Venezia 2009 - Part I

Arriving at San Marco Airport after 13 hours of flying from Dallas with a connection through Frankfurt, we collected the luggage and made our way outside to the middle of a perfect sunny day.

You know that feeling where you've been somewhere before and you know where to go? Well, I was experiencing that because I had been to Venice and this airport two years earlier. Finding the way to the water transport, I made the easy decision to take a water taxi.

You see, last time here I had taken a water bus, which is great if you have lots of time to kill. But with me carrying mom's luggage, I didn't want the hassle. As a warning on the water taxis, people cram in like sardines and it is easy to miss a stop, especially if you are carting around four pieces of luggage.

The water taxi had us to the White Lion on the Grand Canale within 7 minutes. I wish I had remembered to bring my water skis because it was an incredibly fast ride. I also wish I had the foresight to call ahead and have the owner meet us at the canal entry. Most of the buildings in Venice have a door directly on the water side and a door on the 'dry' side. I think it's supposed to be more fancy if you arrive at the water side. Oh well, next time. As you see below, it wasn't a super fancy entryway on the canal side... At least there were no visible four legged carriers of the black plague or anything.

A few doors down from my hotel was the Ca d'Oro, which had a considerably more elaborate canal entry court. It was slightly more expensive to book this ancient museum palace, so I went with rustic charm instead.

Before we were completely out of the water taxi, an annoying man walked up and asked the driver how much to go to St. Mark's square. The driver responded '95 euro', and the man stormed off indignantly because he thought he could get a cheaper rate since the water taxi was already there.

Rounding the corner to the hotel, I noticed right away that the building was ancient. This was great because I enjoy carrying heavy bags up several flights of stairs. No, really.

The White Lion was ideally situated on the Grand Canale, with my balcony having views of the Rialto market and the Bridge. In other words, a perfect place for 1) purchasing a bread, fresh tomatoes, cheese and a bottle of wine and 2) consuming the aforementioned goods while soaking in the incredible architecture and history and chuckling at the occasional tourist floating by in a gondola. This location coupled with a prime location on Strada Nuova ensured a fun stay.

After checking in, I still wasn't tired because I was in Venice! So I went walking through the characteristic back streets until I was good and lost.

I play a game in Venice called 'find the bridges with no handrails'. This time I only found two, here is one...

Leaving the Lake Area (Quando Lasciato il Lago Como)

The day we left Como and started the trek to Florence was best described as 'absolutely perfect' weather. You know, that kind of crisp clear autumn morning that demands even the laziest person to go out for a walk just to enjoy it. So I locked up the Bellagio villa, rolled down windows, then drove up the hill to the Eastside 589 highway.

Well, highway is not exactly the best way to describe it. In some sections, I might have been able to touch both sides of the road at the same time. But that didn't matter, we were enjoying this perfect morning with no traffic or stressful situations. So, I picked up the pace and drove a bit faster.

Then, a car approaching on the other side of the road that looked like a police car waved me over to the 'side' of the road authoritatively (there wasn't much room since I was driving next to a mountain cliff). Was I speeding? I was wondering how much I'd have to pay. My imagination quickly ran with enormous sums and I couldn't help but wonder if it would have been better to have just taken the train.

After a minute the car that waved me down didn't turn around, so I decided to chance it and just start driving again. I cover less than a kilometer and then two cars dart past and both are pointing at my right side of the road next to the cliff wall frantically. Huh? Falling rocks? Danger? They were pretty convincing, so I reason that maybe I should just stop and wait for a few minutes.

I couldn't really see around the curve because of the mountain, so I stopped and waited.

Not twenty seconds later, about three bicycle riders *zoom* by. And then about twenty more, quickly followed by what had to have been hundreds of cyclists. Not just the 'wannabe' amatuers who try to emulate Lance Armstrong that I see around where I live, but honest to gosh professional atheletes in a real race.

I finally had the presence of mind to raise my camera and take a picture of the spectacle on that Lake Como cliffside on an otherwise perfect morning. Eventually, the number of cyclists dropped and finally the support cars and ambulance drove by, followed by a little red caboose.

In retrospect, I'm really glad that I pulled to the side of the road. I'm not sure the windshield wipers could have handled it otherwise.

