at the mountain in front of us for more snow and the days run into each other as we cook up a lot of vegetable dishes and try to ignore what’s going on, going down, going to ruin in this incredible world of ours. Hard to accept that we have so quickly destroyed it in such a short amount of time and that wars are still happening when there should be peace.

But we walk around the river on dusk one night as the mist layers across the lake and the last of the apples dot the leafless trees with their ruby redness and life continues albeit in different weather patterns. It’s time for socks and layers as I wander now through the villages and darkness falls so early.

And we decide halfway through November that we should put up our little Xmas tree to enjoy it before our next trip away to see the Xmas markets in Poland and Germany.

Florence.

I love Florence in the wintertime!

And then we’re off to Florence for a few days - because we can, because it’s fairly close, because we’re so lucky to be living in Italy for now. It’s a taxi ride, a bus and a train and then we’re walking the streets that Michelangelo once walked, in the city where Leonardo lived for a few years and painted the Mona Lisa, where the Medicis ruled mercilessly but basically funded the Renaissance. I’ve never been here in the cooler months, I’ve sweated through the hot summers with hoards of tourists like myself but autumn here is another world. The light is luminous, the famous Duomo gleams pearl-like, jade and coral pink against an azure blue sky. Tourists are less and more scattered. Painters are everywhere, watercolouring Florence for us at bargain prices, so much so that I buy three paintings from artists that had no income during the pandemic.

Our cheap hotel is amazing, it’s right near the Duomo and when I open up my window and look out, to my right is the Duomo, which was wonderful until the next morning when the bells started at 6.45 am, the noise seeming to make the building shake but all the more incredible.

I walk the streets until dusk, finding quaint shops like Bizzarri that sells floral waters for your face, chemicals to clean old paintings and photo developing chemicals, I buy an orange flower water; I pass ancient doors studded with beautiful nails, I find a shop that has been making biscuits since 1858, Antonio Mattei. The family still owns it and they still use the original tin designs and packaging.

We’re meeting up with the daughter’s friend who lives here on the other side of the Arno river. I walk across the bridge that looks back towards the famed Ponte Vecchio, the lights of Florence beginning to turn on and reflect, people rowing long thin boats, people sitting on the bridges and along the river, admiring, talking, reading. We have a drink at a cute bar, La Cite and another Aussie joins us and then head back into town for a trattoria that we’ve been to before, where you eat underground and talk, it’s a Florence appreciation group. Walking home, the Duomo is ghost-like against the black sky with an almost full moon strung in between the various buildings.

We eat breakfast together and then separate. The daughter tries cycling on her friends bike as she may study Italian here next year and a bike would make her look Florentine and also provide cheap transport. I’m off to Santa Croce, another beautiful church, only to find it closed but find frescoed buildings instead, shops of beautiful Florentine painted woodwork; a whole street of shops selling pork goods and sandwiches. As I look into one, watching the production line of one person cutting the pork, another cutting the focaccia and slathering it with various toppings and another packaging it, the focaccia man hands me a slice of bread, still warm. But I need to sit down to eat so I find another beautiful street of old restaurants and choose Verrazzano and order up a glass of their own wine and a pear, pecorino, walnut and honey dish served with a bread studded with raisins and fennel.

And then it was time for my time slot at the Pitti Palace, how things change over the years, 15 years ago you lined up in a smallish line, bought your ticket and went on in. I think I somehow this time picked the right time, it was almost empty. I think it’s the more beautiful gallery and even though some of the rooms were closed, still worth it. I see quite a few of my late husband’s ancestor, Titian’s paintings, Napoleon's bathroom and some beautiful bowls and jugs carved from lapis lazuli and crystal and jewellery boxes carved from amber. Towards the end I am done, exhausted by so much beauty. I walk back and find a wine bar where a glass of wine costs 1 euro (about$1.60).

And then I discover an amazing shop with chocolates and alcohol. The labels are so beautiful!

Then I'm off to meet the girls at La Menagere, a cool bar. We have Negronis and even though it’s not quite the aperitivo hour of 6 pm, the waitress said she’d bring us some tapas. We’re not quite sure what she means and we’re a bit worried about the price especially when she brings us a plate of the most beautiful tapas with chips on the side as well. We shrug and think it’ll be worth it. There is tiny parmesan pastry tarts filled with a savoury cream filling; tiny burgers with pancetta with mayonnaise; chilli olives and the piece di resistance - truffle macaroons filled with goats cheese cream, amazing! When we go to pay, they were free!

The next day, I am woken early by the 6.45 bells and head off alone for a breakfast in another cute retro cafe and then I’m off to see my friend for a coffee in a part I’ve never been to before, full of antique shops. We go to a ritzy place where my caffe macchiato comes with a lid! we talk of plans for writing, photography etc. And I come away inspired.

Starving, I make my way towards the big market and on the way I find a little van parked in the street selling seafood. People are sitting on benches drinking whilst awaiting their panini. I order a spicy tomato octopus one, the bun is amazing, the lemon rind flavour through the spicy octopus perfect, the spicy olive oil sinking into the bread and is perfect with a rustic Italian rosato. I feel very Florentine, not a tourist sitting around, just a few Italian ladies enjoying the autumn sun at Fratelli di Mare.

That night on the way to meet up with girls and their friend at a bar, I pass by a merry go round and walk through a beautiful archway as a Japanese couple in their wedding regalia kiss each other for photos. We have truffle Negronis in Manifattura that serves only Italian spirits and wines and then we cross onto the other side of the river. The river is twinkling with orange coloured lights and we find a restaurant and feast on truffle flavoured dishes (Burrata with shaved truffle, chicken in a pecorino sauce topped with truffles) served by a waiter who looks like a modern day David, Michelangelo’s famous sculpture. Returning home, the moon has arisen and the world is just perfect.

Next morning we leave and meet an American couple on the train going to Venice. They’ve lived in Florence for 22 years! The husband never stops talking, the wife keeps on saying that we don’t want to listen to him (she says all her friends ask her if he ever shuts up). The are happy because they are sitting on opposite sides of the train. They have been married for 52 years so I don’t blame them. He tells us he’s worked in India, Malaysia, Brussels and now Florence and he would never consider going back to America as it's not the America he left.

She tells us that she only recently found she had a half brother. Her father was a Polish furrier in Paris who met her Dutch mother when she was on holiday. She went back to Holland and they wrote to each other for a year. Meanwhile, her father had an affair with a married woman, ended it and married the Dutch woman. Then it was war time and it was getting difficult for Jews to stay in Paris so they got to New York via Portugal. Twenty years ago, a man arrived in New York to this ladie's father to say that he had had DNA done and that his father wasn’t his father and that his mother had revealed who it was. The American woman had acquired a French speaking brother whom she adores and they travel together! I’d just read a book with a similar story!

As we were about to leave she asks us to her 80th birthday that she’s planning for next year at the famous rowing club on the river in Florence. I think we’ll have to go. You never know who you are going to meet and the stories you come across whilst travelling.