Bike trip to Puglia,Italy 2017

Leaving Monday October 30 on KLM via Atlanta and Amsterdam to Bari, Italy. From there an hours drive to Matera where we will spend 3 days prior to biking.

Leaving Venice- the trip home

7:45 am Deb and I waiting for the water taxi outside our hotel. It actually picked us up at the hotel "water door" in the back of the hotel. 

A fun two weeks were coming to an end. But adventures continued......

It was a beautiful foggy morning. The streets almost deserted. 

Dave stood on the deck of the water taxi and shot videos of the ghostly progress through the foggy canals. We will share those later! 

I was hoping that the handsome young water taxi driver knew what he was doing! Visibility was almost zero and at one point Dave said he saw him take out his ipad to check google earth! It was just the 4 of  us on this ride and I was relieved when we pulled up to the dock of the Marco Polo airport.

The flight to Frankfurt was only one hour. 

We found a "new" Maui Jim Polage at Solaris in Frankfurt. 

That is the end of my photos, but not the end of adventure!  The giant 747 that we boarded in Frankfurt was not at all crowded so I was able to get an exit row with massive leg room! 

We taxied for a while and then the captain anounced that we had a small mechanical issue that needed to be resolved. More taxiing, more waiting, then: problem solved, but all the taxiing required re-fueling. More waiting. 

So two hours late into Dulles meant we missed our connection to Vegas. It was about midnight forbus and we were really exhausted.  The new flight they gave us would have a lay-over in Denver, getting us home around 11pm which would be 8am body time. We opted to stay over in DC. Good choice because it turned out the flight to Denver was delayed and we would have missed the connection there too. 

So here we are on our 8am flight to Las Vegas in our dirty clothes, who knows where our bags are!?

Travel is like that. Que sera, sera ...

Last Day in Venice. Wed Oct 8

Today was our Museum day. We headed to the Academia first, but it had a small typed sign on the door saying they were closed until the afternoon because of "technical" problems. Sure enough, there was a little barge pulled up nearby with septic tank drainage pipes running into the museum. 

Our guide had told us that most of Venice now has septic tanks. But some areas where it was not possible to add them, sewage still goes into the canals but "is washed away by the daily tides". And they are periodically dredged. Hmm. 

Dave was fascinated by the work on the infrastructure! You can see that the water level is only a couple of feet below the surface!

Very high tide this morning:

We discovered a brand new Glass Museum: Vitraria+A, right around the corner from the Academia.  It has only been open for a week. The exhibit feautured not just strictly glass but art utilizing the properties of glass such as fragility, transparency, fluidity, etc. As Dave mentioned in his post, sometimes it was hard to figure out how they related to glass. For example, I asked the young docent how the small steel sculpture by Frank Stella related and she said the curator had tried to convince him to create a new work in glass but he said he    has run out of energy to create new work.  But the curator really wanted him represented so he chose the small steel piece. 

Palazzo Nani Mosenigo, where the glass museum is located is beautiful in itself. Often next to an artwork would be a piece of wall exposed. Dave called them "truth windows". 

The square to the left is a tiny piece of fresco exposed. 

Little back streets with their charming window gardens!

Next stop was the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. 

View from the terrace of the Peggy Guggenheim Palazzo. 

Dave enjoyed the view on the terrace while I perused more of the amazing collection. At one point, just before WWII, she made a point of buying a painting a day! Wow! That would be challenging to look at, select and collect at that pace!!

One of her windows onto the Grand Canal. 

I love this early Calder. 

We had lunch in an out of the way locals cafe. 

Everything in this city is done in miniature from the contruction materials delivery:

To the chamber maids' supplies:

No big rolling carts as in most hotels. 

I never knew you could eat a kiwi like a soft boiled egg:

After lunch the Academia was open, technical problems resolved!

Gold ceiling. 

Besides an impressive collection of 12th to 14th century altar pieces, their prize display is the Giorgione painting "The Tempest". I rember it well from

Art History classes. Its enigmatic subject matter fascinates art historians.  It is smallish, maybe 30" x 20" framed behind glass and a people barrier unlike most of the other works. I did not take a photo, too dark and too much glare.

I enjoyed shooting little details of their extensive collection of Veronese, Tintorretto, etc; the Venetian masters. 

I found the above piece of fresco very funny!

