Picture a little square

We have been to La Sérenissima, many many times. Though Venice today is not the Venice I first encountered in the 1990's it is still a city that fascinates, though now it is more a relic of what it once was, the current City administration has for several years moved all services to the mainland in Mestre. Venice is more and more devoted to tourism and apartments rented to visitors, hotels have become very expensive and good restaurants are rare. The Venetians are moving out, pushed out by soaring rents and speculation on the various buildings to transform them into luxury hotels. Venice always was a small city and the population was never large. Though today it is considered very small and dwindling further each year. What will become of Venice once most if not all its inhabitants are gone. The various parishes and churches which stood for centuries empty, will they be all museums for tourists to run through them?

I still remember Venice at a time when the daily rituals started at 04:00am with the returning fisherman's, then the fruit and vegetable sellers would arrive and set up stalls on the market square near the Rialto Bridge. There were grocery stores and milk and cheese vendors, bakeries and various other goods on offer. Many countries still maintained Consulates on the Grand Canal.

There are on the net several very nice blogs on Venice and much of the information is quite charming if not  evocative of a time when there were less day trippers and more Venetians.

Here is a photo of the neighbourhood of the old Ghetto of Venice in Canaregio.
I really like it because it shows Venice as peaceful and quiet, just a neighbourhood, you are not likely to see many tourists in that part of town.

Canaregio the old ghetto area, Venice

Café Florian, Piazza San Marco, Venice

Or this photo of a lady with her wire hair Dachshunds enjoying a drink in this old café frequented by Richard Wagner, who died in Venice. How so very civilized.

All I want for Christmas....

We are just 26 days away from Christmas it is cold today, brisk wind about -14C and swirling snow flakes. Will and I have been talking about what we want for Christmas, well this is what I want and I dedicate this song to Will.

Christmas Lights in Ropponghi, Tokyo.

Salute to a brave and modest nation!

Salute to a brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers , 'The Sunday Telegraph'
LONDON :

Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan , probably
almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops
are deployed in the region.

And as always, Canada will bury its dead, just as the rest of the world, as
always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does..
It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both
of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over,
to be well and truly ignored.

Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall,
waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she
risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. 
But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower
still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely
neglecting her yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American continent with
the United States , and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global
conflicts.

For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions:
It seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one,
and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.

Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world
wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10% of Canada's
entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World
War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by
Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British
order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its
unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as
somehow or other the work of the 'British.'

The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with
a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic
against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy
landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone.

Canada finished the war with the third-largest navy and the fourth largest
air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime
indifference as it had the previous time.

Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was
necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign in which the United
States had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course,
Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian
identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in Hollywood
keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary
Pickford, Walter Huston,Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David
Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter, Mike Weir and Dan Aykroyd have in
the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer, British.

It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be
Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian as a
moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of
its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of
them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that
1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the world's peacekeeping
forces.

Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest
peacekeepers on Earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN
peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular non-Canadian
imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia , in which out-of-control
paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in
disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally,
the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless
friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan ?

Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac , Canada repeatedly does honourable things
for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains
something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud,
yet such honour comes at a high cost. This past year more grieving Canadian
families knew that cost all too tragically well.

Lest we forget.

Traveling in the archipelago, the Cyclades Islands

Monday 11 October, Canadian Thanksgiving, in Thira (pronounce Fira) on Santorini Island, named after Saint Irene ( Holy Peace in Greek).  We had breakfast and went to Thira which is about 3 minutes by car from our hotel.

Thira seen from a cliff

Most old towns in Greece on Islands now visited by tourists and cruise ships have been transformed from once upon a time real villages into giant shopping malls.

No one actually lives in Thira anymore, it’s all shops selling, T-shirts, cheap souvenirs, clothing all of it made in China, even when it looks like it might have been made in Greece, there are also lots of expensive Lalique, Baccarat and Choppard stores selling gold jewellery and expensive watches, would you believe in the $6000 dollar range. Mini markets 7 eleven style and of course discos, bars, and restaurants, all promising wild adventures in sensual pleasures, what is wild are the prices, $16. dllrs for a mix drink, $ 9 dllrs for a beer, the best one was a restaurant where the chicken consommé was $13 dllrs, must have been a special chicken.

 Dominican nun Roman Catholic convent in Thira

The change on Santorini came about after a devastating earthquake in 1956 when the island which was then a small fishing community was almost deserted by its inhabitants so extensive was the damage and no State help was available just 6 years after the end of the Second World War, Greece was still an unstable country.  Land was cheap and developers saw an opportunity to buy and develop the island into a tourist resort, changing forever the look and flavour. But have no fear, you can visit a traditional village today on Santorini where happy peasants delight the visiting hordes of tourists with their simple ways.

Dad looking at the architecture

I was in Santorini 10 years ago and it was still quiet and pleasant, there were shops but all in all it was still a quiet civilized place, since then it has boomed and now it is hardly recognizable. My recommendation is to go to quieter islands in the archipelago of the Cyclades islands.

There are quite a few still ignored by the cruise ships and mass tourism, where you can have a quiet holiday and enjoy the beauty of the place.