The Doge’s Palace

Tuesday May 16th 2023

Today Paul was anxious to visit the Doge’s Palace, as he couldn’t remember our last visit there, which was in 2008. There was also a Carpaccio exhibition that we wanted to see in the same place, so we set off for San Marco. The boat stopped at San Zaccaria and we walked from there, which gave us the opportunity of looking along the canal that goes along one side of the Palazzo Ducale and photographing the Bridge of Sighs.

0I imagine that most people already know the legend, that the bridge, which was built in 1600 to link the Palazzo with the prison, takes it name from the lamentations of the prisoners as they made their way to the prison and the offices of the feared state inquisitors. Later we had the opportunity to walk across it to view the prison, and, fortunately, to come back again.

We started at the Carpaccio exhibition, which brings together paintings and drawings from major museums and private collections all over Europe and the United States. Unfortunately, photography isn’t allowed, as I discovered when I took one. So I only have the one photo, though it’s quite an interesting one.

It’s interesting because it was originally a single painted panel, probably on a door. It was sawn in half at the end of the 1700s, with the lower half, the Two Women, being acquired by Teodoro Correr (we visited the Correr Museum yesterday). The upper half, Fishing and Fowling on the Lagoon, moved to Rome. This exhibition brought the two halves together in a view not seen for over 200 years. Paul thinks that the two women in question are bored out of their minds waiting for their husbands to come back from a day of sport!

Not only was photography not allowed, I was told off for touching the wall. The labels were placed at waist level so you had to bend to read them. My back got tired after a while, so I put my hand on the wall near the label and was immediately told off! 

There were some beautiful paintings which I really liked and there didn’t even seem to be postcards to buy, which is a real shame. However, I found one of the ones I really liked on the internet.

It was painted in 1500 and is called The Virgin Mary and John the Baptist praying to the Christ Child. As well as really liking it, I find it amusing the the holy characters have become wealthy Venetians.

At least there were some seats in the exhibition. Once we got into the Palazzo Ducal, there were none and I became very exhausted. It’s not realistic for ladies of nearly 80 to have to spend hours on their feet! 

The Palazzo Ducale started life in the 9th century as a castle, but this and subsequent buildings were destroyed by fire. The current building dates externally to the 14th and 15th centuries. The interior decorations are 16th century or later. This is a view of the internal courtyard.

It backs onto the basilica of St Marks, as you can see. We had hoped to get into the basilica, but the queues were several hundred yards long, and it was quite impossible for me to contemplate standing for that long.

The tour of the Palazzo Ducale starts with all the public rooms. To demonstrate the wealth and power of the state, the rooms were all painted, on both walls and ceilings, and encrusted with gold. This is the Council Chamber.

It’s rather different from the Tandridge Council Chamber, where Paul and I went to have our first Covid vaccination! 

Below is the Senate Chamber, which is even more embellished.



I felt obliged to photograph the ceiling as well, to give a better view of the encrusted gold embelllisments.



By the time we had examined about 8 or 10 of these highly decorated  rooms, I was beginning to feel I could hardly bear to look at any more opulence, but there was more to come. My final photo of this part of the Palazzo is the Chamber of the Great Council. 



The reason I included this one is the huge painting, taking up the entire wall. It is entitled Paradise, and was painted between 1588 and 1592 by Domenico and Jacopo Tintoretto. Given its size, I’m not surprised it took 4 years.

After all these public rooms, we passed on to displays of weapons, by which time I was too tired to do more than walk past the displays of armour. swords, lances, billhooks, then guns and finally a cannon.

After that, we passed on to the picture gallery. There were some interesting paintings, amongst which I have picked out this Hieronymus Bosch. 

It’s simply entitled Apocalypse.

After the pictures, we crossed the Bridge of Sighs to visit the prison. I would have photographed the bridge from the inside, but it’s just a stone tunnel with one barred window which you can’t really see out of. The prison is pretty forbidding too.

This was one of the taller doors. Some of them were only just over waist high and you would have had to bend over to get in. I found it quite claustrophobic. The prison seemed interminable, with what felt like miles of stone corridors and stairways, and I was glad to finally get out!

We refreshed ourselves with a visit to the café, then set of to visit a Scuola not too far away, where there are more Carpaccio paintings. But the rain started, and my phone’s GPS decided not to work. Paul’s phone had run out of charge, and we were getting quite wet. So in the end I gave in and we decided to go back to the flat, so we went to wait for a boat. This is the view from the boat dock. The number 1 boat is approaching us but it has to wait for the gondola which is in the way. In the background, the yellow Alilaguna boat is on its way back to the airport.

