The Big Boat.

Because of the Festa della Redentore, we had to take a water taxi to the boat.

Rosa and Catalina.

Check out the view. Venice (Mestre) is a huge, industrial port, with loading docks for coal and all sorts of shipping containers. We saw piles of UN temporary housing units bound for Monrovia, Liberia.

Catalina and her ragazzo, Stefano.

Russian-made.

A view from our terrazzo on a perfect summer day.

Unbelievable.

The new right-wing mayor and his crew —along with trying to chase out the extracommunitari— has banned eating “to-go” food in public, even ice cream! It’s a preemptive strike on littering. True, there’s a lot of trash on the streets and too many unutilized trash cans, but they should ticket people for the act of littering. Eating gelato while walking is essentially Italian. We’ve already seen a few Veronese crowding near a Gelato counter (2 out of 3 voted for this character), but the tourists are oblivious.

The Italians need a television campaign like we had when we were kids with the Crying Indian (Native American). A crying Roman? Estruscan?

From here, the next logical step would be to portray His-Holiness JPII, like I suggested in October. The time is ripe.