A Stormy Day

July 7, 2009

Today was our second class. Will and I are still working at verbs, reading dialogs, trying to answer questions, and generally feel as if we are making some progress. However, Diego, our instructor, is a very new teacher and speaks very quickly so he can be hard to understand. Peter's class is actually having conversations.

Since there was a transportation strike all over Italy today, that meant that the vaporetti were on strike part of the day. We had no trouble getting to Sant'Elena and we could walk to San Marco, where we were meeting for a tour of the Marciana library after lunch. As we walked, the sky got darker and darker. We had planned to have lunch near the Piazza San Marco, although not on the riva, but we found a relatively inexpensive restaurant and sat down since it looked as if it would start raining soon. However, the waiters started taking down the umbrellas and told us there would be a big storm soon. Since there were no free tables inside, we went to the next restaurant which was more expensive but was enclosed. Just after we ordered the skies opened. We had a huge storm and it rained hard for half an hour. Evidently on the mainland there was large hail but we just had thunder, lightning, and wind. Fortunately we stayed dry and had a nice lunch of salad with chicken and cheese and a pizza before going off for our tour and by then the rain had stopped. Unfortunately my suggestion of the pizza to save money meant that I itched for the rest of the day.

We had been on a tour of the Marciana in 2006 when we took the student to Padua but it was nice to go again, especially since there were only four of us. I was hoping we might get to see some less public areas but even just seeing the public rooms built by Sansovino and decorated by famous artists of the sixteenth century was very nice.

Then I made an appointment to have my hair cut by Susy's hairdresser next week, just before we leave Venice. He is in Spain at the moment but he will be back before we start our barge and bike trip. We also stopped at an internet point near Campo San Stefano. I didn't get much done before all their computers shut down but I did get an email from Laura so we are meeting on Friday afternoon for a drink.

We walked back via the Accademia and Campo San Barnabà and found another internet point between San Barnabà and San Tomà. It is really small and the computers look pretty old so we will probably go back to the one we usually use near the Campo SS Apostoli. It has lots of computers and we get a discount.

Tonight we just did some studying and I made pasta for Peter and a salad for me. It has been fairly warm and very humid so I haven't felt like eating much hot food. Tomorrow I will have to rethink dinner again. I have several more pasta dinners for Peter, but nothing for me.

Our activity is in the late afternoon again, so I am not sure exactly how we will schedule our time.