Art/Anemones

Wednesday we visited Ca'Rezzonico, the early 18th century palace-home of a family that produced both doges and popes. Its enormous rooms were filled with period furniture and a great deal of art. It faces on the Grand Canal, of course, and has a water entrance for the distinguished guests who would have arrived by gondola for the balls and parties hosted by the family.

One of our favorite things there was the art album created by a wealthy nobleman, Count Leopoldo Cicignara, for his wife. It included pencil and ink drawings by the leading artists of the time. We each chose our favorite separately and were horrified/thrilled to discover we had picked the same work, of an isolated house under a lowering sky. (Guess who had which reaction?) We also loved an unusual painting of a polenta maker, one of a number of small canvases of 18th century everyday life by Pietro Longhi, and Phil was quite intrigued by several paintings of men being abused or beheaded by women.

I did chores on Thursday, to ready us for our brief trip to Sardinia, a semi-independent semi-autonomous island somewhere in the Mediterranean. Phil went to the Guggenheim, an exquisite collection of 20th century modernist art in Peggy Guggenheim's villa on the Grand Canal. He saw works from Picasso and Braque to Dali and Magritte. The most fascinating for him was an enormous canvas by Max Ernst celebrating his marriage to Peggy Guggenheim, who is presented half naked in an owl costume while the artist/groom is rendered as an onlooking stork.

We rose early to catch the boat to the airport. Our flight stopped in Rome, where we had an hour layover to make the flight to Alghero. I never buy tickets with such a short layover, and I try never to get flights that aren't nonstop, but there was no choice here. The boat was on time, the first flight was on time, the second flight was on time. (The return trip is anybody's guess. We are not thinking about it.)

Our rental car was an Audi, for heavens sake. Not what I requested but the same price, I'm not going to argue. It was quite an upgrade. And our hotel is absolutely gorgeous -- a room on a high floor with a view of the
harbor and walled Old Town. There was a bit of an Extreme Coastal Event going on -- rain and a wind so wild that I think all the flights the next day were cancelled -- but we had a cocktail in the top floor bar with a view of waves crashing in under a constantly changing sky, and when the rain stopped we walked into the Old Town and wandered around on the sea wall. It was charming and deserted. I guess tourists don't go to Sardinia in January? I can't imagine why not.

We found a wonderful restaurant nearby, where we indulged in local specialties, including fried anemones (I KNOW but they were very tasty) and oysters and wild boar and smoked ricotta with pane zichi, which turned out to be bread that masquerades as pasta. And for dessert, seadas, a kind of giant ravioli stuffed with sweet cheese, fried, and drizzled with honey. Omg. Sardinia is turning out to be quite wonderful.