blög!: October 2004

9-13. october
(click to enlarge)

watch for canaletto

panorama to the east from the Campanile. the set of domes belong to Basilica di San Marco and to the right is the Palazzo Ducale. the following pictures at ~9am.

panorama to the south. the tower on the left is part of the San Giorgio Maggiore. then the long skinny island is Lido and lastly the church on the right is Santa Maria della Salute. the naval ship chillin' there belongs to the italian navy.

panorama to the west. Piazza San Marco stretches out to the west. in the distance you can make out a cruis ship. everyday cruise ships come to venice; i saw up to 7 at once point. they crowd venice until about 5 and then everthing quiets down quite a bit.

my mom and i together in the Campanile

many ships are moored just past the Palazzo Ducale

contrast Piazza San Marco with the modern naval vessel. this one is really worth clicking on; watch especially for the long shadows of the tourists below.

Piazza San Marco. the puddles you see forming are due to the rising tide. an hour later you could not walk through the piazza any more because the water had risen.

Basilica di San Marco - the four horses atop the entrance have a fantastic history. they stem from 1st century a.d. greece where they stood atop a monument honoring nero in rome. in the 4th century they ended up in the byzantine empire only to be stolen from constantinople by the venetians during a crusade in 1204. napoleon passed along the favor and took them to paris in 1792, and but having looted them fair and square 6oo years earlier the venetians demanded their horses back and in 1815 they were returned. after a quick trip to rome during the first world war and padua during the second world war, they were finally moved inside the basilica in 1982. what you see there are just copies, but they really are magnificent in real life.

Canal Grande - in the bend you can see part of the Ponte di Rialto

Ponte di Rialto up closer

from the Ponte di Rialto. canaletto must have sat here when made his sketches

Piazza di San Marco. Campanile on the left and Palazzo Ducale on the right. bad weather kind of kills this pictures but view was also immortalized by canaletto. there are no buses in venice (there are no cars either for that matter) so all public transportation is on water buses (ie boats). the #1 and #82 will afford you this view.

Santa Maria della Salute at dusk

Murano
Murano is an island which consists entirely of factories in which glass is blown or otherwise sculpted. its sinfully expensive but generally worth the price

a water taxi took my mom and i to murano.

inside the shop.

this guys is making a cat out of a blob of glass. suchie has the cat that he made here, but she doesnt know it yet ;)

some small examples of what they make on murano

Burano
Burano is a small island that is a lot less touristy but really beautiful. all the house are the same size and are all painted bright colors. it makes for a very surreal little place. the campanile in burano is at least as crooked as the leaning tower in pisa

notice how high the water level is.

synopsis of burano

Torcello
Torcello is another island that was originally a bishop seat founded in 639. there is a basilica on Torcello which is built with heavy byzantine/eastern orthodox influence. the basilica Santa Maria Assunta and the smaller Santa Fosca next to it are extremely well preserved. unfortunately i could not take pictures inside but they are very very beautiful. the insidea are covered in golden mosaics.

basilica on the left, campanile center, Santa Fosca on the right

from the campanile in opposite direction. i was standing under the tree in the courtyard as i took the previous picture.

facing southwest back toward Burano. you can make out the lean in the bell tower on burano a little from this picture.

facing east

facing west

5 - 9. october
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Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore - construction begun at end of 13th century.
the fascade on the outside as impressive as the interior is disappointing.
the square building in the foreground is Orsanmichele.

Palazzo Vecchio - city hall for a couple centuries
its not crooked in real life

Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio - the bridge is lined with jewelers...
(its not crooked in real life)

...and has nightly performers singing everything from beatles to italian love songs

Duomo from the Campanilie

Duomo

the large square building is San Lorenzo and the dome behind it is Cappelle Medicee where pretty much all the important Medici's are buried. the Cappelle is unreal inside. its covered in 40 different types of marble and was almost as impressive as the Duomo is from the outside. i liked it best of the things i saw in florence.

San Lorenzo at night. its as old as it looks. the first church was built there in 393.

me and the Campanile. the Campanile is a free standing structure next to the Duomo and is nearly as tall as the Duomo.

via dei Ninna. the building on the left is the Palazzo Vecchio and on the right is the Galleria degli Uffizi

Galleria degli Uffizi - all sorts of people in this gallery: Tizian, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raffael, Rembrant, etc. etc. True to the stereotype its horribly organized. there were no descriptions and nothing at all written next to the pictures that was not italian. undoubtedly the worst audio tour. you had to walk into the right room and them press play and the guide would discuss chosen paintins. on some occasion the paintings had been moved leaving you to your imagination and in other cases whole rooms were closed but still on the tour.

via San Gallo - from my room in the hostel

from Piazzale Michelangelo. this picture is obligatory. most of what you see is air pollution, but the rest is as follows: on the left Palazzo Vecchio, center the Duomo, and on the right Santa Croce.

inside of Santa Croce. Michelangelo, Rossini, Marconi, Enrico Fermi, and Galileo (!) are buried here as well as monuments to Dante and Machiavelli (machiavelli, gotta love the italians, delusions of grandeur..)

picture of Galileo's grave. if you click on the picture you can just make out is name

inside the Palazzo Vecchio

mopeds as far as the eye can see

inside the Palazzo Strozzi there was an exhibit about the Nodel Prize and all the people who had recieved it. was cool, i got to listen to MLK's acceptance speech and glenn seaborg's (Seaborgium, #106). all the nobel prize winners were portrayed on a posters and the posters were run around the room on one of those thingys that they use at the dry cleaners to hang all the shirts.