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Quando lasciato il Lago, uomini in auto puntano a ciglio della strada. Perché? Non capito... Era una gara di bicicletta! Nessuno è lesi :)

Sirmione - Ancient Lake Fun, Part II

While driving from Venice to Lake Como, I had to make a long lunchtime stop at a unique spot in all the world. Sirmione is a geological oddity, a very narrow strip of land jutting about two miles out into the ancient Lake Garda.


It's kind of strange to walk for so far in one direction and see water on both sides. Last time that happened, I was on a cruise ship treadmill.


It was rumored to be the location of a villa of Catullus, a close friend of the family of Gaius Julius Caesar, but it was probably a different Roman dignitary who lived here in those days.

It makes military sense that the original villa builders would pick this spot because it is supremely defensible. Well, except from attacks of a flying or swimming enemy. The ancient Romans wouldn't have stood a chance against a nuclear submarine, right?

Here I am standing in the main 'foyer' of the villa. Behind me, as you might guess, is the lake. Apologies for my shoddy state in the photo, but I'd just been driving in Italian traffic half the day when this was taken.



















Below, you can see the 'marble beach' view out the 'front door' of 'the' villa... I'll bet they had some great parties out there, even though it would be tough to use a jet ski loaded down with a case of beer because it's so shallow.















The size and scale of the Roman villas makes my house seem so small...































They also had a neat little museum with a diverse collection of implements, mosaics, frescos and such.

















I promised some glass and smalti images a few posts back. Here is some off my 'stash' of mixed colors and an Orsoni sample board showing the standard pallette with a pretty large range of value and hue.















And here is the actual result (from my class) of that mosaic from the 6th century. I accidently put up a photo last time of just my empty easel with just the image I was copying in mosaic. Strangely, no one called me on it.

Ancient Lake Fun Part I (Divertimento di Lago Antiche)

Driving through rush hour traffic is never fun in any city, but in Milan it can really grind to a halt. We had left Venice earlier that morning by rent car and had lost a bit of time with a fun stop at Lake Garda's ancient city of Sirmione that I'll elaborate on later.

The lady I was renting the villa from in Bellagio was expecting us at 5:00pm, but a helicopter would be the only option which could have made that happen. Luckily, I didn't have to sit in the Milan traffic for the full 360 degrees of the loop around the city, after only a few miles of a parking lot, I saw a workable exit to the north.

Trying to read the road signs in Italian on a big highway system you've never been on with many impatient drivers zipping around is not exactly the relaxing part of the vacation. The trusty GPS guided us to the correct road north for Bellagio after a few wrong turn missteps in the city of Como itself. Up the mountains we went on the narrow twisty east side 589. Suddenly, the lake came into view off to the left (and way down there). Flashbacks to driving in Santorini Greece came to mind, but this was much easier by comparison.

Lake Como (Larius to the Romans) has long been a resort. Pliny the Younger had written about stays in a villa here for hunting and fishing around 2000 years ago, but mine was going to have running wat... nope he had that, a sewer sys... nope he had that, um, electricity! Which was going to be very handy soon since it was beginning to get dark as I was driving on up around the twisty mountain roads.

I gave the owner Francesca a call when in town. She dropped everything and drove up the awesome hill where the villa is located to let us in and give information about the rooms and the area. I knew it was going to be a nice place, but I was surprised at exactly how nice it all was.
My mom loved the view and the balcony, and there was an olive orchard and an infinity edge pool which were part of the property. There was even a nice little cobblestone parking area behind an automatic iron gate.














Speaking of fancy pools, for the record, even as nice as my pool is, I'd gladly trade my house for this villa any day of the week because there are just no views like this in Texas. Francesca is a great business woman, she and her sister run a shop in town and the nice villa in the pristine location was handed down in their family. She had restored it to a very high standard. Although I don't use the term lightly, it was 'chock full' of amenities.

The town of Bellagio is small and pleasant, well except for the 1960's style band bleating out old rock and roll in Italian at one of the hotels. It is by necessity a compact center of town and everything is pretty much within a few minutes walk.

If you go, I recommend stopping at Villa Melzi and by all means, take the boats around and explore. If you want to spend obscene amounts on shopping, I'd recommend taking the boat over to Mennagio and catching a bus to Switzerland.
Or if you just want to relax, you can do like I did and have a few bottles of wine in your own villa while looking over the same awesome lake Pliny did 2000 years ago.

