Day 8 - Tuesday 19th September - Treviso

Today we were heading to Treviso by train to see the Italian Rellas, i Trevisani. It had been raining all night and would be raining all day so a good day to get out of Venice. Set off with our brollies and weather appropriate shoes and caught the vaporetto at Ca' d'Oro to the station, bought our tickets,  remembered to validate them so we wouldn't get fined, and we were on our way. When we got to Treviso railway station Moira and Lucia were waiting for us.  So so lovely to see them both. Moira had a day off work and Lucia is now retired so they took us for a passegiata under their big umbrellas, Lucia took John's arm and I took Moira's and we strolled around until it was coffee o'clock. They took us to a gorgeous new cafe called 'Caramella' where we talked the legs off the chairs, as Alison would say, drank coffee out of very pretty cups and enjoyed tiny cupcakes. We then went through the market and into a new fancy food store that's opened up, them headed back to the station where Lucia had parked the car. We headed to Moira's place where we helped her get some lunch ready. Marco arrived for lunch - great to see him again too - and we ate and talked and talked and caught up on everything. Then it was time for Marco to go back to work and for Lucia to pick Giovani, her son, up. We helped Moira tidy up then she took us for a drive in Marco's very fancy new Citroën seeing as it was still raining. She decided we could go to Possagno, a small town in the Province of Treviso where the famous sculptor Antonio Canova was born.  We visited the house where he was born then went to the Gypsoteca di Canova. It's a gallery full of plaster replicas of all his marble sculptures that are all over the world in various famous museums and there were also some of his small terracotta sculptures in glass cases on metal stands. We wandered around the first few halls full of lovely sculptures and saw Le Tre Grazie that my cameo is modelled on. We went through to another hall and as I was wandering around the sculptures looking at the small terracotta ones I failed to see the one and only step. We were walking on a white marble floor on a slight slope down and the step, which had only one dark line at its edge led to an equally white marble floor and not easy to distinguish. And besides, the display was set up so that the small displays were at eye level so that's what I was looking at.  Anyway, I went flying spectacularly through the air,  the whole time willing myself not to topple any of the glass cases containing these precious artworks over. I ended up at the base of one of the said cases,  next to the wall. I hit my bad knee on the metal base, twisted my left foot badly and injured my right foot and shoulder in the process also. Moira and a couple of young men ran over while John slowly appeared,  all concerned I'd hit my head but head was OK, just everything else was hurting, especially my pride. I told Moira this is what happens when you take little old people out on excursions! John helped me up and they took me over to a lower section to sit down. When I was feeling OK I hobbled around the rest and then out. Moira took us to a nearby cafe and got some ice for my knee. After a little rest we piled into the car and headed back to Moira's to wait for  Marco to get home from work so we could go out to meet Lucia, her partner Paolo,  Giovani and Matteo, my other cousin Eleonora's son. She is Lucia & Marco's younger sister. We did stop in  at Marco's bicycle store on the way there first. Moira put ice packs on my knee and foot for a while before we left then headed to a restaurant Lucia had chosen near where they all live - Wild Buffalo Steakhouse. Not very Italian but there was lots of room to accommodate such a big group. By the time we got there I wasn't feeling 100% and my foot was killing me.  We all had great meals, talked laughed, took photos then we said our goodbyes and Marco & Moira took us to the Piazzale Roma in Venice so we didn't have to catch the train. So lovely to see them all again. Shame we didn't get to see Lorenzo but he was in Trieste where his university is and he'd had exams to sit. We just missed a vaporetto so waited for the last one to go (11.41pm) and then slowly hobbled painfully back to our apartment.