Venice at Mid-day with Urchins

Since we have had one story of Venice at Midnight with Urchins, we thought a better and easier trip might be Venice at Mid-day with our Urchins!

One of the great things about Padova is its proximity to Venice, it is an easy train trip and only costs 11 euros for all 5 of us to get there. We decided to go over there yesterday since there wasn’t much going on around here and we knew things would at least be open there for all the tourists. We took a vaporetto which is basically a bus-boat from the train station to our destination. When I have been on them before they have been fine, but I have to say yesterday it was a bit over-crowded and had both Bill (if you can believe that) and I feeling a bit unsure (me more than him). It felt just a bit more unsteady in the water than I would have liked from the weight of all the people and bags; it was really rockin’ & rollin’ with the wakes from the other boats and its own starting and stopping. I thought it would be no big deal if you were on one of the outside decks and it tipped over – you would just have to swim about 6 feet to the side of the canal, but we were “packed like sardines” inside. I was mentally rehearsing how I would get all the kids out the open window to swim away from the tipping boat. I am sure that these boats really never tip over and the much, much smaller gondolas are the boats in any real danger of getting knocked around.

Nonetheless, we made it to our stop and headed toward the Peggy Guggenheim Collection which is a very small museum of modern art housed in a beautiful Palazzo that she bought as her “retirement home” in 1947 and had for 30 years before her death. One of my travel books identifies it as a place kids might really like for a number of reasons – the paintings are all big & very bright, there is a beautiful sculpture garden that the kids can run around in, Ms. Guggenheim is buried there along with her 14 little lhasa apso dogs and modern art is inherently appealing to young kids. And another reason not in the guide books, but known to all – “the private parts” on pictures and statues are all worth a good giggle to the 6-8 year old crowd. It was a nice quiet place (at least until we arrived) away from the hustle & bustle of the Grand Canal and the more popular destinations. We stayed for awhile and all enjoyed it. Isabelle’s favorite was a Picasso (of course, if you have seen the self-portrait she did in her bedroom), Sam liked the Jackson Pollack (who I just don’t get) and Nick liked one called “The Little Machine” that looked a lot like the numerous sketches he is always making. You can check out the website at www.guggenheim-venice.it/ and select the English version.

We had lunch in a great little out of the way café near the Guggenheim situated half-way under one of the big bridges over the Grand Canal. Great pizza – the kind with a crunchy crust that you fold in half and eat like a sandwich, its always been my favorite and while the kids didn’t like it when we first got here, now they love it, too. While we were waiting for the train to leave and sitting on the steps of the Grand Canal, there were a couple of guys dressed up like Native Americans and performing American Indian songs and dances for change and selling CD’s of their music. Curious is my only comment and I am hard pressed to believe that they were real Native Americans from an Indian tribe in North America, but who am I to judge? The train ride home was fun and crowded, but we made it back to Padova before 9 pm. Isabelle and I sat next to a beautiful Italian blonde grandma who was done up in all purple from her eye-shadow to rings/bracelets/earrings to purple silk pantsuit – a little girl’s vision of purple loveliness. When she re-applied her lipstick after eating pizza, Isabelle got out her own lip gloss and also re-applied. After that, the nonna(grandma) and bimba (little girl) were fast friends despite the language barrier.

Another fun day on our excellent adventure!