I think I'll be back here soon.

Luciana's Class (Scuola Mosaic in Ravenna)

Ravenna is a paradoxical little Italian city. It is relatively small by northern Italy standards, yet it used to be the capitol of the Western Roman empire towards the end. It is considered the mosaic making center of the world, but everything is relatively inexpensive here. I've been here before, but I really enjoyed it the second time because of the class I took.

When I first arrived at the Luciana Notturni school in Ravenna Italy, I was a bit nervous. At first glance I just noticed a very feminine looking dress made of dainty glass in the window and the sign on the wall for the shop which was a bit girly.

But looking further in, I was relieved to see great executions of classic mosaic pieces, so then I knew I had come to the right place. I was also almost an hour too early because I lost my sheet with the begin time, so the locals were gawking at 'the stranger' hanging out on their street as they went to work.

Eventually, people from the school began to show up and I had a chance to talk with a highly experienced teacher at the school, Brunie.














The class itself was directed by one of the luminaries in the mosaic and art worlds, Luciana Notturni (pictured below). This lady has restored ancient mosaics and created numerous award winning works of art, the work from her studio is highly sought after. During the class, she would stop by and give practical lessons as work assignments were progressing. Notice the cool 'Gypsy Girl' mosaic copy from Zeugma, Turkey in the background there?















So for an entire week, several technical aspects, fundamentals, and 'best practices' of mosaic making were covered in the class. Things like transfering images to lime, gluing a temporary binder to lift the cut pieces, permanent binders were all covered.

A delightful and vivacious historian, Manuela, who's picture I don't have gave great background on the development of mosaics over time. She might well have been the most knowledgable person in the world about mosaic history, and her presentation was just a joy to listen to.
Unfortunately, I couldn't go on her tour on the last day of class in the afternoon since I needed to get back to Venice to pick up my glass ordered at Orsoni.

This was time (and money) very well spent, and I can't wait to work using some of the new techniques learned in the Ravenna class.

In the image below, a student cuts stone for the first time with the little hammer and hardie that we all used.




















A very wide array of materials were available. Not just glass, but rare marbles and other stones lined several shelves in bins everywhere. Wow, I thought I had a pretty good color selection of materials until I went here...















Sometimes, when there were very large pieces, we'd use the 'big guns' cutter like below. I need to get one of these...




















Here is the classroom environment, where we did our daily work.















Here are some of the great shop artists and teaching assistants.














One of the projects was to think of an idea to put into mosaic, and use a modern cement binding system. I put off my design for too long, so at 6am, I woke up and it occurred to me that it might be funny to put a modern object into an ancient looking mosaic. So, I sketched the television in my room quickly... I call the finished work 'Ancient Technology', which CRT televisions kind of are now. : )














Here is one of the great artist teachers, Anna, who is working on a commission for the shop here (it has been censored, because someone else owns the work, not because it contains nudity or something like that).
















Here is the work that I copied in glass smalti, It's from the 600s in a church in town. I liked the colors. Note: this is not the correct way to set down the hammer (martelina).

Leaving Venice (Uscito Venezia)

At 4:00am I hear a loud buzzing above and to the left in the darkness. I realize that it is my phone going off for the alarm I set the night before. Luckily, in Italy, the time change for autumn was at midnight so I had a healthy full five hours of sleep. As I'm getting ready for the day, it hits me that I need to redistribute the weight in my checked baggage and carry-on pieces. I have purchased about 80 kilos of hard-to-find marble and glass to bring back to the US for making mosaics.

So I frantically unpack one bag and shove little plastic bags of stone and glass into another lifting and carefully assessing the weight. Then, I get a bit nervous about the time because my flight is a very early one out of the Venice Marco Polo airport, which for sound and practical reasons is not actually on the chain of islands which make up Venice, but on the mainland.

So, leaving the key in the room I set off into the darkness of Venice at 4:40am. It is still a magical place as there is not a soul to be seen on the Fondamenta Misercordia. With my 200 lbs of various bags and a backpack, I fire up the trusty GPS (which at this point, I really don't need but just in case...) and cross the first of what would become several bridge crossings.

I set off south to get to Strada Nuova where the day before, I'd seen the signs for the airport water shuttle. After up and down a few more bridges and a kilometer of twisty streets, I find the water bus stop. Confidently, I stroll up to the waiting platform and notice on the sign that the first boat picks up at 9:00am.

