As beautiful as Thursday was, Friday started gloomy, cold and damp. A perfect day to visit Venice’s cemetery. Knowing that our two-day vaporetto passes would turn into pumpkins at exactly 12:07 p.m., we hustled out of the apartment to the Fondamenta Nova stop, grabbing a croissant on the way.
San Michele Cemetery is an island lying just off Canareggio, about five minutes by boat from the city. Napoleon, pragmatic as he was, wanted to use Venice’s scarce land mass for more practical and commercial uses, so he closed down all the existing cemeteries in town and moved them to the island.
Today San Michelle is still the city’s only cemetery, and from Fondamenta Nova stop, we can watch the gray hearse boats run by on their procession to funerals. The coffins are placed in a gray container strapped to the cockpit of the boat as it makes the short distance from the city to San Michele. No surprise that there are several funerary shops adjacent to Fondamenta Nova, which itself is coincidentally located one stop away from the hospital.
San Michelle is fairly large but not as intrisically interesting as some of the great cemeteries like Pere Lachaize in Paris (or Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, for that matter). Only a few notable figures, including poet Ezra Pound, are buried in San Michele, and the tombs are not large, ornate or architecturally interesting. But some names do stand out.
Since the weather was threatening rain, we cut our visit short and caught the very next boat out, which happened to be on the route to Murano before returning to the city of Venice. So we toured the inner canal of Murano, all five stops before going back to the main islands.
No day in Venice would be complete without the obligatory visit to San Marco, which was beginning to fill up with weekending visitors. Although the piazza was certainly not crowded, we decided to circumnavigate the arcade of retailers and restaurants surrounding the square, since we had never really done that before.
Our exploration paid off–a six euro Bloody Mary at Cafe Aurora on the shady side of the piazza.
The bartender/barrista was swamped with coffee orders so we told her we would continue our walk and return in ten minutes. Promptly ten minutes later, she was finished her coffee duty and was ready to prepare two delicious Bloody Marys. The cheap price is only available at the bar, no table service, but the waiter motioned us to take a table anyway, because the cafe was nearly deserted in mid-morning. The Bloody Marys were tasty, and for six bucks each, the best bargain we have found in Europe so far. (Remember, they are three times as much at Harry’s a block away.)
By the time we finished our morning beverages, the sun began to break through, and we strolled back to our apartment on the now-familiar route we have taken so many times over the last two weeks. We stopped to buy some really stinky, lusciously creamy gorgonzola at the fromagerie a few doors down the street from the apartment, then picked up four tapas at the bar downstairs and brought the load of victuals up to the apartment for a lunch at home. A lunch fit for a Venetian duke.