A birthday in Venice
I normally arrange a surprise trip or a surprise something for Adrian's birthday, and as he had never been in Venice (a city he adores) on his special day, it was high time we did!
Add to this that La Traviata - an opera that we love - was on at La Fenice, et voila'!
Adrian's birthday started with breakfast in the hotel courtyard
(window boxes opposite our room)
and this is birthday boy looking out of our room
Awww, he looks happy!
One of our favourite things in Venice is to travel down the Canal Grande on a vaporetto. So we took one from S. Stae to the Piazzale Roma terminus, and one back all the way to the Lido.
We managed to get seats outside although it got busy later on with people standing: an Eastern European tourist invaded my personal space many times, with her arms surrounding my head on each side trying to take photos. But I stayed calm.
I told myself that I didn't need to take yet more pictures of the Canal Grande (I have a large collection of photos taken over the years), but well it's impossible to resist!
(The gondoliere on the right was on his mobile phone... tut tut!)
I had promised Adrian a lazy day but it's an unwritten rule that on his birthday we always end up walking/marching somewhere.
We decided to have a look around the Lido (we had been before but not on the side facing the sea) but it turned out that the map from the hotel was not quite to scale!
So we walked much more than expected and in the end had to catch a bus back to the vaporetto stop (the Lido has cars) as we were pretty exhausted.
All the beaches were already closed for 'winter' (but it was so warm that we had to remove all but one layer)
This is the Palazzo del Cinema, famous for the Venice Film Festival
You get a different view of the lagoon and of Venice from the Lido
We took the vaporetto back to Venice
and got off at Accademia. Crossed the bridge
and had a pizza at a restaurant on Campo S. Stefano
We then walked to Palazzo Grassi, a palace on the Canal Grande which is used for art exhibitions.
The palazzo - as part of the Biennale - houses a retrospective of Italian artist Rudolf Stingel.
The main attraction was the palazzo itself because it had been transformed into an art installation by fitting carpet on three floor - and from the first floor up - on the walls too. The carpet is a photographic reproduction of Turkish rugs; they have the peculiarity of looking blurred close by but sharp from a distance. (Apparently the inspiration was the rugs that Sigmund Freud had in his Vienna studio).
It's quite impressive
Some of the art left me rather underwhelmed...
(now this is Art!)
We really enjoyed our visit at Palazzo Grassi.
When we left we had to rush to catch a vaporetto (water bus)
back to our hotel to get ready for the evening.
The vaporetto was packed; just before we got off at S. Stae, an old lady pushed through the crowds complaining about how busy it was. She went on to state that she was a Venetian, 100% disabled and that she had to put up with all that.
Fair enough, I thought (although my 2 crutches won over her 1 stick) but couldn't help smiling considering that without the tourists the vaporetto wouldn't probably be running. In many ways, she represented what most Venetians think of tourists: we want your money (a vaporetto ride is 7 euros!) but not you!
If it wasn't for the tourists, I don't know where Venice would get the money to survive.
Anyway, we got back to our hotel, changed and we were back waiting for a vaporetto in the opposite direction (luckily we had bought a 24-hour pass for 20 euros each).
The vaporetto was rather late and there was a lot of traffic on the canal (rush hour!), so we got to La Fenice only 10 minutes before the show
I had booked (last October!) 2 tickets in the gallery, in central position. I was expecting 2 seats in a row but it turned out that it was a little (unadorned) box with 4 chairs. We had the 2 front ones and there was no-one else in the other two. Eccellente!
The performance was preceded by the Swedish and Italian national anthems (to honour the presence of the Swedish ambassador in the audience).
It was excellent and we loved it.
I expected a modern staging (which it was - it was directed by Canadian Robert Carsen) but it was quite lavish at the same time.
It was wonderful to see La Traviata at La Fenice as the opera had its premiere there in 1853.
We noticed that people dress up much more than they do in London. We had a drink in the intervals (the first one was very rushed because some of the ushers started yelling to go back to the seats when we still had 10 minutes ago and we had just been served the drinks; a German gentleman got very irate and just thrust his drink into the hand of an usher saying "You drink it then!" Needless to say, in the second interval we just ignored them until it was really time to go back)
Bravi!
