A Night in Milan

On the 4th of July, we were in Milan. WP and I had one night there and my family had two nights. Since we didn't have too much time, we just took a subway ride down to the center of the city and took a look around. Here's the main cathedral, a pretty impressively huge building: 

The inside of the cathedral was awesome, here's a view from the back of the church looking toward the altar: 

This statue was particularly interesting, with all his muscles and some bones showing:

There are a lot of funny signs in Europe, but this one might take the cake. "Jesus on the Web": 

Since it was the 4th of July, we decided to celebrate by going to McDonalds for some french fries. Plus, it is fun to go to see what menu items they have that we don't at home, like the Parmesan Snack! On the 1 euro menu you can get a snack size portion of Parmesan cheese that is about as big as Will's thumb:

Later that evening we went to dinner at a place that had some Abruzzese specialties (the region where we spent time in Penne), and some Milanese specialties. The risotto Milanese is prepared with saffron and Parmesan, and was so delicious! 

During dinner a thunder storm rolled in, so our walk back to the hotel was a little bit wet. It was still pretty warm outside, so the storm didn't stop us from getting gelato! We found another location of Grom (which we went to in Florence and Venice), and had some amazing gelato on our last night in Italy. 

On the walk home we took cover in this beautiful arcade that houses fancy shops like Prada and Louis Vuitton. 

In the center of the arcade, there was a wedding dress photo shoot taking place. Not sure about the photographer's decision to use McDonalds as the background...

From Milan, Will and I flew to Berlin to meet some friends and my family went back home via London. We were sad to leave Italy (and Italian food), but excited to go to Germany! Next post will be about our time in Berlin, followed by our trip to the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea.  

Venice: Just Like the Movies, But Hotter

When we walked out of the train station in Venice, the first thing we saw was this green domed building perched on the edge of the Grand Canal. Amazing!   

The architecture in Venice is beautiful, and also unlike a lot of what we saw in other parts of Italy. There is a distinctly Turkish or Byzantine look to a lot of the buildings (for centuries Venice controlled the trade with the Middle East and China in Europe); many of which include colorful domes, wood carvings, and arch-shaped windows. All of this would make for a picturesque and unique city, but when you add the canals and boating culture, it just takes it to the next level. Venice is enchanting, and it is so easy to see why millions of people visit each year. 

After leaving the train station we hopped on a vaporetto, the large passenger tug-boats that operate like city buses or a subway system. Getting on and off the boats is usually pretty easy, but I don't recommend doing it with too much luggage! Here's my mom on the vaporetto, taking in the scenery during the 15-minute ride to our stop: 

The vaporetto took us to one of the San Marco Square stops, and then we had a short walk to our hotel. The hotel was beautiful inside, and had a bar and restaurant on the canal with a view of one of the most prominent churches in the area, Santa Maria della Salute. Here we are on our first evening in town, checking out the view before heading out to sight-see: 

Our first stop that evening was to the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square), where we got to see the famous basilica and bell tower. Mike and I had to take a UC Berkeley grads photo in front of the campanile, which was the architectural inspiration for the one on the Cal campus. Go Bears! 

Here's the one at Berkeley, Sather Tower. Just like in Venice, you can see the tower from all over campus and many parts of the East Bay.  

Here's a closer photo of St. Mark's Basilica, which has such a beautiful exotic exterior:  

From San Marco Square, we headed down a street with lots of little shops selling Murano glass figurines, masks, and little things to snack on like pizza and gelato. Our whole time in Venice it was extremely hot and humid, so we found ourselves stopping to take breaks more often than usual. I think on this first evening it was about 95 degrees and extremely humid!  After only a couple weeks in Europe, my 17-year old sister Alyssa "went native" and started ordering drinks (OK, only one at a time, and just with the family). She took a leap of faith by trying the Aperol and soda spritz, which is a very popular drink in Italy, but not so popular among our American crowd. The Aperol liqueur just tastes so bitter and syrupy, like cough medicine, even though Italians call Campari the bitter one and say Aperol is sweet. It's an acquired taste, I suppose: 

After our break we continued walking through the city and made our way to the Rialto Bridge, which is sort of like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence in that it is a tourist hotspot and there are lots of jewelry and knick-knack sellers on and near it. The bridge is quite beautiful though, and from the top there is a great view of the Grand Canal (the biggest canal through the middle of Venice). 

