He quitted Rome about the middle of May after a sojourn there of seven months, which had occasioned him so small an outlay that he remarked thereon in his Diary. ‘The bills of exchange I took up from my first entering Italy till I went from Rome amounted but to 616 _ducanti di banco_, though I purchas’d many books, pictures, and curiosities.’ Going northwards by Sienna, Leghorn, Lucca, Florence, Bologna, and Ferrara, he reached Venice early in June. Arriving ‘extreamly weary and beaten’ with the journey, he went and enjoyed the new luxury of a Turkish bath. ‘This bath did so open my pores that it cost me one of the greatest colds I ever had in my life, for want of necessary caution in keeping myselfe warme for some time after; for coming out, I immediately began to visit the famous places of the city; and travellers who come in to Italy do nothing but run up and down to see sights.’
Evelyn had the good fortune to see Venice _en fête_, and in those days that must have been a sight well worth seeing. He saw the Doge espouse the Adriatic by casting a gold ring into it on Ascension day with very great pomp and ceremony. ‘It was now Ascension Weeke, and the greate mart or faire of ye whole yeare was kept, every body at liberty and jollie. The noblemen stalking with their ladys on _choppines_; these are high-heel’d shoes, particularly affected by these proude dames, or, as some say, invented to keepe them at home, it being very difficult to walke with them; whence one being asked how he liked the Venetian dames, replied, they were _mezzo carne, mezzo ligno_, half flesh, half wood, and he would have none of them. The truth is, their garb is very odd, as seeming always in masquerade; their other habits also totaly different from all nations.’
In Venice Evelyn made arrangements for visiting the Holy Land and parts of Syria, Egypt, and Turkey; but they fell through owing to the vessel, in which he would have sailed, being requisitioned to carry provisions to Candia, then under attack from the Turks. Forced to abandon this project, he remained in Venice ‘being resolved to spend some moneths here in study, especially physic and anatomie, of both which there was now the most famous professors in Europe.’ But in the autumn Mr. Thicknesse, ‘my dear friend, and till now my constant fellow traveller,’ was obliged to return to England on private affairs; so Evelyn was left alone in Venice. Very shortly after that he had an illness which seems to have at one time threatened a fatal termination. ‘Using to drink my wine cool’d with snow and ice, as the manner here is, I was so afflicted with the angina and soare-throat, that it had almost cost me my life. After all the remedies Cavalier Veslingius, cheife professor here, could apply, old Salvatico (that famous physician) being call’d made me be cupp’d and scarified in the back in foure places, which began to give me breath, and consequently life, for I was in ye utmost danger: but God being mercifull to me, I was after a fortnight abroad againe; when changing my lodging I went over against Pozzo Pinto, where I bought for winter provisions 3000 weight of excellent grapes, and pressed my owne wine, which proved incomparable liquor.’ Its goodness, indeed, seems to have been the death of it. ‘Oct. 31st. Being my birth-day, the nuns of St. Catherine’s sent me flowers of silk-work. We were very studious all this winter till Christmas, when on twelfth day we invited all the English and Scotts in towne to feast, which sunk our excellent wine considerably.’ In explanation of this passage, it needs to be said that he had soon again changed his lodging and gone to reside with three English friends ‘neere St. Catherine’s over against the monasterie of nunnes, where we hired the whole house and lived very nobly. Here I learned to play on ye theorbo, taught by Sig. Dominico Bassano.’