Venice’s Bad Karma
On Saturday morning, I learned what a macchiatone (“big spotted one”) is: it’s basically a caffé macchiato (coffee “spotted” with steamed milk), with a bit more milk – so, somewhere between a macchiato and a cappuccino, served in a cappuccino cup. I had it with a delicious little torta di riso (rice cake).
Then Enrico and I explored some more.
^ “In this antique home of the Dario family, Henri de Regnier, poet of France, Venetianly lived and wrote in 1988 and 1901.” Venetianly?
^ This was a mystery. Was the pigeon already dead when someone gored it with an umbrella?
The apartment we were staying in was owned by a Jewish family. On the wall near the kitchen was a framed edict of 1777, issued by a prince of Venice on the orders of an “Inquisitor of the Arts”, detailing horrifying restrictions on Venice’s Jewish community. Sobering reading. The Venetians invented the concept of ghetto, apparently.
Venice is indeed a beautiful city, but it has many centuries of bad karma to pay off.