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| By 10 pm, the parties in Sant' Elena were in full swing: food, drink, even karaoke |
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| Sant' Elena at around 8:30 pm in the above and the 3 photos below
photo credit: Jen
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| photo credit: Jen |
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| photo credit: Jen |
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| photo credit: Jen |
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| By 8:45 later-arriving boats were beginning to take up their positions around the bacino
photo credit: Jen
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| photo credit: Jen |
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| photo credit: Jen |
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| Looking up Riva degli Schiavoni just after 10 pm |
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| At 1 am the parties were still going: the one above & just below near the Arsenale, the others below along the Riva Sette Martiri |
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| A karaoke-like set-up but with a single headliner |
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| Alas, the only time you see fishing boats of this size around Venice these day is when they're being used as party boats |
Do you mean to tell us you were wandering around that dangerous neighborhood after dark? ;)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it looks like great fun. Thanks for sharing such a beautiful festa with us.
I only dared venture out after dark in dangerous Sant' Elena because when I moved to NYC in 1993 it wasn't yet the theme park it's now become so I had plenty of experience with dicey areas. Wouldn't recommend it to the casual tourist though!
DeleteIt was fun; thanks for looking at the pics and for your comments.
Now, IF I decided I just had to be in Venice for this Festa, I think I know just where I would plonk myself. Danger be darned. Susie, we can protect one another.
ReplyDeletePS I think that it was mostly Jen who had to brave the dark, dangerous neighbourhood. Onya, Jen!
It is a nice place to be for Redentore: plenty busy, but still with plenty of space around you in the park, and with a mostly local crowd. I wish I could have seen some other ares though. A friend mentioned that her family were part of a crowd that set up tables on the Fondamenta near S Nicolo dei Mendicoli, which sounds fun.
DeleteBut I must correct you, Yvonne, Jen (fearless though she is) ventured out when it was still light and left me to risk life and limb in the dark.
Yvonne, by the time we gather up enough courage to visit Venice in the summer, Sandro will be old enough to protect us! Plus, he will be able to speak in dialect!
ReplyDeleteWe would want to bring along some garbage bags though, to clean up the detritus shown in photo #4. Is the guy in the pink striped shirt actually throwing down a paper napkin?
Oh my, Susie, I don't think you or I or Yvonne want to think about the words Sandro has learned in dialect! I think his store of "bad words" has slowed since we changed his school last January, but prior to that he seemed on his way to a vocabulary that would have made a gangsta rapper blush.
DeleteYou are extremely observant! I think you may be right about that fella--which explains why he has a rather particular expression, which I'd previously attributed to mere accident. Now I think it's because he was caught in the act! Tsk tsk tsk...
You had to change Sandro's school? Is it true the Castello crowd can be a bit...rowdy?
ReplyDeleteI sadly must admit to a filthy mouth myself. I attribute it to decades in a pressroom, although I took to filthy language like a fish to water. My years of charm school and ballroom dancing lessons were all for naught.
Yes, that fellow was caught in the act and he knows he was busted! As much as I like to disparage the day trippers and cruise ship crowds, it is hard to believe that people would just let all that garbage sit and not try and collect it.
To answer your questions, Susie, might actually require 3 posts: one on Italian preschool & raising a bi-lingual child; one on the "Castello crowd", its traditional roughness & how it's changed; and maybe even one on Sant' Elena, which a butcher on Via Garibaldi told Jen yesterday was "full of fascists".
DeleteIt's definitely not "full" of them, but, well, there may be something to explore.
A pressroom seems like the ideal place to get an advanced degree in filthy language. For post-doc study, even. Is this why we should all be relieved, actually, that newspapers are disappearing? (I'm not.)
Perhaps the guy in the pic was thinking that the very next morning the usual troop of "spazzini" would be out in force in Sant' Elena picking up the park. Of course the main task of i spazzini is to pick up all the dead bodies strewn about the park each morning before any tourist can see them. But we'll keep this hush hush...
This looks like so much fun. I love all the photos. But you didn't tell us if you sang karaoke?!?
ReplyDeleteThe Comune of Venice, in what most residents would be likely to describe as its lone stroke of wisdom, has prohibited me from ever singing in public. It's really for my own protection. So I lurked quietly with camera in the shadows...
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