The people in the gondola don’t look happy. It is very windy and cold, as well as raining. I don’t know what it was like in the gondola, but the boat dock, which is floating, was pitching and tossing quite a bit. Getting into and out of the boat wasn’t easy, and it was too windy to put umbrellas up on the walk back. I was glad to be back. My cold is streaming, and now Paul is sneezing like mad, so he probably has it too.

A church and a Museum

Monday May 15th 2023

Fortunately, I woke up feeling a bit better this morning. I’m still sniffing and snivelling but the throat is hardly sore at all, though I’m still coughing a lot. At least I didn’t need to spend the day in bed. It was a very warm and sunny day too, a real treat for a change! We set off late, as usual, and walked across to San Pietro island to pay a visit to the church of San Pietro Di Castello, where we have never been before, and which I mentioned in an earlier post. 

The island of San Pietro was one of Venice’s earliest settlements, and it was originally occupied by a fortress  - hence the ‘Castello’ part of the church’s name. The original church was probably founded in the 7th century and was the cathedral for Venice until 1807. It was originally not dedicated to St Peter but to a couple of Byzantine saints. A new church dedicated to St Peter was built in the 9th century, but that was destroyed by fire in 1603. The current San Pietro replaced it, and it was built to a Palladian design.

The free-standing campanile, of which I posted a photograph last Friday, predates the cathedral by more than 100 years, as it was built in 1482, though the cupola was added after the new church was completed.

Inside, the church has a great many baroque embellishments, which were produced in the mid 18th century. There are some quite dark and ugly paintings, in my opinion, though are a couple of interesting ones. Above one of the side chapels there is a late Veronese, St John the evangelist with St Peter and St Paul. Even that one is dark and hard to photograph because of reflections. I had to take the photo from one side, and it’s still dark.

Another chapel houses a painting by Luca Giordano, but the reflections are so bad you can’t really see it, and the chapel which houses it is stuffed full of baroque statues.

The high altar is quite amazing, being designed to include an assortment of statues, as well as being embellished with polychrome marble. 

The vault is decorated with ceiling paintings, as are the side altars.

Other things I found interesting were an ancient chair, claimed to be the chair of St Peter from Antioch, but probably assembled in the 13th century using an ancient funerary stele.

It has has inscriptions on it from the Koran in Sufi script! 

In one of the side chapels there is a mosaic based on a Tintoretto cartoon, whilst in front of it is a fragment of Roman mosaic, which is claimed to be from the original church. 

As we left, we passed something that probably wins the prize for world’s most uncomfortable chair - for more than one reason! 

We walked to the nearest vaporetto stop, and took a boat round to San Marco, which was incredibly crowded. As it was such a lovely day, the tourists were out in force and it was quite difficult to get through all the crowds of people. 

This is the Basilica of San Marco. I managed to find a path through the crowds and find an un-crowded area to take this photo.

The queues for the Basilica and the Doge’s Palace were very long, so we decided to visit the Correr Museum which I don’t recall having visited before. The museum is housed in a 19th century royal palace, and there are various different collections. I had unfortunately forgotten to put on my back brace as my back felt very comfortable this morning, but this was a mistake. The museum does not have many seats, so I’m afraid I rushed past some of the collections in order to get to the paintings. I’m afraid I paid little attention to the Canova collection or to the Venetian history section or to the archeological section, and only briefly paused at the section on arms and armour. The library is particularly stunning though.

I was also amazed to see Marco Polo’s will - though I couldn’t read it!

The paintings are on the upper floors and are displayed chronologically. I was quite taken with this coffin-reliquary, dating from around 1290.

This is an odd story. This is the coffin-reliquary of the blessed Juliana, who established a nunnery in 1222 on the island which later became the Giudecca. Her body was discovered in 1290 to be uncorrupted 30 years after her death, and the nuns had this coffin-reliquary made to display her body.

The section on early paintings contained quite a few by Veneziano, and this rather strange one by Giambono, dating from around 1443.

The Virgin looks rather sly, I think, and I’m afraid I think the baby Jesus looks completely drunk. I’m sure that neither interpretation was quite what the painter intended! 

We passed on to later painters, and I really liked this one by Pieter Bruegel the younger.

The label gives only his dates of 1564 - 1638, rather than the date of the painting. And I have no idea why every painting I photograph is squint!  

