Up with the lark...

Or, more accurately, up with the cold.  Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!  TMI Moment approaching!  I woke up with that horrible sensation of something needing to remove itself from my lungs, and rather than wake the soundly-sleeping Mr G, I (being completely awake, you understand), decided to get up.


So, it's now 5.01am.  I've put all the pictures on both cameras into Picasa, and I'm about to make a food collage for MGF* Kaz, who kindly sent me the pictures she took yesterday.  So, I hear you ask, where did you go yesterday?  Well, Gentle Readers, MBF* Deb kindly took Mr G & I up to Palm Beach, where we got on the ferry to Patonga, a little community which is  reachable by car, but is a very long hour and 41 minutes away... whereas via the ferry?  30 minutes.  Hard to resist, especially with views like this along the way:

And we were then picked up by the excellent folk at Pearls on the Beach, a lovely restaurant set in an old weatherboard building, on the edge of the water, where we ate and drank mightily, and I have to say not being constrained by the obligation to drive was extremely pleasant...


And now, sadly, it's 5.30am, and I have to get up - small, very small, joke there - but I will share the picture of the beautiful food with you, before I rush off to make a very ordinary ham & avocado sandwich for lunch and throw myself into Upholstery School today:

As to the occasion?  More, later.  I promise!


Ciao!

Then what?

So, where do all the Gondolas go at night? Well, they go to the Gondola Parking Lot:

There's a small dog-leg in this canal, which allows a number of gondolas to be parked there safely overnight.


We didn't go on a gondola ride this time, but probably my all-time favourite photograph came from our visit in 2006, when we went round the back-streets of Venice with Guido (and he didn't sing, but he did tell us that there is a gondolieri for every bridge in Venice, so that's about 400 guys (but no women, apparently).

What else?  We went to Torcello, an almost empty island with two restaurants and a magnificent church, with 12th Century mosaics, and signs of the original roman flooring clearly visible for those with eyes to see.


No photos allowed inside, however, but you can see them here, a bit. 


On separate days we went to what Mr Golightly caustically refers to "Lace World" and "Glass World", where we had two fabulous lunches, the Burano lunch was in a scruffy looking diner with no outside tables, no tout and no multi-lingual menus.  The only clue that the food might be OK was a hand-written sign saying "Lasagne Al Forno", which literally means "to the furnace", but actually means "cooked in the oven", or, made here.  And it was, because when I asked her "fatto in casa?", she gave me a look and said "Si, certo!!".  It was about the best lasagne I've ever eaten, with a slice of proscuitto between two of the pasta layers - fabulous.  


About half way through, a woman came in with an empty plate, had a quick chat to the restaurant owner and popped back to her shop next door.  Talking to her later when I was stocking up on lace-trimmed hankies for gifts, she told us that all the locals eat there, and that it's the best food on the island, but the tourists don't go there because it looks a bit shabby.  And it was fabulous, as was the artisanal gelato we had near the boat stop - three magnificent flavours, including dark chocolate, which I smeared all over my face and didn't realise until we'd walked all the way home from the Vaporetto.


How old is this?

The Murano lunch was equally fabulous, at a restaurant we'd read about in a book called "Chow Venice" called Busa Alla Torre, where they had a fabulous Menu Turistica, for about E15.00 - I had spaghetti with clams, and a fabulous whole sea bass, which I was quite happy to fillet myself (I was well brung up, y'know...)

Mr G had a fabulous smelling bucatini with smokey pancetta, and then something that escapes me, but he assures me it too was fabulous, then I made a complete pig of myself with a piece of their homemade strawberry tart, which was fantastic, all custardy and crumbly... yum.  We walked it all off, later, by trying to find souvenirs that didn't appear in every single shop we looked at.  That was hard work, let me tell you.


Then we got the boat back to Venice and had a long nap.  

Living treasures... made of paper

Have you seen this?

Amazingly clever.

Today, gentle reader, I sally forth to purchase innumerable paper serviettes, plastic forks (although I will hold out for bamboo if I can find them), paper plates (the sturdy kind), Stock, onions, spices, and a whole other bunch of non-perishable stuff for The Big Event, which is MWH's 50th birthday BBQ, on Saturday. He's so funny, he doesn't want "a party", so no cake, balloons or streamer-like decorations, just 40 good friends and lots of beautiful food cooked by this clever man, seen here doing things with our amazing early Christless Dinner, which he cooked, in its entirety, on the BBQ!

And then I'm going to make something with these:

which I originally bought to make this:

but instead used red dress making weight linen, from the SWICTBTWBBHNYBCAS*, and lined it with this (gotta love that Deer Valley!):

Excuse my fingers. I had to take this in the office (note the Eclipse mints tin on the desk waiting to be recycled) because, although I got up at 5.00am to finish it, I forgot to take a picture of it before I left home. And, I hear you say, why did you have your camera in the office? Doesn't everybody carry their camera around all the time? No, actually. I had it with me because we were going off to yet our office Christmas lunch on Friday, and I wanted to take photographs of the other side of where we were going to be on Saturday!

Beautiful.

*Stash Which Is Claimed To Be The World's Biggest But Has Not Yet Been Confirmed As Such