Venezia Love

In 2006 I was lucky enough to stay for a September week in Venice before travelling to points further South. The actual people that lived there were back from holiday and it was the most gorgeous architecture I've ever seen. I can appreciate buildings that are a few hundred years old and still standing (since in Texas, almost everything has been built in the past 150 years), but in Venice even the mundane apartment buildings and storage spaces usually have awe inspiring histories. If you go, don't miss the Correr museum for an awesome Roman statuary collection. They recently opened a new interesting museum about plague victims found on Lazzaretto Vecchio, so much history here.

Of course, the Romans had not settled here, they were further to the South in Araminium (Rimini, the Adriatic port with ocean water as silty and disgusting as the Texas coast unfortunately). But, many places I looked at in Venice showed a nod to the neo-classical and Roman influences. A marble sculpted statue head over a doorway, ancient style cornices, mosaics and reliefs... And, it is amazing to walk the streets at night without car noise or exhaust, everyone walking.

If anyone wants to rent a second floor out on an old palazzo, call me, I'll quit my day job and be on the first flight out, for real!!

Venice to me is fragile in its aging beauty. It won't last another 100 years because of the rising sea levels, and despite the bluster from the citizens about the sea of tourists and typical local government squabbles, I saw in some of the citizens there the sad awareness of how things will go. I could live here making art and making trades forever and be happy, I think.

For Soda and Candy, I promised a post of the most bizarre shoes I have ever seen anywhere created at a shop in San Marco. I was passing by back to the hotel and had to take a picture.

Italiana:

Mi Amo Venezia!!!!!!!!!!!!!