That first night in Venice was the final Eurocup football (aka "soccer") match. Will and I have been sort of keeping up on football (pretty easy to do in Spain, where it's around you all the time), and this final game of the cup was super exciting, mostly because it was between two major football-loving countries, Spain and Italy. For whatever reason, there weren't many bars or restaurants in our tourist neighborhood showing the game, and our hotel bar's tables were all reserved, so we ended up in one of our hotel rooms. It actually turned out to be really fun; WP and I picked up some pizzas and beer to bring back, and we had a great time watching Spain win 4-0 with some spectacular goals! Good thing we were alone in our room cheering for Spain, not sure the Italians would have loved us doing that in public. Although there aren't all that many Italians in Venice; about 60,000 in the islands making up the historic center, compared to a daily average of 50,000 tourists (2007 estimate according to Wikipedia).

The next morning we went back to Saint Mark's Square to visit the Doge's Palace, which is right next to the basilica. While waiting in line we saw a lot of Spanish tourists, and one even had the Spanish flag fastened to his shirt like a cape, presumably in celebration on their recent victory. Gotta love that Spanish patriotism, at least for their football team. 

The inside of the Doge's Palace was pretty amazing (though mostly not air-conditioned; note to self: come back during fall or winter), and we got to visit a lot of rooms that were formally the apartments of the Duke. The courtyard of the palace was nice, and runs right into the basilica, which you can see partly covered in scaffolding in the background of this photo:

There was also a pretty cool armory and prison which we got to check out, including the Ponte dei Sospiri (or "Bridge of Sighs"), where they used to walk the prisoners on their way to the dungeons. We did the walk ourselves, and it was pretty dismal, though cooler than upstairs in the palace, so maybe the prisoners at least had that going for them? Here's the bridge from the outside, leading over a canal from one part of the palace to the prison cells: 

Another favorite part of the palace, especially for WP, was the map room (big surprise, I know). There were some enormous maps on the walls showing all parts of the known world, and these giant globes, some showing the world and some showing maps of stellar constellations: 

After a quick stop at the Venetian history and archaeology museum (Museo Correr) in Saint Mark's Square, we headed over to another island that is part of Venice, the Lido. The Lido is a long skinny island that acts as a natural breakwater for the Adriatic Sea and helps ensure the calmer waters that you find within the rest of Venice. The beach on Lido is also pretty famous (Thomas Mann's novella "Death In Venice" is mostly set here, and the Venice Film Festival takes place here every year), so we had to go check it out. In a normal city this is when we would hop on the metro or take a bus, or maybe even walk, but in Venice, everything happens on boats. We got on a vaporetto and had a nice boat ride out to the Lido. Once again, boat culture is awesome. On the way there we saw this boat carrying some small trucks out towards the Lido (one of the few islands in the Venetian archipelago that allows motorized vehicles): 

Once we made it to the beach in the Lido, we tested the water, even though we were woefully unprepared for the beach and had to roll up our shorts and skirts: 

The Adriatic Sea is really warm in summer, and on this hot day most people were either in the water or under umbrellas. After walking around a little more, we'd seen most of the points of interest on the Lido, we headed back toward Venice. On the way we stopped on a few other islands to see some interesting churches. One in particular, San Giorgio Maggiore, was awesome because it is located on an island facing the main parts of Venice, and we were able to go up to the top of the bell tower to see the view. Here's a picture we took of it later on, during sunset:

The church was designed by the 16th-century Venetian architect Palladio, who used influences from Roman buildings to create an extremely influential style (Jefferson's home at Monticello, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the White House are a few examples of American buildings that were inspired by his work). Here's San Marco Square seen from the top: 

And another view of Venice, with lots of church domes visible in the distance: 

We happened to be up in the bell tower at 5pm, and we realized that the bells might ring. After a few minutes of waiting and hearing other church bells in the distance, nothing happened. All of a sudden the bells started ringing a little after 5 (a little bit late, Italian-style) and startled us all! Somehow WP managed to capture this awesome moment of Alyssa cracking up because of the bells. Adorable! 

That afternoon we visited a couple more churches, and a couple of very well-placed drinking fountains. One of the great things about Italy is that they have these public fountains with potable water all over the place. Thanks Italy! 

To get back to our hotel, we took another vaporetto boat and got to see a tugboat bringing in a cruise ship. In Venice the contrast between the size of the buildings in the harbor and the cruise ship was crazy. This thing was huge! 

