Venice to Florence

Today we ventured out to a cool costume museum in Venice. The building itself was quite pretty with painted ceilings and other beautiful detailing. The first room had a temporary exhibit with small art pieces made from natural materials, many of which could be used to make clothing. Some of these were pretty spectacular.

The clothing was awesome. The museum contained both men`s and women`s clothing. The dresses had the typical corset and large hips shape. The details on the clothing was immaculate. Think of the hours and skill that would go into these one-of-a-kind pieces and the sewing or details was likely all done by hand. There was an entire room filled with men`s vests and they all again had very fine embroided details. Just beautiful!

The museum also contained a section on perfume manufacture during the same time period as the clothing. I really enjoyed this part as I am starting to play around with making perfumes in my own home lab. If only my lab could look as pretty at this one! Mine is still a pretty great lab, but I just LOVE the wood. 

They must have had thousands of dollars worth of essential oils, musks, and other fragrances in the museum that you could smell. It will probably be the only time I ever get to smell real musk, Sandalwood, and rose essential oils as they are either endangered or prohibitively expensive.

After the museum, we stopped for a cappuccino and a quick break to rest our tired feet and backs. Then walked around the Rialto bridge and did some browsing and shopping. We bought a cool mask from La Bottega dei Mascareri, which is a tiny shop run by a pair of brothers located at the bottom of the Rialto bridge. They make top quality Venician masks by hand. Their masks have been in many movies and in famous Shakesphere festivials.

For lunch, we found a really good stand up pizza and calzone type sandwich shop and then it was back to the hotel to get our bags and make our way back to the train station for our trip to Florence.

Florence~

It felt almost like a culture shock to go from quiet, car-free Venice to the bustling city of Florence. We were greeted with a traffic jam and lots of horns. We made our way to the Airbnb apartment we rented for our first two nights in Florence. It was a cute little two floored apartment in the historic center.

We then went out to the Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella perfume shop. It is a convent that is famous for its production of perfumes, herbal medicines, and body care products. It was a beautiful shop, but very crowded and pretty pricey, so we did not buy anything.

For dinner we went to a Trattoria across the street from our apartment. It was an establishment that caters to locals with cheap, excellent food. 

Venice Day 2

Woke up with a sore throat and swollen glands...this is no good. I almost never get sick. I am placing bets that it was from the lack of air on my face when on the plane.  Stupid cheap airline...but saving $800 on flights and getting sick still might be worth it! I guess I just better not die from it!

Our hotel provided a nice little breakfast brought right to our room. It consisted of a powdered crossant, a roll, yogurt, capuccino, cookies, and toast. Along with an assortment of butter, jams, cheese, honey, and nutella. The hotel Ca' Bonvicini was decorated to reflect a regal design seen in many of the palaces. The furniture had a French feel, being white with gold painted trim and the walls were fabric covered Damask. It was located directly on one of the canals, but we had a room overlooking the road. 

One thing that I really appreciate about Venice is the lack of all cars. Even with people walking around slighty drunk all night, it is still quite quiet and peaceful at night. Clearly cars would not fit down the roads and alleys in Venice, but I am sure in other places people would have modified the bridges so they could use mopeds. Instead, everyone walks and even delivery of goods is done using true man power and carts that are specially designed to go over the bridges, which are full of steps. It must be a really exhausting job!

Today we started our day on the other side of the island at the Accademia art museum. This museum is filled with Venice renaissance art. We found it interesting that in some of the paintings you could see the people using the ancient Roman ruin, such as one where there were Renaissance people bathing in an ancient Roman bath house that was partially collapsed. 

I thought this painting was funny. There is just something about the guy on the left with his hand positioning and his face that makes me come up with funny stories in my mind about what he is saying.

We then walked back to San Marco Square and went to the Correr Museum. This museum was filled with armour and weapons, paintings, lots of statues, old coins, coin presses, Egyptian mummys, and Doge memorabilia, plus the building was itself a work of art.

At this point, we had a low point in the day when Dylan started complaining about his feet hurting from his sandals. We started back towards the hotel to get different shoes for him. Since this was a very long walk, grumpiness ensued and food indecisiveness took over as we were both tired and very hungry. We finally found a quick cheap pizza place and got two large slices to go. We decided to eat in the empty fish market on the canal and watch the Gondolas float past. This restored our senses and we were again happy.