I also enjoyed one in the manner of Hieronymus Bosch, though as it was behind glass, it was hard to see and impossible to photograph. There were a couple of beautiful Bellinis, but as I’ve already posted one of the Virgin and child, here is a portrait one.

It seems to be called Portrait of St Fortunato, and dates to 1475.

After the paintings, we passed into the restored Imperial Apartments, the sumptuous rooms of Sisi, the Empress Elizabeth, laid out in the 1830s and the 1850s. This one is described as the Dining-room for weekday lunches.

As one who eats most lunches, weekday or other, crouched over an iPad on any handy chair, I was almost speechless!  I can’t quite imagine what the dining room for formal evening meals might have looked like. 

We were quite tired by then, so repaired to the café for coffee and repose. I was able to take a good photo of San Marco from the window of of the café.

Most of the crowds had by then dispersed so the square was almost empty.

It being almost closing time, we left and made our way to the nearest vaporetto stop, catching the number 1 for Arsenale so as to walk back to the flat.

The Accademia

Sunday May 14th 2023

Today has not been exactly successful. I had a very bad night, keeping the whole house awake with loud coughing. I didn’t sleep until after 4, then woke at 6 with severe hip pain, necessitating paracetamol. When I finally woke it was well after 10 and it became clear I had, yet again, developed a very nasty cold or something similar. After a leisurely brunch, and a shower and hair wash, I found it was once again lunch time by the time we left. I was anxious to have another go at getting into the church of San Stae, and Paul wanted to visit the Accademia.

The only boat which stops at San Stae is the very slow number 1, so we took a very long slow trip as it zigzagged up the Grand Canal. At least it gave us time to look at all the buildings and the river traffic. 

It being Sunday, there were crowds of people, and the gondolas were busy. It was cold though, you can see everybody was well wrapped up. I do love the views down all the little side canals. How nice it would be to live along one and have a little speedboat instead of a car to get around!

The number 1 boat is always very crowded, and quite a crowd of us got off at San Stae, having been seduced by information on the internet that it would open at 2.30. This was a lie! It didn’t open at all, so we were all disappointed. Paul and I just got back on the boat going the other way and went back to the Accademia.

We visited the Accademia in 2019, and there were some differences this time, in that some pictures we had previously seen were no longer there, and we saw things we hadn’t seen before. The first room was substantially the same, but this time, I focused on the room itself, which is stunning if you are able to stop looking at the paintings and take it in.

I find it surprising that I was previously able to look at the paintings without taking much notice of the ceiling and the floor! This is the most stunning room in the gallery, and is devoted to very early paintings. After that, further very plain rooms pass on to Bellini, a particular favourite of mine. It’s just as well the rooms are plain, then you can concentrate on the paintings. I find I have photographed at least 6 by Bellini, all of which I love, though I’m only posting one here.

This one is the Annunciation, painted in 1490. It’s definitely one of my favourites.

After the Bellinis, including a monumental one entitled Martyrdom of Saint Mark, we passed on to Titian, but one was missing as it had been lent to an exhibition somewhere. The one I really like, Tobias and the Angel, has been posted by me before on an earlier visit, so I’ll pass on to another favourite of mine, Georgione. There are quite a few of these, but the one below is new to me.

It’s supposed to be of the painter’s elderly mother, and it was painted in 1502.

We passed on to Veronese and Tintoretto, neither of them being favourites of mine. This is Veronese’s version of the Annunciation.

This was painted in 1578. I can see that’s it’s more spectacular than Bellini’s version, but I still prefer the Bellini.

The most spectacular Tintoretto I think is this one, called St Mark Saves the Slave from Torture. It was painted in 1547, so it’s an early work, and one of his first commissions.

It refers to the legend of a Christian slave or captive who was to be tortured for some act of devotion to St Mark (incidentally, the patron saint of Venice). He was saved by the miraculous intervention of the long dead evangelist, who shattered the instruments of torture - you can see them broken at the bottom of the painting. I found this one remarkable for its theatrically, and for the strange and rather compelling appearance of the evangelist swooping in from above. Many of Tintoretto’s paintings exhibit this mastery of perspective.

As we passed on down a loggia with rooms behind devoted to other painters, I was very taken with this one, The Adoration of the Shepherds

It’s by Jacopo da Ponte, known as Bassano, and was painted in 1548. Actually, I prefer this style of painting to that of Tintoretto, it seems more accessible to me, more rooted in reality, and I love the faces of the people who you would not be surprised to meet in the street today.

