The Seven(ty) Bridges of Venice

My second day in Venice was spent walking around the island, seeing the sights of the city and occasionally poking my head into one of the numerous (free) churches. (It's nice to see the age old tradition of fleecing pilgrims continuing well to this day.) 

I spent most of the day taking slightly random pictures of whatever caught my eye.

Above is the famous gondola manufacturer Tramontin & Figli. The boatyard was found in 1884 and still painstakingly crafts each gondola by hand.

We stopped for a small lunch by a seafood market. Some seagulls were fighting over discarded fish carcass by a drain.

Soon though, it was time to say "adio" to Venice. A parting shot of the buildings perched by the waters edge, and of a collared priest, heralding our arrival in Rome and the approaching Easter festivities.

Once on the train, a quick cold dinner of calamari and sandwiches, topped off with Italian sweets bought from a small shop while wandering the many narrow streets of Venice.

Venice, City of Boats

To start off, everything in Venice is a boat. It shouldn't have surprised me as much - Venice is intrinsically connected with gondolas and canals in my mind - but I never thought out the reasonable conclusion: all transportation is by boats. No land vehicles are allowed into Venice past Piazzale Roma, near the train station.

Other than the bus-boats, gondolas (essentially limo-boats) and taxi-boats ferrying tourists, they had refrigerated delivery-boats, garbage-boats, construction-boats; and of course ambulance-, fire- and police-boats. One particularly amusing moment was seeing a policeman holding a radar gun just behind a corner and a police-boat waiting to turn on it's siren and pull over the offending boat. (Of course there would be speed limits. My logic just apparently fails when it encounters boats.)

My first sight of Venice in the daylight were was from an outdoor seat on the bow of a rather bumpy bus. I don't generally have issues with moving vehicles, but I was about ready to throw up after the first boat ride. The beautiful views of Venice was of some consolation, but it took another two trips on a boat for me to gain my "sea legs".  

First stop was Piazza San Marco. The sky had annoying decided to be bereft of clouds in the space directly behind the angle I was shooting from. We went up the Campanile first. There was no climbing involved as the bell tower had been outfitted with an elevator during it's almost complete reconstruction in the early 1900's after it collapsed.

As with any tower, the top of the Campanile offered wonderful views of Venice from above, the red roofing vibrant in the sunlight.

St. Mark's Basilica had a really long wait and required you to check any large backpacks or other large bags. The cathedral is wonderfully Byzantine and famous for its mosaic lunettes depicting, among others, the story of how the corpse of St. Mark was stolen from Alexandria.

There were no photos allowed inside the church. You can also take the climb to see the four bronze horses.

Next stop was the Venetian Arsenal, and lunch!

Lunch started with a wonderful seafood appetizer with octopus, marinated fish, squid eggs and a delicious fish paste/mousse with milk. Then it was squid ink pasta and vongole.

After that it was back to the boats and off to Burano, or the "colourful island". There were wooden piles sticking a few meters above the water surface that marked out a sort of highway for the boats as we moved out to the open waters.

I found some more wisteria on the way to the famous island of colourful houses. The colours here were vibrant to the point of cacophony.

All that walking eventually made me hungry, so I bought some spumigile (meringue) from a rather adorable little bake shop run by a friendly old man. (I've since come to the conclusion that all the best sweet shops are run by old Italian men.)

It was slightly early by Italian standards for dinner yet, so I was temporarily sated with some fried seafood before stepping back onto the boat.

After some more wandering, the skies clouded over and the wind began to pick up. The night was spend in the hotel room with some prosecco from a corner store and take out seafood risotto from a restaurant nearby, listening to the howling of the wind and the rain pounding against the solid wood shutters.

Il Duomo di Firenze

My second day in Florence started with lining up at the Duomo bright and early. The ticket office was a bit difficult to locate. I was told "number 7 on the wall". I ran around the entire vicinity before I finally found a nondescript small metal 7 beside a door opening into a courtyard. The ticket office was hidden deep inside.

I lined up for climbing the dome first, while I still had some energy. Having climbed both Notre Dame and St. Paul's Cathedral on my last trip to Europe, the Duomo seemed a much quicker climb. (I believe there are a few hundred steps less in the Duomo.) The stairs are very narrow and become quite steep towards the top.

After climbing to the top, you're rewarded with a wonderful view of the red roof tops of Florence.

The cathedral, dome and bell tower are decorated with patterned marble in green and red on the entire façade. The construction of the cathedral spanned 140 years and 9 architects.

A small snack of lampredotto, with two types of salsa from a small cart a few steps from the dome. I tend to maybe overdo it a bit when it comes to local foods when I travel. (On my first visit to London, I ate a hearty breakfast of black pudding, baked beans, tomato, fried bread, mushrooms and sausage every single day.) I think I showed some restraint by only having tripe 3 times during my 2 day stay.

