Another gray morning. Another boat doing a job a truck would do, in a drier place. More guys with carts, moving stuff. There is a guy on the boat, working the crane/winch, which picks up the cart by a handle. When the cart is over the opening on the boat, someone opens the bottom of the cart, which dumps its contents into the boat.
(Digression --We had two bags for recycling in this apartment (metal/plastic, and paper/cardboard), as well as a bag for food waste and other garbage. We had a schedule for which days which things were supposed to be put outside for pick-up, but given that stuff was supposed to go out before 8:00 am (and not the night before), we took our garbage out and put it in a trash bin, and only put out whichever recycling type was being picked up the morning we left (leaving the other recycling type in the apartment).
Italy is big on recycling. We saw groups of separate containers for different kinds of recyclables everywhere. It seems to be the case that people do their own separating, and putting of things in the appropriate dumpster (or other accumulation container).
End of Digression)
Note steps down into the canal in the above, and imagine the water level over the pavement during the night......
When we were ready to venture out, I led the way down the stairs, and stepped off the bottom step into significant water. The floor of our entry hallway and entry room were covered with half an inch, to an inch, of water. (It just looked like clean water, and didn't smell like anything, but we know it was canal water.....)
We walked carefully to the door, and let ourselves out. You can't see water on the floor, in this pic, but trust me.....
The nice man, the previous night, had gotten boots out of the closet, but we hadn't understood that we should put the boots on the stairs down from the apartment, just in case......
We were glad the water wasn't deeper!
Locking the door from the outside. You can see how tall this "keep the water out" thing is. I wonder how high the water level was, overnight. Either this thing doesn't seal very well, or it was pretty darn high!
No more water out here. (that is our doorway, at right)
My daughter texted the landlord, and when we returned, later in the day, the floor was barely damp, and smelled faintly of cleaning products.
(Digression -- when we were in Phoenix, I was creeped out because it was just too dry. Venice is at the other end of the spectrum -- just too wet......
End of Digression.)
Moving on.
Performers on the pavement near the Doge's Palace (with San Giorgio Maggiore in the background).
More performers. Hmm. They are wearing fringe, and feathers, which I associate with North American plains people, but they are playing the kind of flute I've seen Guatemalan people play, at street fairs, in Ann Arbor. I wonder if, in Italy, to be recognized as native Americans, they have to wear fringe and feathers? (Fringe sewn on cloth pants and puffy jackets, no less. Nothing authentic about this. Except maybe the music, I don't know.)
Cool metal stuff.
Hey, look, it's a hardware store!
In Venice, you don't encounter many stores that are for the benefit of the people who live there, rather than for the tourists. Here's one!
Small shrines (?) are embedded in buildings, here and there. The flowers are clearly a recent addition.
Lots and lots of shoes in shop windows, in Italy.
Wondering if these are for tourists. I saw many (many) more Italian women wearing tennies, or boots, than fancy shoes. From my observation, they are much more practical about their footwear than most French women were, when we were in France in 2010.
These weren't the only lace shoes I saw.
I did see women in fancy tennies, and did see boots with a lot of (metal stud) embellishment.
Some kind of fierce long-necked bird -- with a ball made of umbrellas? I wonder how long the object the bird holds has been umbrellas. I suspect the bird is a lot older than umbrellas, but I could well be wrong.
Here's something I haven't shown you -- a street sign. They put them on a corner building, at the bottom of the second story. We found Italy to be very well marked. In towns, and in the country, signage tended to be plentiful and helpful. Grazie mille, Italiani!
(Note pigeon-pokers in the white area about a quarter of the way up from the bottom. I saw a lot of these in Venice.)
I've talked about "everything delivered by boat and hand-cart." Here, up close and personal, is a Venetian hand-cart.
With very big tires.
This time the big market, near the Rialto Bridge, was full of vendors.
Love these purple and green artichokes. And don't they look nice next to that garlic, with its own touches of purple?
For our popcorn connoisseur......
Romanesco and broccoli rabe......
Peas.
I thought this was interesting, the way it's mostly stem, and curly at the ends.
Fennel.
More and more artichokes.
Herbs.
Green beans. Fagioli are dried beans, and fagiolini are green ones.
But these are spadone? We call them Italian green beans, at our house (and like them!). We had broccoli from our boat market, or I bet we would have tried some of these.
"Some of everything, please!"
In order to facilitate chronological traversal of these posts, here is a link to the next post.
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