We spent some time in the hotel to relax and get ready to go out for dinner and an opera at Musica a Palazzo.

For dinner we decided on a restaurant close to our hotel.  It turns out that this restaurant had a crazy (perhaps drunk) Turkish waiter. He put on quite an entertaining performance with his skill at getting customers to eat there. Dylan and I split a huge plate of pasta e fruitta del mare and another 0.5L of red house wine. This food was not as good as yesterday's dinner, but it was still pretty decent. 

From there it was on to the opera. Even though Dylan went pee before we left the restaurant, he had to go again within a few minutes of leaving the restaurant due to a bladder full of wine and we had a 20 minute walk to the opera. We nearly ran there for him, but when we arrived the opera was not letting people in yet. So at this point he just runs off like a crazy  person to pee in a dark alley.* It is known that Dylan must defile every place we go. I suppose it could be worse, it might have been poop and the colleseum.  Though, I suppose we still have plenty of time for that to occur! *Dylan would like me to point out that out of repect for Venice, he did not empty his entire bladder. (This, he later found out was a mistake as we still could not get into the opera right away and he had to hold it again for a bit!)

The opera was a unique experience, the show is limited to 75 guests and it has three acts. Each act is held in a different room, with wine or presecco being served between the first two acts. We saw the opera La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi. By the clothing, it appeared to be set in the early 1920's. I didn't really know what was going on as it was in Italian, but it was beautiful singing and music. 

Venice explored

We woke up this morning nice and early so we could make our way to Venice. We took the metro to Milan Centrale Station and found a little cafe where we got some yogurt with granola and fruit and a cappuccino. I am pretty sure that every food establishment in this country has a really nice espresso machine. 

We would be on the train for lunch, so we also picked up a salad, baguette, fruit, and some brie to have for lunch. The train we were on was pretty nice, it was the second fastest type of train in the country. While I don't feel that they can compare to Japan's trains, they sure beat out the US train system. They are fast, comfortable, and on time! 

Once we arrived in Venice, we had to take the ACTV boat 1 to San Stae stop. This boat/bus service is a huge rip off. I mean we spent 7.50 Euro each to go 4 stops which took only about 5 minutes. Also, it was really confusing to figure out how and where to get tickets for the boat. So we wasted a lot of time running back and forth between the different boat docks. This ment that we were now in a rush to get to the Basilica by our reservation time. So we rushed to our hotel and checked in. 

With a map in hand we then had to find our way through the maze that is Venice while trying to run through swarms of humans browsing shops to get to the basilica in time. We did not make it on time and instead arrived 10 min late, but thankfully they people at the cathedral did not seem to care. Saint Mark's Basilica is nice from the outside, but I don't feel that the outside was even close to being as impressive as the Basilica in Milan. The inside was covered in tiny mosaic tiles, the majority of which were gold. This made the ceiling an impressive golden dome. The floors were also covered in mosaic designs. We noticed a few animal mosaics that were really cute. We decided to pay the 5 Euro each to get into the museum and terrace level. This was well worth it even just for the view out over Saint Mark's Plaza. The museum had a number of old mosaics that had fallen off the walls over the years and some information on how they restored some of the mosaics from the outside-in. It seemed like a highly complicated restoration process.

After some coffee and gelato, we made our way to the Doges Palace, just next to the Basilica. This was the home and seat of the government for hundreds of years when Venice was it's own city-state and self-governed. The Palace was sparse in furniture, but was loaded with Renaissance era art. The detail put into the ceiliings in the rooms of the palace were spectacular. I can only imagine the man hours that went into producing buildings like this. One of the rooms in the palace holds the title of the largest room or 2nd largest in Europe. You have to wonder how the ceiling does not collapse. For a room even a quarter of the size, we would now need a large steel beam to hold up the ceiling. Just amazing. Seriously.

For dinner, we went to a little restaurant that was recommended by our hotel (Ca'Bonvicini-which was amazing by the way). Dylan got a squid ink pasta and I got a grilled Turbot fish with grilled veggies. They had some amazing snack food-sweet coated macadamia nuts and caramel popcorn. We shared a half liter of the house red wine, which turned out to be a very good tasting wine. And as if we were not full enough, Dylan ordered a Tiramisu for desert which was so fresh and delicious. It must have been made in house or at least locally from scratch. It had a pale yellow color instead of the typical american white Tiramisu. 

Typsy and stuffed, we wandered back to the hotel for the night. A good day overall.