mary pyche - adventures: Days 1, 2,& 3

Getting here - the flight

Day 1 - arriving in Venice

Day 2 - full day on my own

Day 3 - leaving Venice, meeting the group

I tried to be brief when I wrote the first one hour version of this post at the airport (a draft which I didn't save) and I hate to write things twice, so here is a very brief version:

Getting here

The plane trip was FULL of delays, and I got here about 6 hours later than I should have.

Day 1- Arriving in Venice

I carefully planned to stay at a hotel located on all the water stops, but it was closed for the first two days of my stay, and I had to drag my 50 lb. bag a distance from where the airport boat landed--up over and down several bridges. That felt really great after a horrible plane trip. And I was advised at the airport upon finding out that my stop was closed to take the wrong boat that goes all over creation--an extra hour. The good news is that I got the right boat back to the airport from right at the hotel.

I arrived at the hotel that first day at 5:30 pm, repacked, showered, and went out to traipse around and get my bearings for the next day's activities.

Day 2- full day in Venice

Ate a great breakfast at hotel http://www.palazzostern.it/en, visited the Accademia Museum http://www.gallerieaccademia.org/?lang=en, took the BEST walking food tour http://www.venicebitesfoodtours.com, visited the Guggenheim Museum http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/, took boat to S. Marco Sq. and walked all over that district.

Day -3 Leaving Venice, meeting the group

Returning to Marco Polo Airport was a breeze since the boat stop was opened, got there early, their plane was on time, but they had a hang up with their luggage and it took 2 hours to be on our way to our hotel. It was truly "old home week" seeing everyone again!

We had our Apero (cocktail hour) at 4 and dinner at 7:30.

The 4-star hotel's beautiful tiles and great fixtures.

Typical canal in my hotel's area, Dorsoduro. (green on map)
Related image

Pigments in art store window.

Typical campo (field or square) They used to be an open field area.
Every area has one when there are many streets intersecting.

This is the area at the end of the Dorsoduro neighborhood.
S. Marco is on the other side of this canal (Grand Canal) just a little way further down.

These next few are in S. Marco Sq.

This is the courtyard and entrance to my hotel, Palazzo Stern.
This courtyard fronts on the Grand Canal.

I love the Italian breakfast buffet with just about any item you may want or think of having:
Beautiful china and real silver and those individual jelly jars and fresh flowers.

This is my FAVORITE painting. It is immense. Last time I was here I took a photo with my friend stnding under it to show the scale. I love the colors, the values, the design, the all over impact, the storyline, I want to know more about it, more about the artist, why it was created and where it hung, etc. Some works in this museum (The Accademia) are very very large, and I can't imagine how they were moved and installed here. That is a story of it's own. In fact, they are now doing a restoration on some works of Jheronomus Boch, and they have a wonderful video presentation about it that I hope is also on YouTube.

This is another great painting at The Accademia and this artist
was making a marvelous colored painting of a section of it on his tablet.

One of the many stops on the excellent food and walking tour I was on.

I discovered on this tour that you can ask for Cafe Correcto, which means a splash of liquor added. :)

The mask shop we visited that is listed as one of the best. All made here on location from scratch. The story of the fiesta is very interesting and they last about a month.

This woman and her husband operate the food tour.

This is the front entrance to the wonderful restaurant where we ate a fish pasta dish that was out of this world.
I later returned to it and ate outside as you will see if you read the whole story of this trip.

The locals get their wine at shops like this in each neighborhood, where they bring their bottle for a refill.
It is VERY inexpensive as you can see.

This Frank Stella is in the Peggy Guggenheim Museum's side exhibition. Frank was born in the city I grew up in. I like this particular painting, and there was a nice description of it explaining that the gray bands went from lighter to darker as it descended towards the center whereas the colors went from brighter and lighter to duller and darker as they came from the center outwards.