Yesterday was the Queen’s birthday; in London normally there would have been a parade. Not this time but at least some subjects of Her Majesty got to celebrate:
Continue reading “Lockdown Diaries: Day 33 (Sailing on the Spice Fleet)”
Yesterday the kids finally began to realise the seriousness of the situation!
Young Friend of the Elephants – who was practically bouncing off the walls in delight on Friday afternoon after her school closed indefinitely – commented that all other things being equal, she actually prefers GOING to school to online school – and it was only the second day.
And after lunch, Sophisticated Young Lady (who is actually a grown up now) asked if she could have another slice of bread or are we now rationing bread at home? (No, I was just trying not to become fat pig!)
And this was in the news:
Can’t wait for a handsome para to turn up on the door step with my shopping!
Continue reading “Lockdown Diaries: Day 5 (Venice)”
There was once a kingdom without a king, a country without a sea – ruled by an admiral without a navy.
Do you think I’m joking?!
Continue reading “Anomaly (Or The Navy of a Landlocked Country)”
Leer esto en castellano
Today we’re going to talk about – and talk with – one of my favourite authors.
Let’s start with an excerpt:
..Pisani could hear the cries from the ducal prison. Putting his head to the bars, he called out ‘Long live St Mark!’ The crowd responded with a throaty roar. Upstairs in the senatorial chamber a panicky debate was underway. The crowd put ladders to the windows. They hammered the chamber door with a rhythmic refrain: ‘Vettor Pisani! Vettor Pisani!’
Reads like a novel?
It isn’t.
It’s history – as written by the British historian, Roger Crowley.
The excerpt above is from City of Fortune, Roger Crowley’s book on the rise and decline of Venetian naval power. If you’d like to find out why – the clearly popular – Admiral Pisani (1324-1380) was languishing in the Doge’s prison and what happened next, you know what to do.
(No, I did not mean look it up on Wikipedia!)
Continue reading ““Narrative History at its Most Enthralling”: Interview with Roger Crowley”
You might also like: ⇒ Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin ⇒ Mediterranean Brilliance ⇒ Turquoise
The sky is as low and grey as no sky has a right to be on the 29th of May. The only splashes of colour on Trafalgar Square were the high-vis jackets of the far too many policemen in attendance.
And then it rained.
Continue reading “Sun-drenched II”
Mediterranean brilliance hit me like a bolt of lightning; the whole of human life was enacted on a single, fabulous, public stage against a careless backdrop of thousands of years of sublime art. Colours, foods, markets, clothing, gestures, language: everything seemed more refined, more vivid, more vibrant…
(Cees Nooteboom)
I don’t know about you but at around this time of the year, I invariably reach the point when I could murder for sunshine, flowers and the ability to go out without a coat.
(Not to mention it’s Monday.)
So what we need right now is a little sunshine:
Wishing you all a happy sunny Monday! (Click on the images to enlarge.)
A few weeks ago, when I was writing about Egyptian poetry, I made the point that reading poetry in translation is a deceptive exercise since you’re not reading the same poem that poet had, in fact, penned. You might like the translation but quite possibly would not like the original or vice versa. A sonnet by Petrarch today in two different English translations will serve to illustrate the same point… and the Venetian balcony at night will serve to illustrate the sonnet.
Hace unas semanas, cuando escribió sobre la poesía egipcia, he señalado que leer poesía en traducción es un ejercicio engañoso, porque no estás leyendo el poema que el poeta, de hecho, había escrito. Así que te puede gustar la traducción, pero lo original no, y viceversa. Hoy un soneto de Petrarca con dos traducciones ingleses servirá para ilustrar la misma idea… y el balcón de Venecia servirá para ilustrar el poema. El texto original italiano está abajo de los versiones ingleses si quieres leerlo – no hay que hablar italiano para apreciar la cadencia bella del idioma de Petrarca. (También puedes encontrar un enlace abajo para la traducción española.)
