Venice: St. Christopher

A field trip without a St. Christopher is hardly worthy of the name, is the consensus around here. Venice did not disappoint.

a mosaic on the Grand Canal side of the Basilica di San Marco

...and in the Museo di San Marco. I wonder if this was an old version of the one above, and I think it's interesting that Christopher more obviously has gigantism here.

the Sotoportego S. Cristoforo. We didn't even go looking for it!

at the end of the Sotoportego S. Cristoforo there's a little shrine to St. Christopher

my best attempt at taking a picture of the mosaic behind the grate

at the Campo de la Carità (says the GPS stamp on the photo; we were wandering randomly at this point)

and in the museum on Torcello. I asked the cute grad student at the desk if I could take a picture of this painting and was denied, and my Christopher was *not pleased* with me. Luckily Wikipedia helped us out. Love the fish.

Venice: stuff we ate

Spoiler alert: there's nothing particularly special here. But I couldn't write about our trip and not include the food pictures, right?

First meal in Italy: pasta carbonara at a snack bar - not high cuisine and their pizza was quite bad (fried, somehow?) but at this point we were very hungry and therefore very happy to receive it. If it had been open we would have gone to this restaurant instead, because witches.

By lunchtime the next day we were again so hungry that we had to wrestle a couple slices off this hip artisanal take-away pizza before I could take a picture of it. So very delicious. 

And the NEXT day we were all alone at this amazing biergarten on Torcello, sharing the daily special of risotto in a cracker bowl (the bowl! is a cracker!) and...

...Ten Varieties of Fried Things with One Block of Polenta.

That night, after the unfortunate rain incident, I got to try squid ink pasta while Christopher devoured the better part of a plate of fried calamari...

...but the restaurant was loud and we were both kind of miserable so then we took our "pizza carbonara" to go. Perfect late-night hotel food, excellent paired with leftover fruit from breakfast!

I regret failing to write down the names of the things we grabbed at the train station before we left. Mine was a poofy fried bread which if covered in glaze and filled with strawberries would have made a very convincing Donut Man strawberry donut, but topped with a scant teaspoon of tomato sauce and a single basil leaf was just...a lot of poofy bread with not too much going on. C. had a "Viennese" sandwich which contained a hot dog and french fries. Bread, Wurst, potatoes: that's all the food groups, right?

Cheers!

p.s. - I also regret the absence of gelato pictures here, but never fear, we did do our share to support the local frozen-treats industry. My fingers were too sticky to take pictures, maybe.

Venice: mosaics

Venice: canals, wealth, glass, gelato...ok granted, it is possible that everything I knew about Venice I learned from that masterpiece of literature, "Olivia Goes to Venice" (completely not kidding on the masterpiece front, all the poor reviews aside), but in any case I didn't know enough to look forward to the mosaics. The walls and inner domes of the Basilica di San Marco are covered in golden mosaics - maybe I did know that - but I never expected to be so blown away by the floors! The floor art continued on Murano at the Basilica dei Santi Maria, Donato e Cipriano (there's a famous dome mosaic here too, apparently, but it was hidden behind scaffolding when we visited). And the uncomfortably crowded boat ride out to the island of Torcello to see the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta was more than compensated for by the stunning mosaics of the Last Judgement on the west wall. The latter were guarded by a grumpy lady who was not about to let anyone break the photo ban; luckily Wikimedia Commons can help us out!

golden mosaic closeup

I intended this to be a St. George picture but in fact it's the archangel Michael...there's a dragon, in any case.

The story of creation. The scale of this is hard to capture.

and then there are the floors...

floor with peacock

3D effect ftw!

A helpful poster at the back of the church on Murano provided interpretations of the illustrated figures. Here, "Christ Eagle, regeneration symbol. It keeps between the claws a little bird symbol of human weakness that the eagle raises again." Which...is definitely what eagles do with small birds? 

"Two cocks bring a fox. They are the symbol of divine Vigilance that keeps in check the Cunning."
Probably best not to get into the gender implications of this one.

"Two crickets (that represent the alacrity of a Christian)"
Really? Aren't you curious? I'm so curious. And I don't know where to even start looking this up.

Von Sailko - Eigenes Werk, CC BY 3.0
It's hard to pick a favorite, but I thought this part of the Last Judgement mosaic was particularly cool. According to the audio guide, the angel on the left is rolling up the heavens (Revelation 6:14, "the heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up”) and the two on the right are supervising the rescue of the drowned from "the sea," apparently copied from a floor mosaic in a nearby Roman villa because who knows what the sea looks like? 

More images of the Torcello mosaics here 

Venice: hotels

Our mom-kid trip to Venice was fabulous. There were low points, to be sure, like the time I insisted we go for a walk before heading to dinner and we got stuck without shelter in the pouring rain and then had to squelch our way into the now-crowded-with-all-the-other-American-tourists-whose-walks-were-interrupted restaurant. But there were so many amazing things to make up for the harder ones. For starters, both hotels were fabulous. It makes such a difference when "home base" is somewhere I'm happy to spend time!

The kind and astonishingly multi-lingual receptionist at the Hotel Arlecchino, an easy walk from the train station, upgraded us to a room with a spectacular view of the canals. We stayed here one night, and I wouldn't have thought to book two different hotels for a three-day trip but this worked out perfectly: one night with easy access to the city, two nights of peaceful sleep. I took pictures in the evening and the next morning and I can't decide which I like better so here are all of them.

we're in Venice! there are gondoliers! and motorboats too.

looking right, evening

looking right, morning.
that long canopy on the sidewalk covers adorable and romantic canal-side seats for the restaurant next door, which is definitely on my list if we ever do this again!

looking left, evening

looking left, morning

We spent the other two nights at Casa Sulla Laguna, right near the last vaporetto stop on Murano, where we were treated like family* and the view out the window was equally, if differently, spectacular. Venice skyline in the distance! You can't see it in my photos but it was totally there. During the day there were boats chugging right by the window; at night the water was flat and silent. Shades of blue-green-gray...

* C. has a new favorite treat, Italian-style "hot chocolate," which is a packet of chocolate mixed with corn starch that when stirred into the right amount of hot milk straddles the line between hot drink and warm pudding. "You can eat it with a spoon!" I had to order some when we got home.