Downstairs, we saw groups of plaster casts of antique Greek and Roman statues which were used for the teaching of art. I particularly liked the Horse of St Mark

We passed on to Tiepolo, a wonderful picture of 1730 or so, but a rather strange concept.

It’s called St Joseph with the Infant Jesus, and Saint Francis of Paola, St Anne, St Anthony, and Saint Peter of Alcantara. It has always seemed a very odd concept to me to paint people together who were not alive at the same time and never knew one another. The baby is very ugly too.

The next one I liked was for years attributed to Caravaggio. It’s called The Chess Players.

Apparently it is not now thought to be by Caravaggio, but by one of his followers. I still like it though.

The gallery ends with some ceiling paintings, which, fortunately for the viewer, are not displayed on the ceiling, so one is not obliged to lie on the floor to view them. This one is by Tiepolo.

It’s called The Feast of the Cross, which I find another strange idea.

By the time we had got to the end of the gallery, we had been there for a couple of hours and it was becoming clear to me that I was far from well. My throat was sore, I was both coughing and sneezing and longing for my bed. So we caught the slow number 1 back to Arsenale and walked back to the flat - or stumbled, in my case. Actually I am far from sure how I managed to write this as I just want to be asleep! I hope to be able to sleep tonight, rather than spending the entire night coughing and keeping everybody awake.

Two Churches

Saturday May 13th, 2023

We didn’t really start out today until after lunch, as Paul slept late and wanted to spend time with his email which was getting out of hand, and I did my Zoom Pilates class so that made me quite late too. It was an odd sort of day, because it was very cold in the flat, and the forecast was for rain all day, so we went out in coats and raincoats, only to find it was sunny and warm and the coats and raincoats needed to be taken off and consigned to the rucksack.

We decided to look at some churches today, starting with San Giorgio Maggiore, which is on a little island of the same name. The view from the water is one of the most photographed and painted images of Venice, so I took further photographs, this time from the number 2 boat which we had caught - it’s the only boat that stops there.

It’s another church designed by Palladio and was completed in 1576; this is the side view, showing the campanile, which you can go up by lift. Paul declined to do this, though I believe there are wonderful views over Venice. At the front, the facade of white marble looks to have been recently cleaned, because it shines brilliantly in the sun - and there was fortunately plenty of sun today. I wished I had a hat and sunglasses.

The interior is very bright and spacious, with massive columns, typically Palladian as they are modelled on the classical style of Ancient Rome.

The major works in the church are 3 late Tintorettos, two on the chancel wall behind the altar. They aren’t easy to photograph, as you can only get to the side of them. This is the one I preferred.

It’s called The Gathering of the Manna. The other one, opposite it, is The Last Supper. There’s also his very last work, The Deposition, in a side chapel. Tintoretto died while painting it and it was finished by his son. I’m not a great fan of Tintoretto anyway, but I didn’t like that one at all, though I did photograph it.

There seemed to be a long wait for a boat back to where we had started, so instead we took the first thing that came along, which was the number 2 back along the Giudecca canal again, repeating yesterday’s trips. It was a gloriously sunny day though, so we enjoyed the views. I was able to get a much better photo of both of yesterday’s churches since I was sitting by a window on the best side of the boat. This is a much better view of the Redentore church.

These churches are much better photographed from the water.

As we approached the Zattere stop, I also managed a much better photo of the Gesuati church.

We continued on round to the railway station where we changed boat to the number 1 for the long slow trip down the Grand Canal. Because it’s slow and there are so many stops, we had ample opportunity to appreciate the lovely views. Some of my photos were spoiled by reflections in the window, but there were beautiful views of the palazzos and the little canals between some of them, with small wooden bridges across them.

This view is quite typical, and you can see the little wooden bridge is quite busy with the people crossing it.

It was a disappointment to see, as we approached Santa Maria della Salute that the church was covered with scaffolding and the facade was hidden behind painted canvas, so there are no photos. I imagine it is being cleaned so that it will be gleaming white like San Giorgio Maggiore. It seemed a shame not to have a photo of the dome of Salute which has become such an emblem of the city and has been much painted and photographed.

The huge baroque church was built in thanksgiving for the deliverance of the city from plague in 1630, hence the name ‘Salute’ which means both health and salvation.

The interior is a huge octagonal space, with eight side chapels.

