Carpe Diem

Yes, Carpe Diem is overused but it fits our day yesterday. We had originally intended to go to the Accademia, after our morning visit to San Marco. We've learned to go to San Marco in short visits, generally after 11:00 a.m. when they turn on the floodlights. Yesterday's visit was to the loggia, where we could see the four bronze horses and also the view of the Piazza (all the other squares in Venice are called campos). When we stepped outside, it was such a glorious day, we switched gears. It has been rainy and cold for a good bit our time here and we wanted to get lunch where we could sit out and enjoy the day. We took the vaporetto to the south side of Venice, the Zattere, where we knew it would be nice and got a simple lunch in a bar near the San Basilio stop. Again, a bar is an all purpose place in Italy--serving food, coffee, pastries, snacks, in addition to other beverages. Greg had risotto al pesce and I had polpiti (octopus) with potatoes and olives. We lingered in the sun for as long as we could and then walked up the way to the church of San Sebastian. This is a church covered in artwork by Veronese. .or, it usually is. Most of it was either covered by scaffolding or gone altogether, for restoration. We have seen it several times and love this painting, which is normally on the ceiling and looks as though the horses are coming right at you!
We continued up the Calle Lunga di San Barnaba and got the vaporetto at the Ca' Rezzonico stop. We, unbelievably, ran into our friend Roberta on the bus and got off at the Accademia stop to have a coffee with her.

After that, we meandered home, stopping by the grocery and then sat on our balcony, listening to birds and watching the sun set behind the buildings.

Someone recently remarked that it will be hard to leave all this timeless beauty. That brings up an interesting point. . .yes, it will. At the beginning of this trip, I talked about the feeling of anxiety before setting off on a long trip. We really like our home and our lifestyle. It's very comfortable with a pleasant house, cats, good friends. . .but with a major trip, there's a feeling of skydiving and with the metaphorical opening of the 'chute, feeling the world expanding.

There's a different feeling at the end of a trip--I feel it even when we spend a week in Hilton Head! There's a feeling of time slipping away and a bit of melancholy that it will inevitably end. Greg and I talked about this yesterday and will try to do what we always attempt, feel an enormous privilege to have had this opportunity. Yes, we're the ones who had to set the goal and save the money but neither of us anticipated when we were very young that we would have traveled to Venice several times and feel comfortable here.

Who knows what adventures are ahead of us?