Not being a tourist in Venice

We arrived at the giudecca just as the autumn sun breathed out its last on the lagoon. An immense cruise ship was pulling in at the same time, dwarfing the Santa Maria dome and the lacy arches of San Marco, and the vaporetto curved around it like a nimble mouse before letting us, along with a surprising amount of Venetians, down at Palanca.

This time we are in an apartment, and have today been able to fulfil our dream of going to the Rialto market, buying every delicacy we can, and then going home to cook. The shopping bag soon filled up with sweet razor clams, succulent shrimp, heavy red chestnut porcini, baby flowering zucchini crisp as apples and tasting slightly fishy, curlicues of burgundy treviso, and copious handfuls of fresh leaves. Weighed down further with a couple of bottles of suoave we made our way back through leafy campos and alongside canals reflecting sea green boats and houses of crumbly red bricks, over wooden bridges and past cheese sellers, gondola repairers, book binders: Everywhere the light danced, on canapes and hanging vines, and in the ripples made from the water traffic: People seemed to hang upside down in the canal as they crossed over the ponte Santa this or into the fondamento San that.

We bought plastic sheeting to protect our friend's table on which we first cooked and ate, and on which Julian then painted a postcard from Venice.

Now it is time for dinner.

When I do concerts I never feel like a tourist because I feel like I am giving something back. Maybe I am misguided but I have a similar feeling today.