The main altar’s sculptural group represents the Virgin and Child protecting Venice from the plague. It houses a Byzantine icon from the 12th or 13th century which came from Heraklion (then called Candia) in Crete after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Some of the best works in the church are by Titan but they are behind the altar where visitors are not allowed. Another painting by Titan, The Descent of the Holy Ghost, is in one of the side chapels but I’m afraid I didn’t like it. There’s another one by Titian in the sacristy, along with a famous Tintoretto, The Wedding at Cana. However, the sacristy isn’t open very often, and it wasn’t open today, so there was no chance of seeing either. I seem to remember that, on a previous visit to Venice, I went to Salute 3 times before I was able to get into the sacristy! 

It was closing time and we were practically the last people out of the church. Fortunately, there wasn’t long to wait before we could take the boat back to Arsenale. The sun was still shining and we appreciated the wonderful views. Lots of people were out in gondolas also appreciating the sunshine. It’s just as well to do it today, rain is forecast for tomorrow! 

We had beautiful views of the the Campanile, a glimpse of San Marco and the Doge’s palace as we passed.

I also photographed The Hotel Danieli, one of the most celebrated hotels in Europe.

 It was built as a palace in the 14th century and became famous as a venue for the first opera performed in Venice, a work by Monteverdi. It became a hotel in 1822, and became popular with the literary and artistic set. Famous guests include Dickens, Ruskin, Proust, Balzac, Debussy and Wagner. George Sand and Alfred de Musset chose it for an orgy, and, when de Musset became ill, George Sand left him and ran off with her doctor.

By the time we reached the Arsenale, the sun had gone in and there was a cold wind, so we hurried back along Via Garibaldi to the flat and cups of hot tea and coffee. 

A Better Day

Friday 12th May, 2023

We woke to better weather, and in fact there was little or no rain during the day and quite a bit of sun, though it was still cold in the shade. It seemed sensible to stress my back as little as possible, so the plan was to take as many boats as possible, do as little walking as possible, and go to see some churches as you can sit down there in between looking at the paintings and sculptures.

We began by walking to the nearest vaporetto stop, San Pietro. We walked past the church of San Pietro, which was the site of one of the earliest churches in Venice, probably established in the 7th century. The existing church dates to the mid 16th century and was the original cathedral of Venice until 1807. It’s built to a Palladian design and has a free standing campanile.

We intend to visit the church later, so I won’t say any more about it now.

We caught a boat that took us round past Arsenale, giving us views of the Doge’s palace and the Campanile of San Marco.

From there we passed into the Giudecca canal and round to the railway station. Here we changed to the number 1 boat, intending to travel a few stops down to the church of San Stae. 

San Stae is a striking baroque church, which appears to be undergoing some restoration at present, and was unfortunately closed. There was no information displayed on the church, but the internet helpfully told me that it was only open a few days a week, the next time being apparently  Sunday afternoon. So we can try again then! We took the boat back to the railway station so as to sit down to have something to eat, then we retraced our steps back down the Giudecca canal to the Redentore church. This is the Giudecca’s principal monument, having been built by Palladio. It was built in thanksgiving for the end of a plague in 1576, and every year, the Feast of the Redeemer is celebrated here in July.

This church really needs to be photographed from the water but I was on the wrong side of a rather crowded boat, and the Giudecca was very choppy anyway, so this was the best I could manage. It had to be photographed from one side as I don’t walk on water! 

The interior is more austere than many venetian churches, having apparently been a design deliberately chosen by Palladio to be humble.

The altar is rather baroque though.

I didn’t particularly like many of the paintings, which were mostly, I thought, in need of cleaning. The illustrations in the church leaflet showed the paintings to better advantage, especially a Resurrection of Christ by Bassano, and Christ’s Ascension, attributed to Tintoretto’s workshop; these were both so dark as to be almost impossible to photograph. I preferred one of the lunettes above the entrance by somebody called Pietro Muttoni, showing a Madonna and Baby Jesus and St Felix.

We caught a boat across to the other side of the Giudecca to visit the Gesuati church. This was built by the Dominicans who began work in 1726 when the Gesuati order was suppressed. The facade is quite stately, reflecting the facade of the Redentore opposite.

The interior is remarkable for the frescoed ceiling by Tiepolo, which I did not even attempt to photograph. I would have needed to lie on the floor in the middle of the aisle, and I did not think this would meet with the approval of the very stern lady who took our tickets, as well as being rather in the way of other visitors.

The interior is rather more baroque than that of the Redentore, and not so much to my taste.

