Summer birthday special

Of a special summer birthday.


It was truly marvellous to have a hot hot hot Venetian summer birthday. A real change from my usual wintery celebrations. In fact we all agreed that Sunday felt like the hottest day of summer yet.

Finn and I started the day with birthday breakfast bellini...

F putting the deliciously ripe white peaches through the potato ricer
 - a highly effective peach juicer, it turns out.

Constructing the most delicious breakfast cocktail
 - rosy refreshing peachy deliciousness.

Cin cin!

Here I am going to backtrack slightly though, because, really, this year's birthday was, unfortunately, not all rosy, although mostly it was.

Earlier in the week, before my (Sunday) birthday, on Wednesday to be precise, we all took off to the beach at Lido straight after work.
Ok here I better back track slightly more...

The beginning of this tale lies in the fact the Finn is shrinking. Not in height, but in mass. Since moving to Venice and giving up heavy, muscel-producing work, Finn has been getting smaller, most noticeably his hands - his finger joints particularly have been shrinking. For the first two and a quarter years of our marriage, Finn would've needed the aid of soap if he'd ever desired to take his wedding ring off. Over the last three months though, fiddling with the ring has become an increasingly precarious pastime. Then, about two weeks ago, as we said our "see you tomorrow"s to S&A around the side of the Arsenale, Finn waved goodbye and his ring flew right off his finger, bouncing once on the step of the bridge we were crossing, rising at just the angle to go straight through the railing but somehow, miraculously, hitting the railing itself and falling back onto the step. How lucky and what relief did he feel, did we feel, in that moment?! Well, a lot, but obviously not quite enough, as no precautions for future recurrences were taken.

So where the tale goes from here you can pretty much figure out. Playing with a beach ball in the sea at Lido, Finn's wedding ring flew past me, glinting golden in the bright low sunlight, and plopped into the Adriatic. Having seen it land, I immediately called to Finn to dive in and retrieve it, pointing straight to the spot. He hadn't even noticed it was gone though, and took too many moments to figure out what was going on, during which time I became increasingly frantic. Svetislava, ever practical, rushed out of the water and borrowed a snorkelling mask from someone on the beach, but the visibility was terrible and we couldn't find it. In the end we spent an hour or more searching for it unsuccessfully. It was maddening, as we all knew it was just there, if only we could figure out exactly where just there was. We left the beach feeling sad and frustrated, but Svetislava was not ready to give up and, on the way back to the vaporetto, inquired at all the hotels and tabacchini about getting hold of a metal detector.

The next morning, knowing full well it was still just there, Finn and I were not prepared to give up so easily either and so we armed ourselves with a pair of goggles and a colander each and headed straight back to the beach. Orientating ourselves with the red pole near 'the spot', we resumed our search. Visibility was much better, but our idea of scooping and sieving the sand with the colanders was fairly useless. So we swam around and around, digging with our fingers and trying to avoid hermit crabs, but again to no avail. After a couple of hours it was time to head to work and this time when we gave up, we felt really like we were giving up. We'd tried, but there was nothing more we could do. It was time to move on.

As our wedding rings had been made out of recycled gold - family rings acquired by David, my father, melted together to form two new rings - Finn immediately began an internet search for scrap gold. Svetislava though was still not ready to give up. Eventually, through someone she knew who knew someone who had a friend in a sub-aqua company, she arranged for a guy with an oxygen tank and an underwater metal detector to meet us back out at Lido on Saturday afternoon (his first available appointment).

Matia and Finn
- looking very optimistic with the presence of the metal detector.

With S&A covering for me back at the boxes, Finn and I began our third-time-lucky search at Lido. We swam out and again located the spot, this time feeling like we'd be in for a highly celebratory evening. (In anticipation of this, and also of my birthday celebrations, we had gone early to the Rialto markets to stock up on deliciousness, as the markets are closed Sundays and Mondays.) The Adriatic, it seems, had other plans for Finn's ring. An hour of swimming backwards and forwards with the metal detector, forming a wider and wider search zone (with emphasis on the direction of the current), retrieved nothing, not even someone else's lost treasure. Perhaps we should've offered to pay more (100 euros seemed like a small price to pay at this point for the recovery of the ring), who knows how these things work in Italy, but it didn't have that feel about it. The ring simply could not be found.

We were, we are, so disappointed. Our hopes had been raised all over again, and dashed all over again. So we are sad all over again. But we really feel like we tried everything, there is nothing more to do now but begin planning the replacement - my ring will be melted down with whatever other old gold we can get our hands on, and two new rings will be created, though not until we're back in Wellington. In the meantime, perhaps we'll acquire Finn some kind of cheap street vender temporary Venetian replacement. 

So on Saturday night we had a lovely dinner celebrating only my birthday-eve and not our wedding ring retrieval. 

A bowl of sea snails (remnants shells in the bag on the left), whole flounder with green olives, and potatoes fried with leeks and anchovies - a highly delicious variant on the quintessential fish and chips.

And so began my birthday celebrations.

On my Sunday birthday, pasticcini were enjoyed with the bellini featured above, and followed (at the pavilion) by family lunch (our Danish pavilion Sunday tradition). Unfortunately I was in too much of a hurry to eat the superbly delicious frittata Finn made, so no photos exist. When S&A surprised us with birthday cake and more birthday-bellini though, Finn got hold of the camera.

Summer birthday cake deliciousness
- chilled custard cream fruit sponge. Yum yum yum yum yum.

After work we went to a nearby greenhouse bar for our third bellini-type drink of the day. It was sweltering hot!

Watermelon, peach, raspberry, prosecco - mmmm refreshing.

Finn and Svetislava made some very sweet, very hot friends.

The next day - weekend Monday - we returned to Sant'Erasmo (the garden island featured previously in Recovery) for my first ever beach birthday fun day.

We found the perfect spot on the beach under a tree.

Svetislava came with some friends of theirs we had met a few times - visitors from Barcelona and Macedonia - but Arnel had to stay home and work.
We had a wonderful picnic - a 6.55kg watermelon, special Venetian artichoke hearts from our dinner the night before, bread, herby mushrooms, cream cheese, spek, tomatoes, smoked mozzarella....
Books and magazines to lounge away the hours.
A wild fig tree to raid again, this time from the vantage point of Finn's shoulders.
And swims between every episode, in a narrow deep channel where the boats come into the bay between the mudflats.
It felt so much like being on holiday. From the moment you step off the vaporetto and walk along the road beside fields of vegetables, gardens shaded by fruit trees and grape-covered pergolas, it is like you have arrived somewhere very removed from Venice. Unlike Lido, the beach itself is lined with trees, behind which are more gardens. There are two bars supplying essentials such as ice creams and beer, but not a rentable beach hut in sight, let alone endless tiered rows of the things. So it is much quieter, much more relaxed. Locals arrive by boat and wade or swim between their umbrellas set up on shore and the awnings on their boats. I want to point out here that one sun umbrella is not enough - people have a minimum of three, providing essential shade to retreat into. Lucky we got a tree!

Pizza for dinner from our excellent local continued the relaxed feeling right to the end. Not to mention the hazelnut and yoghurt (two separate flavours) gelato with lightly caramelised figs...

What a sweltering, fun, and delicious summer birthday!
Fantastico!

23 August 2011