Bridge Forty - Ponte Storto o Caotorta

Now we were back on track and standing still to look at the Ponte Storto o Caotorta in front of us, after having added an extra bridge well worth including in our planned itinerary.



We were watching another of those 'meet you at the bridge' scenes, where two people are having an impromptu or planned tête-à-tête at a bridge above the glimmering, almost painted  surface of the canal. We've seen many of these so far, too many to be a coincidence. It reminded me of a line in Leonard Cohen's song, The Stranger:

"Let's meet tomorrow, if you choose
Upon the shore, beneath the bridge
That they are building on some endless river . . ."

And two lines later the answer comes:
'And you say okay, the bridge or someplace later.'

We now walked across the Campo Santo Stefano with its white marble statue of Nicolo Tommaseo, author of a substantial, eight volume Italian dictionary completed in 1874, placed in the centre. A mime artist was entertaining passers-by along one section of the square, and I thought that for a busy tourist city such as Venice there were actually very few street artists to be seen. During the whole day we saw no more than three or four musicians and other performances artists along the way.