I think the roundel you can see above and behind the altar is also by Tiepolo, but I couldn’t get close to it as that part of the church was roped off. 

This church is full of sculptures and bas reliefs, many by Gian Maria Morlaiter, another artist of who I had never heard. Some of the paintings here were also rather dark, but there is a Crucifixion by Tintoretto which I think must have recently been cleaned.

I also admired a sculpture of the Madonna of the Rosary by Antonio Bosa, which gives church the alternative name, Santa Maria del Rosario.

Then we got back onto the number 2 boat and retraced our steps again past the railway station and down the grand canal. I would have liked to photograph the Rialto bridge, but the boat was far too crowded for that, we would have needed to get off and I was mindful of the need to take care of my back. We changed at the Academia to the number 1 boat so we could get off at Arsenale and walk back to the flat, which takes around 15 minutes. We walked up the Via Garibaldi, a broad street which was created by Napoleon in 1808 by filling in a canal. The first house on the right of the street was the home of John Cabot and his son Sebastian, navigators who in 1497 ‘discovered’ what they though was the coast of China.

It was actually the coast of Newfoundland.

The plaque under the lion of St Mark names them, and the lower plaque, which is under the title ‘Canada’, points out that they were then in the service of the English king Henry 7th.

By the time we had walked home, my back was quite tired and I was glad to lie down and drink a nice cup of tea!

A difficult day

Thursday May 11th, 2023

Everybody slept late - Paul because he was exhausted and my friend and I because of having had a bad night. My back seemed better so I did my Zoom Pilates class, thinking the exercise could only help. However, as soon as I started showering and getting dressed afterwards my back became painful again, so there was little prospect of my going out and walking around. It was raining and windy anyway. It was also very cold - 14 degrees. Clearly, winter hasn’t gone away.

My back seemed better after lunch, and the rain had more or less stopped, so we decided to walk to the Arsenale stop and take a boat to do some sightseeing. It takes just over 15 minutes to walk from the flat to the Arsenale, and by the time we got there, my back was so bad it was clear there was no prospect of any sightseeing, so we were obliged to turn round and go back to the flat. 

Although it was not actually raining, it was very dark and the streets were very wet. 

This is the view towards San Giorgio Maggiore. You can see how dark the sky is - the rain arrived again shortly after I took this.

The sky looked slightly better in the other direction, up towards the Arsenale.

So we will hope for better weather tomorrow. And we’ll hope for my back to be better. I really don’t want to have to spend my holiday lying down swallowing paracetamol!

Arrival in Venice

Wednesday May 10, 2023

No photos today, for reasons which will become obvious!

We set off for Venice on a cold rainy day, and the weather only got worse. The plane was on time and we were quickly through passport control, though there was a very long wait for baggage. We discovered there were ticket machines for both the Alilaguna boat into Venice and the 7 day public transport tickets for the vaporetto. We were able to use the machine to collect the vaporetto tickets we had already bought on-line, but we had to join a queue to collect our Alilaguna tickets. Another time, we might not bother getting the tickets on-line since there was no queue at the ticket machines, but long queues at the ticket offices.

I got a text from my friend to say that she had fallen and broken her arm, and had gone to the hospital. She pointed out that we would need to meet her there if we wanted to get into the flat, as she had the keys. So we took an Alilaguna boat which stopped at the hospital, joining another queue. The strong wind and the wake from passing speedboats made the lagoon quite rough, even though our boat stopped whenever a speedboat approached. Not only was it very windy, the rain was very heavy and so visibility was very limited - hence the lack of photos. 

When we reached the boat dock at the hospital I found it hard to get off the boat as it was moving up and down so much, and Paul had to take my suitcase off as I doubt I could have managed it.  The rain was heavy and it was too windy for umbrellas, so we dragged our suitcases through the rain to the hospital, relieved that we had no clothes in our backpacks, as they were getting even wetter than our suitcases. 

By the time we had found the Emergency Department, our friend had been X-Rayed, had her bones set and had her arm plastered, so we just waited until she had her prescription for painkillers, and then braved the weather again to get a vaporetto to the nearest stop to the flat. Once again, I found it difficult to get into and out of the heaving boat, though by the time we got out at San Pietro, the rain had slackened a lot. 

During the walk to the flat, my back became painful again and during a subsequent visit to the supermarket for supper, it became much worse, which did not bode well for the holiday. Supper was late, and we all went to bed, though it was a long time before I was able to sleep as my back was so bad.