A day at the Guggenheim

...And now it's days later, and I've missed all kinds of things; missed our time in Siena entirely. Will fill in later, with pictures at the very least. But just now I've woken up from yet another nap, and it's the evening of our second full day in Venice.

It's been a lovely day. Got up, ate the B&B's roomsevice breakfast (apricot-filled croissants & cappuccinos & little crunchy toasts & 'Nutkao' - tasty Nutella knock-off), and then spent the whole rest of it (11am-5pm) in the Guggenheim Museum, just down the road. Paying the entrance fee for the museum let us see lots of lovely and interesting art, but more than anything I think I loved the museum itself. Such beautiful spaces - a wonderful calm sculpture garden with cool shade and tall trees, a terrace looking out on the Grand Canal, and the museum cafe in a glass-enclosed balcony looking onto the garden.

They gave us a cocktail on the terrace at noon (a 'spritz' - prosecco, soda, Aperol, and an orange wedge - sweet and bitter and orange-y and cool), which gave us a great excuse to hang out there admiring the view. All that stuff about Venice's canals smelling bad in the summer seems to be hooey. It just smells like the ocean. And sitting in the warm humid shade with a cool drink, looking out over the water & watching the boats go by, was so very pleasant.

Time drifted by, and when we'd finished looking through the museum and wandering in the garden and admiring the view from the terrace just one more time - it was already 3:30 in the afternoon. I would ordinarily have been very unpleasant company by this point, not having eaten for so long, but today I just got floaty, rather than grumpy. How nice, I thought. (Derek agreed.)

Had a lovely lunch in the museum cafe. Derek got penne pasta with tomato sauce & grated cheese, and a glass of fresh grapefruit juice. I had a glass of red wine and a caprese salad - pretty good tomatoes, wonderful fresh mozarella, great little black olives, and baby leaf-lettuce, topped with yummy olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Lovely and fresh and cool, this was the meal I'd been envisioning almost since we decided to come to Italy. Both dishes were meant to have fresh basil in them, but I think they must have been out. And both were lovely anyway.

And then it was 5pm, and we came back here and had a nice long nap. In a bit we'll gather ourselves & decided what to do for dinner. I'm still feeling very drifty....