Today was rainy and gloomy from the start.  Too bad the weather couldn’t have stayed as nice as it had been, but, oh well.  The apartment was being cleaned this morning so Alan and I decided to go to the Peggy Guggenheim museum.  When we got there, there must have been 200 people waiting in line for tickets.  They were down the block, around the corner, all the way down that block, around the next corner and up to the next bridge!  There was no way we were going to wait in a line like that.  Since we were in the neighborhood we decided to go to Santa Maria della Salute or La Salute as it is commonly known.  It is a huge octagonal shaped church built to commemorate Venice being “delivered” from the Plague in 1630.  We had been there before, but it is quite unusual, very beautiful, and was a dry spot in the rain.  Here are a few pictures taken with my phone.

We then went back into the rain and went down the Grand Canal to the Ghetto where we had lunch at GamGam.  It is a Kosher restaurant with a knockout antipasti platter of Israeli foods.  I also had a bowl of matzo ball soup and Alan had tagliatelle with salmon.  Alan tasted my soup and said the right thing (under very threatening looks from me), that my chicken soup was better.  We both agreed though that my matzo balls don’t hold a candle to the ones at this restaurant.  These were the lightest, most delicate matzo balls ever!

We came back on the vaporetto a different way, out into the lagoon and got off at San Basilio stop.  From there we walked home stopping for coffee and to go into Chiesa San Sebastiano.  It is a 16th century church full of stunning paintings, mainly by Veronese.  There were no pictures allowed so we can’t share them.

On the way home we passed this little plaque up on the side of a building.  There are many, many such plaques throughout Venice and as one walks, one needs to remember to look up.

We got home about 45 minutes before we had to leave again to meet Nan for our wine tasting at Estro-Vino e Cantina.  This is the third wine tasting we have done with Nan and each one has taught us such new and different things about wine.  Anyone heading toward Venice would do well to arrange for a tasting with Nan and her company Venetian Vine.  After six different wines and six different food pairings, we walked home, still in the rain.  Good thing we didn’t have to drive anywhere.  And we only had one bridge to cross and didn’t fall into the canal.