Thursday and busy, busy...

We covered a fair amount of territory Thursday - even took a water bus to get to two of the places we visited.  Our first stop was the Correr Museum which is one of the buildings facing St. Mark's Square.  The same building also houses an archeological museum and Sale Bibliotecha Nationale Marciana.  I think all these pictures are from the Marciana but I'm not sure.

Every major building we visited in Venice has just stunning ceilings.  Both Chris and I spent a lot of time staring straight up and getting dizzy.

 A humungous room with a truly incredible ceiling...

 A closer look at that ceiling...

This was the ceiling going up one of the staircases and the picture below shows the ceiling of the landing of that staircase. Apparently in its heyday as the largest republic and richest empire in the world, money was no object.  Just make it large and beautiful.  And they did, luckily for future generations of sightseers.

 This is a map of Venice that as far as I could see had no date on it.  But it has to be quite old and is in beautiful condition.  I've always liked old maps and this one is wonderful.

And Chris and I agree that this was a bridal chest with these strange double-sided combs - wooden, so that they survived is amazing! - and the sweet little statue off to the side.

 I loved this little statue of Mary and the baby Jesus.  At least that's who I assume they are - most any woman with a baby in art of this era was the Madonna and child.  But that's why I love this one - she could be any loving mother with a chubby little baby - no haloes, no saintly look...

 A beautiful wood model of a proposed structure.    The picture below is a portion of the beautiful double staircase inside - everything is lopper jawed because I had to angle to camera to take the pic.

And this is a second model which you can see through (that's Chris taking a pic of something else) because the model was built so that it could swing open.  This is the one that was supposed to be a palazo but only the ground floor level was finished and Peggy Guggenheim purchased that and it now houses some of the Guggenheim modern art collection.

A wood lion that I thought looked very noble and handsome.

Gorgeous hair combs and perhaps an arm cuff in the center(?).  Not sure what they're made of although my first guess would be tortoise shell if tortoise shells can be different colors.

Came back out of the Correr and I took this picture of St. Mark's and the bell tower.  To get the bell tower straight, I have to live with St. Marks at a fairly advanced tilt!

And now we're in a water bus headed to the Mocenigo Museum.  The picture below has one of the current Biennale exhibits.  Chris says all of the exhibits will be taken down which with ones like this is kind of a shame.  I love the two hands holding up the building, since apparently, in actuality, Venice is slowly sinking into the lagoon.

 Now we're in the museum.  It is one of several palazzos (homes) the Mocenigo family built .  And, of course, the beautiful reception area above also has a biennale exhibit and it won't be a shame if it is removed!

 Ceilings, ceilings, ceilings...

The museum also boasts a display of clothing of the period including women's (which supposedly included those strange dresses that looked stood out on each side looking like convenient places to rest your teacup!) but there were only two dresses for women, both pretty ho-hum and then some pretty incredible waistcoats for men as seen below.

 My personal favorite!

Stunning, aren't they?  I'll expect to see some of my on-line miniature needleworkers making miniature ones at some point - a lot of them would certainly be capable of it.

The museum also included several rooms set up as a perfumery.  In addition to the ones I have pics of, there were a couple of rooms with lots of glass containers for mixing and such.  It was a fun exhibit because there were various and sundry things you could smell.  The table below was one but being open, the aroma of each wasn't always noticeable.  There was another table that had many, many jars with lids and you could lift the lid and get a good whiff.  I was too busy doing that to take a picture.

And a collection of pretty little containers (bottles, pots, etc.) for perfume and creams and such.

We took a break for lunch at an osteria we saw on our way to the museum.  It was very busy and obviously popular.  I got tagliatelle Bolognese which I have always wanted to try.  It is the "official" dish of Bologna and I never did have it while I was there, strangely enough.  It's a dish that has many recipes claiming to be the official, traditional, authentic, whatever, but there is actually a recipe that was designated "official" by one of the many culinary designators that govern things like wines, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, etc. in Italy.  It's all taken very seriously.  I have that official recipe somewhere.  Anyway, the one I was served was tasty - very mild and I felt like I maybe detected a slight cinnamon-y flavor.  But being on the tagliatelle noodles, it was difficult to eat at least for me.  I think you're supposed to twirl it which I can do pretty well with spaghetti but tagliatelle are wider noodles so I just cut it up.  And it would have been even better if it had been hot.  Chris had lasagna after seeing it on all four of the American families' plates the night before and it was delicious (and hot).

Finally finished up at Ca' Pesaro - another museum that used to be someone's home.  I took very few pictures because I didn't see much that appealed to me.  There was a modern art gallery and an oriental art gallery.  On entering, you are in the modern art and first thing I saw was three Brillo pad cartons piled on top of each other, along with three Andy Warhol paintings on the wall including a Campbell chicken soup can and I'm sorry, I just get aggravated when I see "art" like that.  I guess the paintings at least are a form of graphic art but three Brillo cartons?  No.  So there was a lot of that and then toward the last room or so, there began to be pieces that were modern but did not make you think "shoot, I could do that".  And I know - the response to that usually is "yes, but you didn't did you?"  So, I guess if you're audacious enough to stack cartons, paint soup cans, put Oreos in jewelry boxes, then yes, you're an artist and get big bucks.  And now I'll quit pontificating. :)

Below is another incredible ceiling.  The three panels at the top are actually panels at the top of the wall.  I had to take the photo so the scene would be right side up and that made the wall be upside down!

The last two pictures are one of my favorite ceilings so far.  I love the very ornate, gilded, glitzy ones but this ceiling was all wood - no gilding anywhere and it was so pretty.  Without all the gleam, the pattern of the wood is very much the star of the show.   I showed these to Chris that evening and wonder of wonders, he hadn't seen it while we were there and wished he had cause he didn't have any pictures of it!

 As much of the ceiling as I could capture...

and an enlarged detail of the corners as they come down onto the wall.  I just love this.  I did notice as I edited the photo that the bit of trim on the right is not showing on the left which made me wonder if that was intentional or somehow got damaged, although how on earth would something at the top of a 15 or 20 foot wall get damaged???

That took care of our sightseeing for the day so it was back on the water bus and walk over however many bridges to our room.  We had enjoyed Rossopomodoro so much the night before that we decided that is where we would have our Thanksgiving dinner.  And since it was Thanksgiving, we didn't get pizza.  I got one of the specials which was two sea bass filets that were covered with grated potatoes and then baked.  It was very tasty but way more than I could eat.  I forget what Chris had but his was very good too - we've been very good about sharing which is nice since you get to eat more than one thing.  And even though stuffed, we split a chocolate tart-type thing cause after all, it was Thanksgiving - you have to have dessert.

This time the table next to us was occupied by a man (maybe Italian?) who spoke very good English with very little accent.  But what he also did, while they were standing waiting to be seated, was massage the girl's neck (I mean a two-handed massage, almost made me want to ask him to do mine!) and the whole time he was doing it, he was whistling.  When they got seated, after saying "Ah, very nice, very nice", he commenced whistling and whistled through perusing the menu.  Finally he quit when they brought the wine and bread and then he talked a lot in very rapid, robust Italian.  So we didn't visit with them, but they (he) kept us nicely entertained.

If I remember correctly, we split a whole bottle of wine (and since I'm not remembering for sure, I'd say that's correct).  Full and tipsy, we staggered back to our hotel - fortunately around the corner from their door and maybe 100 feet to our door.

So now, it is Saturday, we are in my beloved Firenze where they are having a 34K marathon today and it has been raining all morning.

ci si vede!