If you do the math, this is something of a problem as my flight was at 6:30am. If you have ever seen the movie shots where the background seems to rush out behind the actor and the camera tilts at a 45 degree angle as the protagonist grabs his head and yells 'Noooo!!!', you'll have a pretty good idea of my frame of mind.

After I get through with my initial shock, I set off to the south thinking, maybe I can find a nice 100 euro water taxi along the way... But no, no such luck.
Apparently on Sunday morning, they are all sleeping, inconsiderate bastards. Anyway, there are several more nice bridges and the water bottle I'm carrying with the 200 lbs in luggage is getting annoying to carry loose, so I put it in a bag. After about 600 meters of twisty streets, I hear a pleasant gurgling water sound, the sound a water bottle makes after the lid has been twisted off inside your bag under the weight of 20 kilos of marble. So I have a nice little waterfall going in my bag which I have a grand time emptying out before trudging on happily to the south.

A few minutes later, I get to the train station and consider that I could buy a ticket to the mainland and then cab it to the airport. So I lug my bags up the steps to Santa Lucia station and go to the ticket counter, no, wait, I cannot believe that there is no hard working Trenitalia employee there at 5:00am eagerly awaiting my questions. So I check the schedules and it looks like a no-go.

I arrive at the conclusion that the logical thing to do at this point is to go to the only garage / bus / car entry point on Venice, Piazzale Roma. So in front of the train station after lugging the heavy bags down the steps again, I see possible salvation. A 100 euro water taxi is trolling for people, but no, he's going on to the north because he apparently has *too much money*. Sure, I understand, he needs a better quality of life. He can't be hauling troublesome tourists back and forth *all* day long, that's just silly.

Based on my GPS calculations, I stare down my opponent directly across from the train station. It is the mother of all marble bridges when you have luggage, 'il Ponte degli Scalzi' as pictured in the photo above except, in the dark with no people on it. I begin my ordeal already tired and almost certain my right arm has been stretched an inch longer after carrying the heavier of two bags for such a distance. Up the bridge I go and the trip down is only slightly less tiring. Another kilometer to the south and over another smaller bridge, I notice that a new larger bridge without a steep grade ran between the station and Piazzale Roma. I almost want to go back and cross over that easier bridge just out of spite, but coolness prevails and I go on to the bus stop, find a taxi, and make my way to the airport.

Finished Pool More or Less (Piscina è Quasi Completato)

Even in Texas, it was too cool today to go swimming, and so it was that today was the day I finally moved off my laz the pool photos off of my camera. You can see my own version of a typical line of cypress trees in the background here. I keep thinking I should have bought larger ones, but the selection and quantity of the larger ones was severely limited. I'm also wondering if I should plant forward in between each tree to make a solid tree line. Also, I'm seeing life sized hand carved marble statues on either side of the spa. Or maybe just a gigantic hand and head reaching skyward, as if a giant statue was buried in the ground... No that would be lame, two statues it is.

Luckily, since the contractor would work with me a bit, they poured the deck substrate down about 5/8" to the coping stone. This will allow an anti fracture membrane to go on and also a healthy 1/2" thick tile that has a pre-cut (read: not much work for me) pattern. Unfortunately now though, I have substandard choices for the marble, so maybe I'll find something in Italy at the end of the month. I have to finish it fairly soon though as the building permit will run out and I'll have to file for an extension or something. Maybe some friends on the city council can help out if I drag it on too long? Nah, I'll be done before then.

Basically, I now have a 110 meter empty canvas to 'paint' on with marble and mosaics. It. is. cool.



















Here is a side view of the steps to see how the mosaics catch the sun, even under water.
















Here is one of them up close... I didn't realize that I was blatantly ripping off the Caesar's Palace logo until after it was done (Apologies to Harrah's Entertainment, Inc. But honestly, I left more than enough compensation on your roulette table this past March, guaranteed).















And here is yet another picture... Are you bored yet?















Everybody can stop by for a swim (best bring a wetsuit since it's a bit cool now).

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Non credo che è quasi finito! Purtroppo in Texas, trovo che l'acqua si raffredda in autunno. Ho bisogno di comprare qualche famoso marmo di Carrara (ma non questa pietra economici ho campioni di altri luoghi).