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.
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