Continue reading “A Petrarch Sonnet (Venice Balcony at Night)”
Venice, the ultimate tourist destination, was already popular as far back as the 16th and 17th century: it was one of the obligatory stops on the so-called Grand Tour, when wealthy young men – principally English – travelled for a few years in Europe to complete their education. The Grand Tour was, in a manner of speaking, a posher and lengthier forerunner of the modern gap year. Or – if we’re less charitable – of the package holiday. In any case, the Grand Tourists invariably wound up in Italy; and we owe them a number of varyingly entertaining travel accounts as well as far too many paintings of young Englishmen posing in togas in front of well-known Italian landmarks.
Continue reading “Venice According to Canaletto: The Doge’s Palace (Then & Now)”
The two hundred galleys of the Holy League – Venice, the Spanish Empire, Genoa, the Papacy, the Knights of St John and sundry smaller states on the Mediterranean seaboard – were sailing south on the Ionian Sea in battle order when a small brigantine passed them: a Venetian ship from Crete carrying the news that the town of Famagusta, the last stronghold of the Republic of Venice on Cyprus, fell to the Turks.
The date was 4 October 1571, three days before the Battle of Lepanto.
Continue reading “The Gruesome News from Famagusta”
Countless films have been made about the pirates of the Caribbean, not to mention the countless books written, both fictitious and factual. But how many of you knew that there used to be pirates on the Adriatic too? Or who they were or where was their lair? (Anybody who doesn’t know where the Adriatic is is probably reading the wrong blog by the way.)
Continue reading “The Pirates of the Adriatic”
It’s been a while since we’ve been to Italy… and the weather outside is pretty grey (this passes for summer hereabouts), so I thought it was time for a new instalment of Venice in Black & White.
Enjoy. 🙂
Continue reading “Venice in Black & White II”
Recently I’ve been to Venice… as you know. And recently, I played around with black & white photography… as you also know. 🙂
Continue reading “Venice in Black & White”
Black and white is powerful… and not just in the form of black words on white paper.
Continue reading “Black & White”
I wrote the weekly photo prompt post this week for Bloggers World, and as luck would have it, I was invited to write it on the subject of doors. Or entrances. Exits and gates. The means of leaving and entering enclosed spaces, basically. Owing to the limitations on that forum, I was only allowed to share one door to play the part of the challenge prompt.
So here come a few more doors, constituting my reply to the weekly photo challenge by Bloggers World and being this Sunday’s miscellany.
I should re-brand this blog Waterblogged: Dry Thoughts On Damp Venice the rate I’m going.
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand.Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV. by Lord Byron
I blush to admit it here but before I read City of Fortune, before I stood on the Bridge of Sighs myself, looking out at the view towards St Mark’s Basin, I used to be under the impression that the Bridge of Sighs in Venice had to do with sighing lovers, like some sort of a Juliette’s balcony. In fact, the Bridge of Sighs connects the Doge’s Palace to the new prisons on the other side of the canal and the sighing was done by the condemned men as they were led across the bridge, this being their last glimpse of the views of Venice.
Continue reading “The Bridge of Sighs”
The Arsenale, the ‘Forge of War’, was Venice’s naval dockyard where the Serenissima Repubblica built the fast, sleek war galleys that ran the length and width of the Mediterranean, protecting Venetian trade and interests.
Continue reading “The Arsenal of Venice”
As you might or might not have noticed, for reasons too tedious to go into here Waterblogged moved house and this is where it’s going to live from now on.
From your point of view, I hope this means that the site will load ever so much faster, even if I put photos on it… From my point of view, hopefully it means that I can spend my time blogging rather than fixing endless software problems.
For the moment the old site is still up with loads of links still pointing to it which I will fix bit by bit before taking it down. But it’s not being updated anymore. I tried to make this site look similar to the old one and in the end, I think it actually looks better. You’re welcome to disagree. 🙂
Normal service will resume here tomorrow with the Mediterranean Miscellany but in the meantime it occurred to me it would be a good idea to find out if your subscriptions did in fact safely transfer with the blog and is there actually anybody reading this, so…
…I thought maybe we could have a caption contest!
Amateur photographers say that it’s impossible to take a good picture of a column. Viewing the results of numerous attempts I made on Nelson’s Column on Trafalgar Square, I have to agree. Nevertheless, recently in Venice I managed to take this photo:
Any ideas for a caption, please leave a comment.
Waterblogged 