The cathedral is underlain by Roman ruins and an older church. There's an exhibition of some artifacts that were found and sketches of the plan above and beyond. The exhibit let's you walk among some of the excavated ruins and on the mosaic floors from centuries ago.

The floor of the modern cathedral above and the mosaics of the ruins below.

The Baptistery was undergoing renovations so the outside was completely covered in scaffolding. The Baptistery is octagonal and built on the location of a series of older baptistery. The octagon shape is apparently often used for baptisteries as the number 8 is very important in Christian numerology, symbolizing resurrection.

The ceiling of the Baptistery is richly decorated in golden mosaics depicting Biblical scenes, angels, and the last judgement. The full gamut of angelic beings are depicted: dominions, powers,  archangels, regular angels, principalities, virtues and thrones.

The famous bronze doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti have been restored and are now preserved in the nearby Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, behind glass in a dehumidified environment. The doors on the Baptistery are a replica. 

For lunch, there are plenty of choices in the streets radiating from the Duomo.

Pappa al Pomodoro (Florentine tomato soup)

Pappardelle al Cinghiale (pasta with wild boar)

Tagliatelle ai Porcini (pasta with wild porcini mushrooms)

Sadly my time in Florence drew to a close and I boarded the train for Venice. The first thing I did in Venice was eat more food. I was especially looking forward to squid ink risotto.

Seafood spaghetti

Squid ink risotto

Grilled fish of some sort and scampi

We stayed in a lovely hotel, that I will introduce more in my next posts on Venice.

Italy Digest

I had an amazing time during my first visit to Italy. There's too many pictures and too much to tell, so I'll start off slow with some iPhone photos while I sort through the 1200 on my camera. We visited Florence, (Cinque Terre, Pisa), Venice and Rome on this trip. Rather than a true digest, this is more of an introduction.

The flight there wasn't too bad; as usual I spent the time catching up on movies. We transferred in Amsterdam, where I got to sit on some cool Danish Modern chairs. We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel once we reached Florence. Our taxi driver was an impeccably dressed elderly Italian man in a purple sweater. In Italy, the lanes are a suggestion: 4 cars, 2 scooters and a bicycle easily drive through a three lane road. It's all traffic circles in Italy, which just added to the chaos.

"lemon and wisteria"  --  one of the many leitmotifs of my trip in Italy. Flowers blanketed daily life in Italy, unlike North America where they are too often relegated to appearances on special occasions only. They overflowed on balconies and you were bound to find a flower market on weekends.

And the food! Not just pasta and pizza, although there were many, for me on this trip. I didn't imagine pasta and pizza could taste so much better as they did in Italy. There was absolutely wonderful seafood in Venice and Cinque Terre, and of course I hunted out the local specialties, like tripe (trippa and lampredotto) in Florence. I've had more gelato in two weeks than I normally eat during an entire summer.

This is just a small sample of the overwhelming spam of food pictures to come.

Italy was a wonderful mix of the modern and the old: cars and scooters racing down narrow cobblestone alleyways, wooden shutters on leaning old buildings selling cellphone sim cards, and modern concrete buildings straddling the ruins of empires gone by. Very different from the sterile newness that pervades North American cities.  

Rome in particular was an amazing millefeuille of Baroque wrapped Renaissance churches built on Roman Republic plazas built on early Roman ruins built over ancient pagan temples.

The architecture is of course undeniably magnificent. The churches are draped in decadence: mosaics, paintings, marble and sculptures cover every surface. There's a mixture of styles spanning years and countries. I did start to get a bit of church fatigue towards the end and my neck was hurting from straining to see the frescos on the ceilings. (A quote from Mr. Demwell, my half Italian high school teacher: "ABC, another bloody church".)

I was incredibly happy with all the wonderful and amazing artworks I was able to see. Similar to my trip to the Louvre, there's an incredible sense of excitement at seeing paintings and sculptures I've studied but so far only seen in pictures. By the end of our meander through the Uffizi, I had taught my mother to recognize the Annunciation and baby John the Baptist in paintings.

(Another credit here to Mr. Demwell for his explanation of the Assumption which I used: you can't have Jesus' mother dying, especially not growing old or with sickness. No claims to dogmatic or theological correctness.)

In Venice, everything was a boat, even the traffic jams. I'll probably harp on this point again later. Garbage boat, postal boat, ambulance boat, police boat, taxi boat, construction boat...

A highlight of my trip: seeing the Pope! (I think. Does it look like the pope?)  We happened to be in St. Peters while they were wrapping up a mass.

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Next up: Cinque Terre and Pisa! (A fair warning now that there will be almost no food pictures because I was too excited and ate everything before I remembered.)