On the way back to the hotel, Dave dropped a euro in this guy's hat. 

There are hundreds of "Secret" gardens that you can only find if you get lost! 

Wrapping up the last evening in the hotel bar. 

Tuesday in Venice October 7

Today we did what we should have done yesterday afternoon. Thirteen of the VBT-ers hired a licenced walking tour guide. Since several had been to Venice before, we requested the "backstreets" tour and avoided all the obvious tourist spots. It was great! Our guide's name was Cristina and she was born in Venice and has lived there her whole life. 

Our Guide Cristina. 

She explained that Venice is made up of 114 (?) islands, each with a piazza in the center with a cistern, surrounded by buildings and a church. I began to notice and photograph the cisterns. 

One of our first sights was this leaning tower. Hard to tell in the photo, but quite crooked. 

She suggested we look up at the chimneys all over town. They are all unique. Young stone masons had to build a beautiful, functional and novel chimney design to become acredited. So almost every chimney in Venice is unique. 

We passed a gondola making yard. Gondolas are not symetrical. They are longer on one side to balance the gondolier's weight. So they are are custom made for each gondolier and they can't gain or loose much weight!

Gondolas are all uniquely "furnished". We were told it costs about 80 euros for a half hour for up to 6 prople, but we did not indulge. 

Cristina told us that this is is one of the

best residential neighborhoods. For most of it's history until about the 1950's the population of Venice was about 150,000. But now there are only 56,000 full time residents  and their average age is 65 !

After the 2 hour walking tour, we had lunch on the waterfront. Seafood rissotto! Yum!

In the afternoon I made my only real purchase of the trip. I had seen it the day before and thought about it all afternoon and evening. In a way, it is a piece of jewelry, but also a very creative piece of art. I met the designer and his son who have been creating this wearable jewelry/art for the last 20 years. It is only available in this one little shop in Venice that we just happened to pass the previous evening. I was so intrigued after talking to him that I went to the website where I found we could make an appointment to visit their nearby showroom. 

The assistant walked us two short blocks to the courtyard of an old Palazzo. Inside was a modern glass and metal shiny lit room of shelves and drawers. Wish I had photos but you can see it on their website: micromegaottica.com

Each piece is unique and I got to choose each component. Back at the store, Hugo, the son took all the measurements and helped me with all the component choices. Their/ my creation will be shipped to me in about 10 days!

After that adventure we visited an interesting art exhibit in a beautiful old Palazzo: "A Sense of Place", featuring works by Anish Kapoor, Tony Cragg, Ai Weiwei among others. 

Sculpture outside the Palazzo by Ai Weiwei titled "Forever" looks like an infinite assembly of bicycles! 

More wandering around the city, getting lost as we were advised to do. Following the map is impossible. I began to feel like a lab rat learning to run a maze! I was starting to feel pretty good at it!

But sometimes a street just ends at a canal without warning, as this one did and all you can do is turn around. 

After dinner we ran into Bob and Deb who had gotten tickets to a concert in a nearby church. 

Venice

Dave here.

We have been so busy running around this amazing town, we haven't taken the time to post.  I am resting my feet in the Academia art museum, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to update everyone.

Tourist.

Classism isn't a new concept.

Visited great new glass museum.  Shows very interning works -- not strictly glass, but art that reflect the qualities of glass: fragility,  transparency, delicacy etc. some of the works wee a stretch.

Austine broke the bank buying a pair of the most amazing original eyeglasses at this shop.  They should arrive at home in a couple of weeks.  Really really cool.

Ciao for now... 

d

Monday- We transfer to Venice

It took about an hour by bus from Bassano del Grappa to Venice. 

Beautiful countryside. 

Inside the water taxi from where the bus dropped us off to Venice. About a half hour of a very bumpy ride! 

Through a very narrow passageway, we arrived at our Hotel Saturnia. 

As our rooms were not yet ready, we walked to St Stephano square for lunch. 

Found a really well used old Polage in a Solaris sunglass store. 

Outdoor market

Late afternoon refreshment in a little back Alley Cafe. 

Right above us:

Leaning tower. 

Met some others from our group for very expensive drinks on the Westiin Hotel Terrace on the water with an amazing view. Forgot to take photos! 

Drinks were served with complimentary finger apetizers. Dave and I decided to call it a day and proceeded back to our hotel while the others went elsewhere for dinner. We were so full!