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| Like Venice, Sant'Erasmo has its own canals, but also cardi, or cardoon plants (foreground), vineyards (at right), and many other crops |
The Easter crowds are beginning to fill the city now, which made it a good afternoon to get away to Sant'Erasmo, which, though only a short distance away, really is another world from the city all those tens of millions of people come to see each year. In the broadest sense the relatively few people who live on Sant'Erasmo are "Venetians," but only in a broad sense. They are more particularly, and quite proudly, Sant'Erasmans, and the more time one spends on the island the more one understands how well-founded and justified are their sentiments and their fidelity to the place.
Last year I stayed 2 nights at the Lato Azzurro on Sant'Erasmo, cycled round the island (several times) and saw the Festa del Mosto. One of my favorite memories is of G., comfortably seated in front of THE shop, saying to me in a friendly way in Italian : I haven't seen you around here before. We had a little chat and he told me he had lived on Sant'Erasmo all his life and loved it.
ReplyDeleteI think it can be so easy to forget about Sant'Erasmo, Rosalind, or totally overlook it, as there's so much else to see, so it's great to hear about your stay on it. Lato Azzurro is a wonderful place, and its stable of bikes for rent, and its restaurant, and the old-timers whom I noticed at the end of one day last week had gathered at a couple of its tables inside to play cards (perhaps only because it was still off-season, so no one was likely to bother them?). Like you, I've also found people there to be very loyal to their native island, and a far cry from what Jan Morris, writing in 1960, described as "a gloomy lot" in a "moribund" place. I still have yet to get to the Festa del Mosto though!
DeleteI fell in love with the island and even chose the house I would live in! However am back home in Corsica, close enough to Italy for regular visits.
ReplyDeleteI also visited the Lazzaretto nuovo and was almost marooned alone on the island when I inadvertently let the signal light go out. The vaporetto was heading for Sant'Erasmo but they saw me frantically waving my arms and turned round to fetch me. They brushed off my apologies when I got on board for the 100 metre crossing.
The card-players were very much a fixture, a colorful glimpse of local life.
The fact that those signal lights shut themselves off after a time without any warning to the person who set them going, Rosalind, can be a real pain sometimes--at least if you're not expecting it, as I have not expected it while waiting on Certosa. Of course, after it happens once you always remember. And I continue to be impressed by the vaporetti drivers and crew in relation to any other public transportation system I've experienced.
DeleteYou're really not too far away in Corsica at all--at least not compared to those crossing whole oceans & time zones to get to Venice. It must be beautiful there.