After a much-needed hotel (and air-conditioning) break, we ventured back out for an evening ride on a gondola! Our gondolier's name was Roberto, a third-generation gondolier with lots of fun information about the city. As we got started, Roberto popped a bottle of prosecco for us: 

It was fun being down at water-level, and Roberto took us down lots of tiny canals, some of which are reserved for gondolas only. Here's the "street" sign that means no motorized boats are allowed in: 

We happened to choose our time to ride during very high tide, so as we went under the little bridges that span canals, Roberto often asked my brother Nick (who was sitting in the front) to lean one way or the other to make sure the front point of the boat didn't scrape the bridge. In this photo you can see how close we came with some of the little bridges:  

Our ride also took us onto the Grand Canal, which is the main passage where the vaporettos  and personal speed boats pass by, causing some little waves. Here we are in front of the Rialto Bridge: 

The gondola ride was really fun, and it was cool to see the base of buildings in Venice. A lot of apartment buildings, restaurants, and hotels have little docks for boats, and we even saw one building with a boat garage (a metal grate acted as the door; apparently this was used for filming the movie "The Italian Job"). It amazes me that the city can function as well as it does with the threat of floods, erosion, and other water-related problems always present. From our gondola we saw that the tide as so high, the water from the Grand Canal was starting to spill over onto the sidewalk at the base of the Rialto Bridge: 

After dinner we made out way back to San Marco Square, which we had heard was partly flooded due to the high tide. In front of the basilica and the campanile, there was a huge puddle of water. Little kids were playing in it and adults were dancing around to the nearby accordion and violin music, it was quite the Venetian scene. 

On our last day in Venice, before heading out to the island of Murano, we saw this produce boat where people go to get their fruit and veggies. I guess it makes sense that if they have to bring everything in on boats, why unload it before people buy it? This boat was just docked on the side of a canal, close enough to the sidewalk where people could see the produce. 

The boat ride to the island of Murano was pretty long, and we got to go past some parts of Venice we had not yet visited. When we were almost to Murano, we passed the Isola di San Michele. In 1807 this island was turned into a cemetery because it was deemed that burying the dead on the mainland where everyone lived was unsanitary, especially when people died in epidemics. The bodies were loaded on to special burial gondolas and sent over to this island. 

We didn't stop to visit, but you can see that the name of the vaporetto stop is "Cimitero": 

The island of Murano is known for the special Murano glass produced here. They sell the glass all over Venice (and beyond), but it was fun to visit the source and get to see all the shops that specialize in different types of products. The chandelier shops were particularly impressive, and we also liked this sculpture outside: 

That evening before dinner back in Venice, Alyssa stopped to buy a Venetian mask. After trying on several, she chose this gold and black number with the feather on the side: 

We ate dinner that evening at a really great restaurant called A Beccafico located on the Campo San Stefano. The owners are Sicilian, and it was great to get to try some Sicilian specialties even though we didn't make it all the way down south to the island itself. Will was really excited about his main course: spaghetti-like noodles with anchovies, pine nuts, parsley, raisins, and bread crumbs. Such a crazy combo, but apparently one that worked well. Here are the twins toasting to Venice: 

The next morning we took the train up to Milan for our last night in Italy with the family. I'll leave you for now with one last photo of the Grand Canal, taken during our gondola ride! 

Florence with Family

From Lucca, we made our way to Florence, where we met my mom, stepdad Mike, and little siblings Nick and Alyssa. WP and I got to Florence before the family and checked into our apartment rental. We had a beautiful 3-bedroom apartment right on the Arno River, overlooking the famous Ponte Vecchio (old bridge). Here's the view of the bridge from our living room, you can see the top of the Duomo (cathedral) over the buildings across the river: 

The apartment was very spacious (which was nice for our big group!), and decorated as if a little old Italian grandmother lived there, with really nice furniture and old paintings. My family had just traveled for a couple weeks in London and France, so it was nice for them to be in an apartment instead of a hotel, with access to a kitchen, laundry, living room, etc. 

Our apartment was just a short walk from the main piazza with the Duomo and bell tower, and on our first day exploring we walked through the square and went inside the cathedral. Here's a photo of the outside of the church; the whole structure is so massive it is a little hard to capture the tower, dome, and front facade, but you can see the dome peaking out between the church and tower: 

After eating a fantastic lunch of Abruzzo-style pasta at the Ristorante della Accademia (a recommendation from our friends Jim and Deb; thanks again!) we had to stop for a photo at this place next door, the Twins' Caffe. Twins in front of Twins', awww so cute:  

From lunch we headed over to the Accademia museum to see Michaelangelo's  famous statue of David. I think we were all very happy to have had made reservations to get into the museum. We only had to wait about 10 minutes in the reservations line. The people waiting in the non-reservations line looked like they'd been there for a while, standing in the hot sun in humid, 100-degree weather, ugh. 

