After the thrill of St. Anthony's tongue (see posting
In Padova I if you haven't already) it was time to spend the day taking care of business. I hoofed it up to the Rialto market for a morning of photography followed by marketing. The market was just as photogenic as the last time with myriad vegetable stands and fish, eel, bivalve, and crustacean mongers. After a hundred or so pictures, I put the camera away and started shopping in Italian 0.101 (that's like one-one hundredth of Italian 101). I managed to buy 2 trout for dinner, but I didn't know how to ask him to clean them. Rather than lapse into
sign, I brought them home and cleaned them myself. I think the last time I cleaned fish was just before Zack, Molly, and I left on our grand adventure in 1991--they caught a couple bass at the Ormondroyd's and wanted to eat them. Seventeen years later cleaning a fish hasn't changed much although I suspect these are farm-raised genetically improved rainbow-trout...Onward. I found a meat market--rejecting the first where the butcher shared a storefront with a horse-meat dealer. Figuring they were related businesses, and out of respect for my brother and sister-in-law, my four neigh-phews, and North American horseflesh in general, I passed them by. Another shop seemed to have plenty of flesh that we don't consider companion animals so I went in there and proceeded to buy a small round of veal--no horse, just baby cow...There was a long wait; the butchers provide custom service, back and forth to the cooler, slicing, trimming, displaying, talking, wrapping. A sprig of rosmarino when appropriate for the cut. A quick trip to the veg market for lemons, beans, some fruit and I was on my way back to Fondamenta Gherardini and our casa. One more trip for wine (the wine shop was closed as it's Wednesday afternoon--just like Berea in the 1950s) and then some potatoes from our local vendor.
In between market trips, Nancy and I went to Scuola Grande de S. Roch. My o' my, what a display of early 1500s Italian art. The rooms were huge and the paintings by Tintoretto depicting both Old and New Testament stories were full of veiled imagery that I remember my friend, Luke Colavito from Ithaca, used to tell my freshman composition class about when we went to the Johnson Museum. The Scuola was great for me as they provided mirrors for observing the ceiling art--solved my vertigo problem and let me enjoy Moses Drawing Water From The Rock!
After the thrill of St. Anthony's tongue (see posting In Padova I if you haven't already) it was time to spend the day taking care of business. I hoofed it up to the Rialto market for a morning of photography followed by marketing. The market was just as photogenic as the last time with myriad vegetable stands and fish, eel, bivalve, and crustacean mongers. After a hundred or so pictures, I put the camera away and started shopping in Italian 0.101 (that's like one-one hundredth of Italian 101). I managed to buy 2 trout for dinner, but I didn't know how to ask him to clean them. Rather than lapse into 
sign, I brought them home and cleaned them myself. I think the last time I cleaned fish was just before Zack, Molly, and I left on our grand adventure in 1991--they caught a couple bass at the Ormondroyd's and wanted to eat them. Seventeen years later cleaning a fish hasn't changed much although I suspect these are farm-raised genetically improved rainbow-trout...Onward. I found a meat market--rejecting the first where the butcher shared a storefront with a horse-meat dealer. Figuring they were related businesses, and out of respect for my brother and sister-in-law, my four neigh-phews, and North American horseflesh in general, I passed them by. Another shop seemed to have plenty of flesh that we don't consider companion animals so I went in there and proceeded to buy a small round of veal--no horse, just baby cow...There was a long wait; the butchers provide custom service, back and forth to the cooler, slicing, trimming, displaying, talking, wrapping. A sprig of rosmarino when appropriate for the cut. A quick trip to the veg market for lemons, beans, some fruit and I was on my way back to Fondamenta Gherardini and our casa. One more trip for wine (the wine shop was closed as it's Wednesday afternoon--just like Berea in the 1950s) and then some potatoes from our local vendor.
In between market trips, Nancy and I went to Scuola Grande de S. Roch. My o' my, what a display of early 1500s Italian art. The rooms were huge and the paintings by Tintoretto depicting both Old and New Testament stories were full of veiled imagery that I remember my friend, Luke Colavito from Ithaca, used to tell my freshman composition class about when we went to the Johnson Museum. The Scuola was great for me as they provided mirrors for observing the ceiling art--solved my vertigo problem and let me enjoy Moses Drawing Water From The Rock!
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