Venice, Italy

September 6th - 9th

Venice, Italy

Venice is such a unique city!  But before we jump into Venice, you might wonder how we entertain ourselves on the many hours of train travel between destinations. Well the scenery is always a good start (the train from Innsbruck, Austria to Venice, Italy was amongst the most beautiful we had seen), and the book series we each choose have become good friends. But this trip has been as much about research and learning as it has about sheer delight. So in that spirit we decided that we would start taking a course to continue our education.  The class is Environmental Psychology from UC Irvine and studies the relationships between the built environment and human behaviour.  Right up our alley!

Steven diligently taking notes...such a good student! Jenna on the other hand seems more concerned with taking pictures!  : )

The gorgeous vineyards and green mountains we passed in Northern Italy

Ok, so we made it to Venice!  There is nothing straight or logical about the streets in Venice, which means that you can get lost in minutes!  There are NO vehicles within Venice, so your only choice to travel around is by walking or taking their boat transit.  The canals are gorgeous and restaurants are lined up along the waterways!

The main canal

The boat transit map in Venice

Welcome to Italy...pizza anyone?!

Jenna was extremely excited about the gondolas!!  Unfortunately a 30 minute ride was way out of our budget but pictures are free!!

Popular 24hr clock

A performer on the street...blowing fire out of her mouth! Crazy and Very Impressive!

September 7th

We stayed at a hotel about 20 minutes outside of Venice and trained into the city each morning.  Our first morning traveling into the city, our train stopped on the tracks on the bridge entering the city.  We waited on the train for almost 30 minutes and then a lot of people decided to just start walking to Venice!  

Walking along the tracks to Venice!

The 'Boat Stops' (instead of bus stops!)

So many bridges throughout the city, and they all have to be high enough for boats to go under.

Cruising on the boat transit

A few nice pictures of Venice

We took the boat to an island near Venice, called Murano.  Murano is very well known for their blown glass.  When we got off the boat we were encouraged to check out a blown glass demonstration.

It takes over 10 years to become a professional glass blower!

They work with molten glass, at 1000 degrees, and its amazing how they mould it into whatever shape they want!

This man took this ball of heated glass and in seconds made a...

HORSE!!  Very impressive!

Blown glass....and then he smashed it!

After our demonstration we went out for lunch in Murano.  Murano felt like a mini Venice.  There were a lot of shops and canals, but a bit quieter.  The shops basically all sold Murano glass, but there was so much variety in style and skill.

Pizza along the canal

One of the many shops selling Murano glass

Large Murano glass sculptures

One last time...Murano glass!!

After Murano, we took the boat to another island called Burano!  No, Burano does not sell Burano glass! lol.  Burano is a small fishing island, but is more known for their colourful houses!

Love!

The streets/canals of Burano

Sunset with people practicing their Gondola boating...only in Venice!

We did not know we were at the Leaning Tower of Burano!  Seriously, this tower was going to fall over any minute!

Venice has a festival or Carnival and they sell these gorgeous masks everywhere!

September 8th

Today we were finally able to go to a winery!  We were sad that we were never able to go to a winery in France, especially Bordeaux, but now we were in Italy and very excited to get a tour!  We visited Astoria Winery.  They are mainly known for their Sparkling Wine, but also produced many other stilled varieties of red and white wines.

Astoria Winery

We were very impressed with the architecture and new modern buildings they had as their showroom and production lab.

Just a small bottle of wine in their showroom!

When we arrived we were given a partial tour.  When the lady in our hotel booked the tour for us, she forgot to tell them that it needed to be in English.  So the tour ended up being more independent until a man walked up to us as we were trying to figure out all of the equipment.  Little did we know that this man was the owner and spoke fairly good english, and he pretty much told us everything about the equipment and the company!

The hopper on the left collects the grapes and sends them into the tank on the right that crushes the grapes.

The grape juice now rests in the big tanks to ferment.  After a number of days the wine is taken to their other site and put in the wooden barrels.  The brown stuff on the right is the remnants of the grape that they use for their spirits.  It is amazing how they have minimal waste and can use all parts of the grape to make a drink product.

The tour continued on into Taste Testing 

Enjoying the Winery!

Grapes!  They are days away from being harvested!

The owner of Astoria Winery.  Not to brag, but he's kind of a big deal! lol.. he hangs with the likes of Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Italian Indy car drivers and Tour de France winners. We had no idea the winery was so connected to the cultural chic!

Most of the time when you go to a winery you pay for the tour and then spend a lot of money buying a bottle or two of wine.  Well we were given a free tour AND they gave us two gifts!!

Our Gift!!  A bottle of Sparkling Rose and a CD of their lounge music

Very excited about our free wine!  Don't worry we still bought 3 more bottles of wine from them because of their incredible hospitality!  Our luggage was not very light with all of those bottles of wine, but don't worry they did't last very long!

Finally, we spent many hours in Venice at the Architecture Biennale.  It is a huge global architectural exhibition that Venice holds every other year, and we were lucky to be in Venice during this time.  Every country had their own pavilion, as well as many individual architects shared a multitude of ideas and concepts that all revolved around the theme of 'Common Ground.'  We really loved the whole exhibition! You would imagine that we have more photos than this one, for such an event!? After two days of viewing we collected near 500 photos and thought that the blog wasn't the right environment to give justice to all the concepts...so we're planning on creating a separate slide show with a detailed analysis of every slide...a slide show we can bring into your home and share with you personally  ; ) hahahaha 

Biennale Architecture Exhibition, Venice, Italy

Next Stop:  Cinque Terre & Pisa, Italy