A beautiful trip to do once you're in Venice is visiting the island of Sant'Erasmo, the garden of Venice.
Sant'Erasmo is the biggest island of the venetian lagoon and still a place out of the crowds..

The island has been for a thousand years and still is the vegetable garden of Venice, it's products are well known all over Italy for their hi quality, specially the famous violet artichokes ,aubergines and zucchini..

You can reach this beautiful island with the public boat n. 13 from Fondamente Nuove, the trip is about 30 minutes across the lagoon and the frequency is every hour..
Get off at the first stop Capannone (Sant'Erasmo has 3 stops) and rent a bycicle at the Bed and Breakfast Lato Azzurro...you can explore the place, enter some farmers gardens and try some products, buy the unique honey of barena with the flavour of the see..
Taste the local products at Vignotto restaurant, have a swin at the very venetian beach of Bacàn and during these days until septmeber there's a great art exibition at the Torre Massimiliana of the famous painter Emilio Vedova...the exibition place is worth a visit, an old tower built in the 15th century to control the lagoon and just restored a couple of years ago.

We can't install the air conditioning system because there's no space for the engines which are not allowed to be out on the Grand Canal as well as the portable machines cannot stay out of the windows for the same reason...the police would come up as they always do as soon as some of our guests put a bottle of wine on the window sill..
The rules in Venice for the historical buildings are very strict, specially for those on the Grand Canal.
We should be much bigger like the grand hotels and have a back side where to put engines and machines, but we are not.

Sometimes we think that the air conditioning would be a plus for our guests but then...we still prefer the ceiling fan, it's healthier for our body, it saves lots of energy for the planet and it doesn't warm up the air outside...

Maybe sometimes it would be better to do as our fathers did: open up the window, breath the air, hear the noise of the people, at least in Venice this is possible, and try to remember that in the summer it must be hot as well as in the winter it must be cold.

For those of you in Venice on the nights of july 27th and august 7th there will be the choice of being present at a historical event..the installation of the 4th bridge of Venice, a piece of architecture by the spanish architect Calatrava.
The bridge will connect the railway station Santa Lucia to the car terminal piazzale Roma across the Grand Canal.
The canal will be closed on those nights to the traffic to permit the passage of the 3 parts of the bridge on special boats.
After years of disputes and argumenting between the population and its politicians, finally this big and expensive (and possibly useless) bridge will be finally placed.

We"re on Google Earth...if you want to check yourself, click on the Accademia Galleries Rooftop...
or here at: www.panoramio.com/photo/850980