On the Move - Italy (16 of 23) - Happy Anniversary
We began our day very early, leaving the hotel about 6:30am in order to wander through the deserted streets of Venice at dawn. One of our guidebooks had suggested it as the only time to have the city to ourselves. We were on the Rialto bridge--one of only three over the Grand Canal--as Dawn spread her rosy fingers across the sky, but it was fairly cloudy and that was the last we saw of the sun for quite a while. We strolled through the San Polo and Santa Croce areas to the train station, where we bought our tickets to Rome, and then back across the city. We had decided that we would buy a carnivale mask as a souvenir of the city and made a game of stopping at each shop window to pick the best on offer there. But our favorite window was that of a period clothing store offering a real suit of armor and some thigh-high boots that seemed perfect for swashbuckling. We wandered through the church of Santa Maria dei Frari to see the tomb of Canova (designed by the sculptor for the tomb of Titian, but completed by his assistants for his own memorial) and a couple of altarpieces by Titian. The church was filled with very elaborate baroque and neo-classical sculptures. Leaving there we headed back toward San Marco, poking our heads into the church of San Polo, but pulling them back out quickly, as the church was filling for mass.
We arrived back at the hotel to find a message from steve, so I called him and had him call us back again. It was the first time we had talked in over two weeks and it was so good to hear his voice. We didn't have long to talk, as we needed to get breakfast before it ended at ten, but it was lovely to chat for a bit. We had breakfast in the lobby of the hotel, which consisted of cereal with yogurt and ham spread on rolls--nothing special, but they did make very nice cappucinos. After breakfast Jason went to put our tickets away and realized he'd left his credit card in the ticket machine at the station, so we paused to call the UK and cancel it. That dealt with, we started out again, but were stopped on the landing outside the hotel door by a sign for the Murano glass shop on the other side of that floor. We wandered in and a very pleasant, effusive German man named Abdi showed us all his favorite pieces and special deals. It was quite an extensive operation, with tour groups coming through. We made note of their offerings and decided we might come back after we'd seen what there was on offer over in Murano itself.
We walked across to the Dorsoduro, across the Grand Canal, and visited the Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice's premier fine art gallery, focusing on the development of Venetian painting from the 14th to the 18th century. We saw a lot of Tintoretto and Veronese, a lovely "Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple" fresco by Titian, and a vast number of non-descript 17th- and 18th-century works, but our discovery here was the work of the late 15th-century painter, Giovanni Bellini.
Leaving the Accademia, we walked along the canal. Jason found pannini for us, which we ate in a little courtyard next to a canal with lion-headed pump streaming water. There were wells and pumps in every piazza, it seemed. Most of the wells were sealed, but the pumps were churning out water and judging from the people filling water bottles from them, must have had fresh water. We continued along the waterfront to the Palazzo Vernier dei Leoni, which was the home of Peggy Guggenheim for many years and houses her collection of Surrealist and Abstract Art, as well as the Mattioli Collection. We enjoyed a couple of Brancusi sculptures and I actually found a Kandinsky piece I didn't dislike. They had a nice Magritte and one each of Calder's mobiles and stabiles, but otherwise nothing there really grabbed me in the Guggenheim collection. We had better luck in the Mattioli section, particularly enjoying pieces by Futurists Boccioni, Balla and Rossoli. In the building at the back of the palazzo, which houses the bookshop and cafe, there was a special exhibit of the work of Severini, another Futurist who did very dynamic studies of dancers that we enjoyed very much.
We went a little nuts in the bookshop there, buying a number of postcards, a t-shirt for Jason of the Kandinsky piece we both liked, and three posters, which we arranged to have shipped home to London. We probably would have done the same in any case, but it was particularly satisfying since all of the museum's proceeds that day were being donated to the victims of the terrorist attack on New York. One of the members of the board of the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, which administers the Guggenheim Collection in Venice as well as the museum in New York, is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the WTC tenants that was hard hit by the disaster.
Leaving there, we walked down to the next vaporetto stop, San Salute. The Chiesa de Salute, with its distinctive dome, was open, so we walked through it. Most of the churches in Venice are built on the Greek cross plan, rather than the more familiar, elongated Latin cross. I find this made them seem squat to me. After that brief stop, we boarded a vaporetto to get across the Grand Canal to San Marco, where we entered the Doge's Palace just as it was starting to rain. We walked through the Museo dell'Opera, which mainly houses columns and statues removed from the Palace and replaced with copies, to protect the originals from the vagaries of erosion and pollution. That's on the west side of the building, from which it is necessary to cross the wide central courtyard to the other sections of the museum. Since there was a massive thunderstorm going on, we stood under the colonnade for a few minutes, until the rain let up slightly and we could get across without being soaked.
The Doge was the elected ruler-for-life of Venice. We visited the Doge's apartments, the State Rooms, the meeting rooms of the baroque government of the city-state, and the armory--established during a time that armed coups were feared, to stockpile arms for the loyal cadre of Republican Guards. We walked across the famous Bridge of Sighs from the courts to the prisons across the canal and wandered through an enormous complex of cells before returning to see more meeting rooms of various arms of the government. The rain had let up, but it was cold and blustery, so we walked along the covered arcade around the Piazza San Marco, looking at the shops. Jason had found a mask he liked above all others, and I liked it, too, so we took this opportunity to buy it for ourselves before going back to the hotel for a nap.
