Italy: Venice

We entered Venice at night on the water bus.  The buildings and bridges along the grand canal were lit beautifully.

Rialto Bridge

We stayed at the Hotel Colombina right on the canals.  When you entered the lobby it was like you were stepping back in time to the 18th century.

It was Carnival Season in Venice.  WOW!  With my husband's costume fetish I can't believe we didn't dress up, but nothing we have would have compared to the costumes we saw on St. Mark's Square.

Carnival was pretty tame compared to what I had imagined.  Surprisingly the square was quite by about 9PM.  It was very family friendly and a lot of fun to people watch.

They had a stage set up at the end of the square with big screens and a seating area where they had different kinds of performance groups scheduled throughout the day, but the highlight was walking around and interacting with the people in costume.

The first day we were in Venice we took our walking tour.  The guide was a little different that the ones we have had in the past.  I tried to loosen him up a bit and got labeled as "the joker" of the group.  Imagine!  I don't think I have ever had that label or anything like it before.

I actually took over the tour for a little bit to help out.  I think he just got tired of me asking questions and figured if I was talking to the group I couldn't ask him anything.

Bridge of Sighs

Venice - Trade Center of the World

Our group at the Venetian Shipping Trade Center

The tour was a marathon.  What was supposed to be one and a half hours turned into about four and because I had made friends with the guide, I didn't feel we could slip out.  I think he was just lonely.  After the marathon tour we even got an extra tour on the side and learned all we ever wanted to know about the Venetian water system.  Of course I did ask the question...I hope we made his day.

St Mark's basilica was beautiful.  The mosaics were astounding.  Since the written scriptures weren't available to all classes the scripture stories were told through these mosaics on the ceiling.  Do you know this bible story?

Each tile was about as big as a contact lens.  What dedication it must have taken to put these scenes together.  Each dome or section along the nave told a different story.

The gold represented enlightenment from heaven and the whole ceiling was covered in it surrounding these mosaics.  Most of the decoration for this chapel came from the booty of returning sea captains. We were also able to view the treasury with religious relics from all over the world and the golden altarpiece.  Due to all the gold in the ceiling and the daylight coming in through the windows, the inside of this basilica was actually glowing.

The highlight of my Venice trip (besides the cute shops, carnival, and being in a place like none other in the world) was attending the Interpreti Veneziani Concert in the San Vidal church.  This was a small chamber orchestra that performed mostly Vivaldi's works, in its true 18th century baroque fashion.  The audience was small, the music was grand and the setting was classic.  Vivaldi is one of my favorite composers so this was a real treat and these guys were really good!  Each piece was wonderfully played and all the performer's love of music was evident.  The excitement on stage was contagious and had me smiling through the whole concert.

Venice is most certainly a place I would want to visit again.  Next time I want to hit the nearby islands of Murano and Burano that time constrained us from doing this trip.

Italy: Milan

I was lucky enough to have a few travel companions with me this trip.  My Mom heard we were planning a trip to Italy and put a bug in my Dad's ear.  He surprised her with tickets for her birthday.  This made it so nice when Eric had to work, I didn't have to sight-see all by myself.  The tiny flat they rented in Milan was just around the corner from our hotel.

We spent two days in Milan.  We loved the walking tours we had taken in Barcelona last year so much we decided to start each new Italy location with one.  You get a little local history and a guide that will answer your travel questions to plan the rest of your trip.  They give you the current happenings around town, some pointers for seeing the most popular attractions, and taking their tour gives you an opportunity to meet other tourists and make some new friends.  In Milan we took the free walking tour.  (www.newmilanfreetour.it)

Here are some of the sights we saw:

Of course we had to go to the Milan Cathedral, also known as the Duomo.  It is the fourth-largest church in Europe.  Unlike the other cathedrals in Italy this cathedral stayed true to the Gothic architecture with which it was started and forfeited the popular renaissance dome as architectural trends shifted.  A very different style to all the other cathedrals we saw on our trip.

My favorite part of this cathedral was the statue of St. Bartolomeo.  It looked like it belonged at our house on Halloween.  This was a gory depiction of  Bartolomeo carrying his skin like a robe after being skinned by the Romans.  When you walked around the statue you could see his face, hands and feet.  It was quite sensational.

