Venice

Shopping...

Venice is know for it's production of glass...especially blown glass. So of course they had some really nice and really cool glass platters, glasses, cups, etc.



these glasses were my favorite...too cute!!!


there were also some vases...I didn't like them as much as the other things but they were everywhere so I thought I would include them just in case...



They also had street artists everywhere. You could buy these oil paintings that were just on like a watercolor paper or you could get a black and white drawing of the city. Inside the actual gallery shops were more paintings that were actually on a stretched canvas instead of paper...those were often framed and obviously more expensive.
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Beautiful Venice...


It was a bit hazy but not in a smoggy sort of way, more of a mist that faded out the distance. And the water was gorgeous (even though it's supposed to be toxically disgusting...a professor was honeymooning in Venice, got off the train and looked at the Grande Canal for the first time and saw a dead pig just bobbing along...you never know what you can find in these waters). You know college kids love to do crazy things and we probably would have ended up jumping in at some point in the trip but we were very strongly (and effectively) discouraged with stories of last semester's students who jumped into the canals and became horribly sick...yikes.









As you would expect, there were gondolas everywhere and we actually got to ride in one one day...we were all excited and getting all wound up and we get in the little boat and we're riding away and then like 2 minutes later (after we had crossed the canal) we docked and had to get off...quite a tease. But apparently there are only 3 bridges that cross the Grande Canal and so a quick and cheap way to get to the other side is to pay like 50cents to ride in a gondola across.

see...I am definitely waaaaaay too excited.



And there were restaurants that had out-door dining on the canal and little accordion players ...so Italian.


and of course you've hear that Venice is sinking...


well it really is...a lot of the stairs leading up to the doors of houses are under the water (as you can see). We actually heard something about some possible deal with Walt Disney. Something like Disney wants to buy the city and the city is considering it because Disney is so good at handling large crowds and they could market the city and raise more money which could be used to help restore and preserve the place.

A Palladian church...they were everywhere and they all look the same.

On the island of Murino there was a glass museum where they displayed the history of glass making and glass blowing in Venice. These were some reeeeeally old pieces...

and a little bit of stuff from the 17th century...

and some really cool modern stuff like this octopus by Carlos Scarpa (who is also an architect). There is actually a larger (actually HUGE) octopus that he designed which is held in the gardens of this museum but the gardens were closed so this is all we got. But I really liked this little octopus...you have to remember, too, that this was hand made!

This was just a really pretty more medieval church that I don't even remember the name of...it was just picturesque...

A delightfully cluttered bookstore...I'm definitely a literary person because little stores like this just make me happy...we poked around and found everything from cook books to architecture and fashion to novels to romance novels and ancient leather bound copies of The Canterbury Tales to some pretty explicit... ummm... material...lol. Anyways it was fun to just poke around in here.

We went up into the tower of one of the churches and got to see the whole city...we were up in the bell tower, and we about shat ourselves when the thing actually went off...I mean, we were practically inside the stupid bell when it rang.

Awwww! This is my cute little Italian professor, Stephano Fera. He teaches one of our History and Theory classes and he meets up with us in the cities we visit and gives us guided tours of the cities' architecture. This man is full of information...he knows random and interesting details and stories about everything. Anyways, he is just too cute and looks like such the Italian...