Once inside, we got to see a pretty cool special exhibition of musical instruments that included some types of clarinets, harps and pianos I'd never seen before. Afterwards we went into the main sculpture hall to see the man himself. It was actually pretty impressive to see David up close; it is a lot more detailed than the duplicate one that they display in the square near the Ponte Vecchio where the statue used to be placed. I snapped a quick clandestine photo of the statue (hey, we came this far, we deserve to have a no-flash photo, right?) and of the Pink David statue in the courtyard of the museum made by a contemporary artist: 

After the Accademia, we walked back through the Duomo square to a really good gelateria and sorbetteria, Grom. I think between all of us we tried the lemon, raspberry, dark chocolate, coffee, cantaloupe, and chocolate chip, all of which were amazing (there was another branch of Grom in Venice, and there may be others; keep an eye out if you're in Italy!). With our gelato in hand, the sweltering walk back to our apartment wasn't so bad, but still, none of us were complaining when we got inside to our air-conditioned haven. Here we are on the Ponte Vecchio: almost home! 

The next day, we had another appointment in the morning to get into the Uffizi Gallery, which is home to a gigantic collection of paintings and sculpture ranging from Greek and Roman sculpture all the way up to paintings from the 18th century. I tend to prefer more recent art, but I was surprised by how cool a lot of the triptychs from the 13th and 14th century were. There were a lot of pieces that were done almost like an ancient Mod Podge (you crafters or former OMers know what I mean). They boiled animal parts (usually goat skin) to make a glue-like substance that they then used to paste down gold leaf to highlight the halos of saints, Jesus, and Mary. The pieces we saw were very brightly colored and looked almost like scenes from a biblical comic book, depicting different memorable episodes from Bible history and saints' lives. The other big hits among our group were Boticelli's Venus (the one where Venus is riding in on a clam-shell) and Primavera, as well as Caravaggio's painted shield with the head of Medusa. From inside the Uffizi we had an excellent view of the Ponte Vecchio and surrounding area. Just beautiful! 

Later that day we visited the Basilica of Santa Croce that had some pretty strict rules about what we could wear inside. Luckily, my mom is pretty handy with Kleenex and made me some little cap sleeves to cover my shoulders, and they had a machine where you could buy a robe for 50 cents that Alyssa bought. Only Alyssa could make this robe look so cute! Here's a little sibling reject photo for your viewing pleasure: 

The inside of the church was incredible, and houses the graves of a lot of famous Italians like Galileo, Macchiavelli, and Dante. Each grave is decorated pretty elaborately with carvings and statues that relate to their studies, profession, or personality. Here's Galileo's grave, with lots of scientific instruments and maps: 

The ceiling of the church was also pretty awesome; check it out: 

We also got to go back into the cloisters of this church, where I'm not embarrassed to say we ran through the sprinklers to cool down a bit. I'm pretty sure God (or the gardener?) had those sprinklers on at that moment just for us. Either way, Amen! Later, when we rejoined the civilized people, we decided we should have at least one photo of all of us together, in front of this beautiful chapel that reminded us of the geometrically ideal design at the Alhambra in Granada: 

On our last full day in Florence, Mike, Will, and the kids took a hike up a big hill to a church, while my mom and I went pottery shopping, because that's how we roll. I won't go into too much detail about the pottery, but basically, it is all beautiful, and it took us a long time to choose which patterns we wanted for our new oil and vinegar holders. Will took the camera up with him on the hike and got some incredible photos of the cityscape, where you can see the Duomo, the bell tower, and the surrounding buildings:  

While they were up there they also went to visit the San Miniato church that had a very detailed facade and incredible interior dating back to the 13th century. 

They were all especially enthusiastic about the special reddish marble that was used behind the altar and cross in the front of the church. The way the light was shining through from behind made it look almost like lava:

That afternoon we reunited and all made the trek to the Pitti Palace, a huge palace complex from the Renaissance that includes a few different museums, tour of the apartment chambers, and a garden. Here's the view out the window of a museum looking toward the gardens: 

For our dinner we (mostly Mike, to be fair) made some pasta at home with fresh spaghetti, tomatoes, basil and parmesan cheese. So tasty! 

Our time in Florence was so fun, and we were happy to get to be there with my family. Our apartment was amazing, the food was fabulous, and the sights were one of a kind. I definitely hope to visit Firenze again someday! From Florence we took the train up to Venice... more soon about our hot and humid three days by the canals!