Venice continues to delight, and I continue to be v. v. tired - almost hungover with the elated exhaustion of finishing my book. Today I tried to be mindful and in the moment even though I'm distracted by book release stuff. The writing exercises this morning were great - we spent some time wandering around and observing things, and Rachael pointed out that a lot of my little pieces have involved vessels full of water (cups, mugs, cisterns, wells), which was interesting, although I don't know what to do with that bit of wisdom...
After we were done for the morning, I took advantage of some downtime to wander the quiet sidewalks and ancient canals between here and San Marco. San Marco itself is awash in tourists, but I found a restaurant that served surprisingly good risotto for being in such a touristy area. So I sat and people-watched and ate my risotto and drank my wine, and it was all a perfect moment.
Then I met up with the other writers at the Doge's Palace - we had a 'secret itineraries' tour, which took us through the secret wings of the Doge's Palace. That includes the prison cells for the highest-ranked prisoners, the areas where the secret police and the Council of Ten did business, the area where Casanova escaped from, etc. It was cool to see, especially since the tour guide was a great storyteller.
Then Lisa and I split off from the group, took a vaparetto (water bus) back, and had a couple of drinks and snacks near our hotel so we could catch up properly. Then I took a twenty minute nap that could have happily lasted two hours. And then I had dinner with Rachael, Veronica, V's husband Adam, and their son Owen. We went back towards the neighborhood where I had such a lovely dinner last night, found a great little restaurant with the perfect outdoor seats, and enjoyed a lot of fun conversation and some delicious food (they had gluten free pasta!). And my time here is all too rapidly drawing to a close...
Which means, I suppose, that I should sleep. Going to bed now would go a long way toward restoring my sleep deficit, which means I'll probably play sudoku for an hour, but I'm hoping sanity wins out. Goodnight!
After we were done for the morning, I took advantage of some downtime to wander the quiet sidewalks and ancient canals between here and San Marco. San Marco itself is awash in tourists, but I found a restaurant that served surprisingly good risotto for being in such a touristy area. So I sat and people-watched and ate my risotto and drank my wine, and it was all a perfect moment.
Then I met up with the other writers at the Doge's Palace - we had a 'secret itineraries' tour, which took us through the secret wings of the Doge's Palace. That includes the prison cells for the highest-ranked prisoners, the areas where the secret police and the Council of Ten did business, the area where Casanova escaped from, etc. It was cool to see, especially since the tour guide was a great storyteller.
Then Lisa and I split off from the group, took a vaparetto (water bus) back, and had a couple of drinks and snacks near our hotel so we could catch up properly. Then I took a twenty minute nap that could have happily lasted two hours. And then I had dinner with Rachael, Veronica, V's husband Adam, and their son Owen. We went back towards the neighborhood where I had such a lovely dinner last night, found a great little restaurant with the perfect outdoor seats, and enjoyed a lot of fun conversation and some delicious food (they had gluten free pasta!). And my time here is all too rapidly drawing to a close...
Which means, I suppose, that I should sleep. Going to bed now would go a long way toward restoring my sleep deficit, which means I'll probably play sudoku for an hour, but I'm hoping sanity wins out. Goodnight!
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