We slept somewhat later than we'd planned and when we went to the restaurant that had sounded good in the guidebook, nothing on their menu really appealed to me. It was just down the street from the place where we'd had very good Chinese food the night before, so we went there again, instead and had another very tasty meal. It was nice to have a good solid break from Italian food.
Back at the hotel we watched an episode of Stargate on the DVD drive Jason had swapped into his laptop from mine and got to sleep fairly early. All in all, it was an anniversary we are likely to remember happily for a very long time.
Next, one more day in Venice...
We arrived back at the hotel to find a message from steve, so I called him and had him call us back again. It was the first time we had talked in over two weeks and it was so good to hear his voice. We didn't have long to talk, as we needed to get breakfast before it ended at ten, but it was lovely to chat for a bit. We had breakfast in the lobby of the hotel, which consisted of cereal with yogurt and ham spread on rolls--nothing special, but they did make very nice cappucinos. After breakfast Jason went to put our tickets away and realized he'd left his credit card in the ticket machine at the station, so we paused to call the UK and cancel it. That dealt with, we started out again, but were stopped on the landing outside the hotel door by a sign for the Murano glass shop on the other side of that floor. We wandered in and a very pleasant, effusive German man named Abdi showed us all his favorite pieces and special deals. It was quite an extensive operation, with tour groups coming through. We made note of their offerings and decided we might come back after we'd seen what there was on offer over in Murano itself.
We walked across to the Dorsoduro, across the Grand Canal, and visited the Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice's premier fine art gallery, focusing on the development of Venetian painting from the 14th to the 18th century. We saw a lot of Tintoretto and Veronese, a lovely "Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple" fresco by Titian, and a vast number of non-descript 17th- and 18th-century works, but our discovery here was the work of the late 15th-century painter, Giovanni Bellini.
Leaving the Accademia, we walked along the canal. Jason found pannini for us, which we ate in a little courtyard next to a canal with lion-headed pump streaming water. There were wells and pumps in every piazza, it seemed. Most of the wells were sealed, but the pumps were churning out water and judging from the people filling water bottles from them, must have had fresh water. We continued along the waterfront to the Palazzo Vernier dei Leoni, which was the home of Peggy Guggenheim for many years and houses her collection of Surrealist and Abstract Art, as well as the Mattioli Collection. We enjoyed a couple of Brancusi sculptures and I actually found a Kandinsky piece I didn't dislike. They had a nice Magritte and one each of Calder's mobiles and stabiles, but otherwise nothing there really grabbed me in the Guggenheim collection. We had better luck in the Mattioli section, particularly enjoying pieces by Futurists Boccioni, Balla and Rossoli. In the building at the back of the palazzo, which houses the bookshop and cafe, there was a special exhibit of the work of Severini, another Futurist who did very dynamic studies of dancers that we enjoyed very much.
We went a little nuts in the bookshop there, buying a number of postcards, a t-shirt for Jason of the Kandinsky piece we both liked, and three posters, which we arranged to have shipped home to London. We probably would have done the same in any case, but it was particularly satisfying since all of the museum's proceeds that day were being donated to the victims of the terrorist attack on New York. One of the members of the board of the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, which administers the Guggenheim Collection in Venice as well as the museum in New York, is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the WTC tenants that was hard hit by the disaster.
Leaving there, we walked down to the next vaporetto stop, San Salute. The Chiesa de Salute, with its distinctive dome, was open, so we walked through it. Most of the churches in Venice are built on the Greek cross plan, rather than the more familiar, elongated Latin cross. I find this made them seem squat to me. After that brief stop, we boarded a vaporetto to get across the Grand Canal to San Marco, where we entered the Doge's Palace just as it was starting to rain. We walked through the Museo dell'Opera, which mainly houses columns and statues removed from the Palace and replaced with copies, to protect the originals from the vagaries of erosion and pollution. That's on the west side of the building, from which it is necessary to cross the wide central courtyard to the other sections of the museum. Since there was a massive thunderstorm going on, we stood under the colonnade for a few minutes, until the rain let up slightly and we could get across without being soaked.
The Doge was the elected ruler-for-life of Venice. We visited the Doge's apartments, the State Rooms, the meeting rooms of the baroque government of the city-state, and the armory--established during a time that armed coups were feared, to stockpile arms for the loyal cadre of Republican Guards. We walked across the famous Bridge of Sighs from the courts to the prisons across the canal and wandered through an enormous complex of cells before returning to see more meeting rooms of various arms of the government. The rain had let up, but it was cold and blustery, so we walked along the covered arcade around the Piazza San Marco, looking at the shops. Jason had found a mask he liked above all others, and I liked it, too, so we took this opportunity to buy it for ourselves before going back to the hotel for a nap.
We slept somewhat later than we'd planned and when we went to the restaurant that had sounded good in the guidebook, nothing on their menu really appealed to me. It was just down the street from the place where we'd had very good Chinese food the night before, so we went there again, instead and had another very tasty meal. It was nice to have a good solid break from Italian food.
Back at the hotel we watched an episode of Stargate on the DVD drive Jason had swapped into his laptop from mine and got to sleep fairly early. All in all, it was an anniversary we are likely to remember happily for a very long time.
Next, one more day in Venice...