Buon compleanno Adriano!
Now how can I top this next year? LOL!
Add to this that La Traviata - an opera that we love - was on at La Fenice, et voila'!
Adrian's birthday started with breakfast in the hotel courtyard
(window boxes opposite our room)
and this is birthday boy looking out of our room
Awww, he looks happy!
One of our favourite things in Venice is to travel down the Canal Grande on a vaporetto. So we took one from S. Stae to the Piazzale Roma terminus, and one back all the way to the Lido.
We managed to get seats outside although it got busy later on with people standing: an Eastern European tourist invaded my personal space many times, with her arms surrounding my head on each side trying to take photos. But I stayed calm.
I told myself that I didn't need to take yet more pictures of the Canal Grande (I have a large collection of photos taken over the years), but well it's impossible to resist!
(The gondoliere on the right was on his mobile phone... tut tut!)
I had promised Adrian a lazy day but it's an unwritten rule that on his birthday we always end up walking/marching somewhere.
We decided to have a look around the Lido (we had been before but not on the side facing the sea) but it turned out that the map from the hotel was not quite to scale!
So we walked much more than expected and in the end had to catch a bus back to the vaporetto stop (the Lido has cars) as we were pretty exhausted.
All the beaches were already closed for 'winter' (but it was so warm that we had to remove all but one layer)
This is the Palazzo del Cinema, famous for the Venice Film Festival
You get a different view of the lagoon and of Venice from the Lido
We took the vaporetto back to Venice
and got off at Accademia. Crossed the bridge
and had a pizza at a restaurant on Campo S. Stefano
We then walked to Palazzo Grassi, a palace on the Canal Grande which is used for art exhibitions.
The palazzo - as part of the Biennale - houses a retrospective of Italian artist Rudolf Stingel.
The main attraction was the palazzo itself because it had been transformed into an art installation by fitting carpet on three floor - and from the first floor up - on the walls too. The carpet is a photographic reproduction of Turkish rugs; they have the peculiarity of looking blurred close by but sharp from a distance. (Apparently the inspiration was the rugs that Sigmund Freud had in his Vienna studio).
It's quite impressive
Some of the art left me rather underwhelmed...
(now this is Art!)
We really enjoyed our visit at Palazzo Grassi.
When we left we had to rush to catch a vaporetto (water bus)
back to our hotel to get ready for the evening.
The vaporetto was packed; just before we got off at S. Stae, an old lady pushed through the crowds complaining about how busy it was. She went on to state that she was a Venetian, 100% disabled and that she had to put up with all that.
Fair enough, I thought (although my 2 crutches won over her 1 stick) but couldn't help smiling considering that without the tourists the vaporetto wouldn't probably be running. In many ways, she represented what most Venetians think of tourists: we want your money (a vaporetto ride is 7 euros!) but not you!
If it wasn't for the tourists, I don't know where Venice would get the money to survive.
Anyway, we got back to our hotel, changed and we were back waiting for a vaporetto in the opposite direction (luckily we had bought a 24-hour pass for 20 euros each).
The vaporetto was rather late and there was a lot of traffic on the canal (rush hour!), so we got to La Fenice only 10 minutes before the show
I had booked (last October!) 2 tickets in the gallery, in central position. I was expecting 2 seats in a row but it turned out that it was a little (unadorned) box with 4 chairs. We had the 2 front ones and there was no-one else in the other two. Eccellente!
The performance was preceded by the Swedish and Italian national anthems (to honour the presence of the Swedish ambassador in the audience).
It was excellent and we loved it.
I expected a modern staging (which it was - it was directed by Canadian Robert Carsen) but it was quite lavish at the same time.
It was wonderful to see La Traviata at La Fenice as the opera had its premiere there in 1853.
We noticed that people dress up much more than they do in London. We had a drink in the intervals (the first one was very rushed because some of the ushers started yelling to go back to the seats when we still had 10 minutes ago and we had just been served the drinks; a German gentleman got very irate and just thrust his drink into the hand of an usher saying "You drink it then!" Needless to say, in the second interval we just ignored them until it was really time to go back)
Bravi!
Buon compleanno Adriano!
Now how can I top this next year? LOL!