This Year's Models: Carnevale This Morning

That moment when even the most tradition-bound photographer must finally admit that a swiveling electronic view finder on his camera would really come in handy 

One of Venetians' Very Favorite Things to Do During Carnevale...

...is to flee the city they call home. 

For obvious reasons, the fact that no small number of Venetians find the present-day incarnation of Carnevale annoying if not outright odious is typically not mentioned in any of the articles offering an "insider's guide" to the Venetian Carnival, so I offer it here in the interest of accuracy. 

Especially on Friday, Saturday and Sundays, when the crowds are at their very densest--in all senses of that word--Venetians are keen to be anywhere outside the city (if only in the lagoon). But, really, any day of Carnevale is considered a good day to get out of the city by residents whose jobs don't require them to remain here.

My son and I followed their example last Sunday, going to his close friend's birthday party held at one of many hotels within the Terme Euganee region just over 40 minutes by train from Venice. The Terme Euganee are the hot spas situated among the Euganean Hills, which have been drawing visitors since antiquity for their therapeutic effects.

The most important of the four towns of the Terme Euganee are Montegrotto and Abano, and the name of the station at which we de-trained was Terme Euganee-Abano-Montegrotto. Any number of hotels are within a short walking distance from the station (there are no public baths).

I don't have any particular ones to recommend, but I do believe you need not stay overnight; a day-trip from Venice to the baths is also possible.

The panaorama below shows just a couple of the numerous pools of various temperatures at the Hotel Marconi, which is less than a ten minute walk from the station.  

And the rest of the images here show the scenes to which we returned on Sunday afternoon around the train station. Some people find such scenes quite thrilling. But it's nice to know there are escapes available.

Another Walk In the Fog, This Morning (8 Views)

We start from the same place today as in Tuesday's post, Campo Santa Maria Formosa, but then follow a different route towards home....

A Walk In the Fog, This Morning (11 Views)

An appointment took me from San Zaccaria to Piazzale Roma on foot this morning before 9 am. I hadn't time for any scenic detours of the sort I would have liked to take on a morning like this--to see, for example, the church of the Miracoli in such fog--so these are just snaps from the quickest route between two points (with the exception of the two last images, actually taken after the appointment on the way home). There was no Vento di Garbin like yesterday--this fog settled in for hours today.

3 Views of This Morning's "Vento di Garbin"

A more accurate title for this post would be "3 Views of the Effects of This Morning's Vento di Garbin," as the Vento di Garbin, I learned today, is the name of the damp chill wind, coming from the direction of Marghera and originating around Lago Garda, that blows fogs through Venice.

I was picking up our son from school this afternoon, and remarking upon the fact that it had been somewhat foggy just after 8 this morning (when all these three images were captured), then at around 11 a.m. had abruptly become so foggy that standing on one side of the Grand Canal you could hardly see the palazzi on the opposite bank, then shortly after lunch had become so clear-skied as to seem like the first day of spring, when the native Venetian I was talking to replied simply by way of explanation, "Vento di Garbin," and provided the description I've transcribed in the first paragraph above. Thus, giving a name to a mutability that had seemed to me almost beyond comprehension, and reminding me of the large lexicon native to the lagoon: not the least important of the ways in which Venetians have managed to make what some might have considered an inhospitable and nearly uninhabitable waste into their home.

Lunch at Very Low Tide, Sant' Erasmo, Today

The Patron Saint of Undisturbed Reading Time

It wouldn't take much effort to properly identify the saint whom the sculpture above is actually supposed to represent, but I must admit I have no interest in that.

Instead, I admire the quiet efficiency with which that sword in the saint's right hand is likely to discourage all comers from disrupting the saint's focus on the book in his left.

Of course since most interruptions of our reading time these days are from our various electronic devices--or our own addiction to such devices--the saint has his work cut out for him. But, then, he would never had been beatified if he hadn't already shown some capacity for performing miraculous interventions.

Pietà, Church of San Simeon Piccolo

For all the intended pathos of this sculpture of Mary holding the dead Jesus, I find the petitions piled up on the floor around it even more moving.

Of Gods, Saints, and Monsters (and One Dog), This Morning

Young Canova at the Museo Correr