The Vittorio Galleria was an elaborate shopping area. The art tiled into the walls and the floor was representational of the establishment of Italy and around the center dome there were mosaics paying tribute to the four major continents.  On the floor was a little about Itlay's history including the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus and another of a torino (honoring the city Torino) that passersby make sure to step and spin on for a little good luck.

We passed by the world's most prestigious opera house, Teatrale alla Scala...

...and stood before Leonardo da Vinci himself.

We ventured to the Brera Neighborhood and visited with some local artists while we admired their work. We had some yummy Italian gelato.  (I think I liked the gelato in Spain better, but it was probably because it was so stinkin' hot when we were there.  That was not this case this trip.)

It was also in the Brera Neighborhood that we met Pinocchio (up to his old tricks, it seemed by the length of his nose)  and visited Geppetto's shop.

A few months before our trip I booked us tickets to get into the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and see Leonardo's fresco of "The Last Supper."  Due to the deterioration of this piece of art they limit the number of people who can view it to help with the preservation.

This was probably the highlight of my Milan experience.  I have studied this piece of art and taught about it countless times, da Vinci's mathematical precision to create depth and perspective, his scientific representation of the human body, but seeing it in person was more than I could have imagined.  When I walked up to this wall it was as if I had stepped back in time and had an invitation to join the Savior and his apostles at the table.  I was right there with them!  That was when I determined that great art to me was a piece (visual, musical, literary or otherwise) that could transport me to another time and place and help me experience thoughts and feelings that I never could on my own.  I also determined (between this trip and my Barcelona trip) that the only true way to really appreciate and understand a piece of art and the artist is to see it first hand in the setting the artist intended. I was sad Eric wasn't able to experience it with me.

Eric was probably more disappointed he didn't get to visit the Sforza Castle.  Housed within this castle are several different museums.  There was an ancient art exhibit, a midieval armory,

tapestries, the progression of furniture and interior design through the ages, paintings, and sculputres including Michelangelo's unfinished Pieta.  

There was also a museum of musical instruments in one wing that caught my attention.

While we were in Milan we hit the tail end of Fashion Week before it moved to Paris.  In many of the piazzas there were big screens and seating set up so you could sit and watch what was happening on the runway.  We also took a stroll down the via Dante, a pedestrian only boulevard, and did some window shopping in Milan's high end shopping district.  It was fun to see the up-and-coming fashions.

After squeezing all that in to two days, it was a good thing we had a few hours to rest on the train to Venice. This was only the beginning!

Italy: The Flight to Milan

I am so lucky that my husband doesn't travel much for work, but that when he does it is to some pretty exciting places.  This year he had a trip planned to Istanbul and Milan.  I would really have liked to see them both, but Italy was my first choice so plans were made for me to meet him in Milan after his work in Turkey was done.

You know how it is when you are using air miles - you don't get the best flights, you have long lay overs and get to take the route less traveled.  Well that really turned out to be the case on this trip.

From Portland to LA, then on to Paris via a little detour in Ireland before finally arriving in Milan.

Another passenger on the flight got very sick while we were over the ocean and an emergency stop had to be made in Charlotte, Ireland at some little podunk airport.  The country looked beautiful from the plane window.  I'll have to add it to my list of places to visit.

Luckily I was a smart traveler!  If I had been on the amazing race, you would have been cheering for team Keri.  Thinking ahead, I made the most of my four hour layover:  I exchanged a little money in LA for euros and then thought it might be wise to pick up a map of the Paris airport so I could find my connecting flight once I got there.  With the short stop over in Ireland, I missed my connecting flight in Paris. It was a huge benefit to have the map of the airport with me.  I was able to navigate my way to the ticket kiosks, transfer my ticket to a new flight, go through customs, change terminals and make it to my gate without any hindrances.  I was even able to help a few other people.  I survived the "boarding press" in Paris and was glad to be on my last leg of the flight to Milan.

Our hotel in Milan, The Atlantic Best Western

Once in Italy I made it through customs again, found the bus terminal, bought a ticket that would get me within blocks of my hotel and was so pleased to see my hubby waiting for me patiently at the bus stop.  He didn't look worried one bit about my delay.  Since I did not have international coverage on my cell phone I had no way to let him know what was going on.  At one point I found a wireless network in Paris and was able to send him a text - "took a detour to Ireland, had to find a new flight, will meet you in Milan about an hour late."

The adventure had begun!