Spent the night tossing and turning about my encounter the previous night. What a potential mess. Do I need to stop being friendly? What is the secret to maintaining a distance but still being friendly? Guh. I'm chalking it up to the status of "Not My Problem." So there.
I gave the Venetian oil painting talk at breakfast. We set out for the Rialto area and Scuola San Rocco. As we were walking near Campo San Polo I heard my name being called from behind us - "Kreex! Kreex!" - it's one of the Venetian versions of my name, so I knew it wasn't one of the clients. I turned and found Safwat coming up to me. He's the restaurant owner of the nearby Dona Onesta, and a friend.
In Italian he asked me if this was my tour group - yes - and he told me I need to come see him for lunch today. He has special menu just for me. Okay, I'll be there in a couple of hours.
I turned back to the group and one of the ladies said "It must be fabulous for you to have all these men falling all over themselves to cook for you. How lucky!"
Yeah, I'm a lucky gal. Whoop de doop.
So a while later I stopped in a the Dona, and found I really was in for a treat. Safwat knows I like the Venetian traditional dish of "sarde in saor" but I'm not really a huge fan of the sardines, just the "saor" - the marinading process using onions, raisins, vinegar, oil, and pine nuts. It is so sweet and delicate, you honestly don't know they are onions and they don't taste like it.Safwat put a spin on it for me to try - he used scampi and oh my goodness, it was a revelation. Ah-mazing!!!!
He also made me a shrimp and mushroom risotto that would make you slap your mama, it is so good. And an asparagus tapenade that he took me into the kitchen to show me how he did it. What's up with the new dishes, Safwat?
He made the scampi in saor especially for me but he will be doing the asparagus from now on when it's in season as a contorni (the vegetable dish served after the meat course.) He already does a shrimp risotto and a mushroom risotto but is thinking of putting the combination on the menu as well.Mmm, so good. He could put the scampi in saor on as well, and it would entice the people who are afraid of the whole sardine thing. Sooooo, good.
I walked back to the apartment to change my blouse before going to the hotel. I had spilled some risotto on it. My little neighborhood block had a few businesses on it: a vintage clothing store, a smallsalumeria (mini delicatessen & bakery), a vini sfusi (homemade wineshop where you get your water bottle filled up with table wine for about a $1.50 - gotta love Italy) and a restaurant.
The owner of the vini sfusi and the owner of the salumeria were standing outside their shops having cigarettes and they stopped their conversation to greet me. "Ciao ciao, signora. Come vai?" I responded fine thanks, how are you, in kind. The vini lady asked me how long I am in the neighborhood and I told her only a few more days for right now. I told her that when I come I usually am on vacation and stay down the street atCampo San Barnaba. This time I am working so I haven't been there every day. Then she hollered over to the Salumeria man in Venetian dialect, an he ducked inside the shop. She chatted with me about the weather and how I often I come here. Salumeria man came back out with a package that he presented me. Coldcuts and bread - how nice! She came out of the shop with a bottle full of sfusi red wine. She spoke in Italian rather than the local dialect, thankfully. "For you Signora. It is nice to see you in the campiello. I see you hang the laundry out the window. You always smile."
How cool!
I brought my packages into the house, changed up and left again for the hotel. Tonight is the farewell dinner and the farewell for me of this contract. I am hoping that Frank offers me the job before I come home, but I think that any offer will come from the corporate folks. The waiting game...
We had a lovely time at dinner. More little envelopes, more great memories and toasts to one another. It was a rocky start after that first night but it smoothed out nicely. A lot of clients asked whyMamma wasn't at the dinner and I told them that honestly in all the years I have known her, I have never seen her out at night except for this trip. Unless it's going to church, of course.
We made our way back to the hotel and I hung out a bit with Roberto and Paulo in the Tiepolo Bar. As I left the hotel I passed the gondolier station which was closed since it was just past midnight now. There was a group of teenagers outside the Bauer hotel on the other side of the small canal, milling about and taking pictures. In the gondola closest to theboatmen's kiosk there was a girl taking a picture of a boy who had peeled the cover off the gondola and was inside of it. They were giggling and must have thought they were pretty slick.
Not cool, people. That is like breaking into someone's office, someone's business. Those boats are more expensive than most people's cars and you can't just go screwing around in them all willy-nilly. I called out to them to GET OUT, now. They were shocked that someone was butting into their fun and as I stood there with my mobile phone in my hand I told them I was dialing the police. "This is a crime." I don't know where they were from I don't know if they spoke English or not, but they definitely got my gist. I told them I was taking a picture of them to show the police when they got there. (I didn't actually take a picture.)
"Why do you care?" the girl asked.
Because it isn't your to touch or get into. They scampered away and over to the Bauer hotel and went inside, along with the rest of the kids. I waited around a few minutes then went back into the hotel and wrote a note to for the gondolier office letting them know what happened. I gave it to Marco to hand off to them when he left in the morning.
Why can't people just leave other peoples' stuff alone?
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