Venice, City of Magic

I’ll have LOADS to tell you about Venice tomor­row (Carnevale, our amaz­ing Palaz­zo of a hotel, the MAR­KETS, my new love affair with arti­chokes in every form, our nos­tal­gic trip to the Peg­gy Guggen­heim Col­lec­tion (guess who used to be an art historian?).

Right now I’m drop­ping. We got up ear­ly, went out in the rain, arrived at the vaporet­to (water bus) stop in time to hit a STRIKE, walked half an hour in an evil down­pour UP and DOWN the steps of bridges, John lug­ging all the baggage…

Home to moun­tains of laun­dry as every­thing got soaked through the lug­gage, believe it or not! Four loads so far and I’ve been home only five hours. A gor­geous sup­per of grilled beef fil­lets, red pep­per soup with creme fraiche and a warm sal­ad of can­nelli­ni beans with Parme­san (brought back in the soaked suit­cas­es!) chilli oil, fresh bread­crumbs and rocket.

Tomor­row we dri­ve Avery to the train sta­tion for her first jour­ney alone (one stop and change of plat­form!) to vis­it a friend in the coun­try. I’m get­ting per­ilous­ly relaxed about this sort of thing. But I’ll have time to blog. And I’ll leave you with this image: Brangeli­na, hand­ing their kids one by one out of a water taxi, right before our very eyes. I hate to say it: I was a bit starstruck.

But even more impres­sive… those ARTICHOKES…