Chips and pizza - does it get any better than this?
Check out the little devil in the foreground - creepy!
Judith and Holefernes - me crying ...
Wednesday 1st October 2008
Venice – the city of love and afternoon sleeps and sunshine and expensive frickin coffee, yes we were sucked in by the Piazza San Marco like molto tourista before us – 27.00 EURO; do the calculations, it was incredibly expensive!
We jumped aboard the train to Venice from Trieste – it’s a two hour train ride along some pretty rugged and beautiful Italian coastline. I attempted to capture this with photos but like most amazing experiences it’s difficult to capture the essence of it when excluding the periphery.
The waters of Venice are blue, beautifully blue and it’s something that really adds to Venice’s spectacular beauty. The Medici’s and their love for art is everywhere, hidden in corners or flouted in the street – it’s a saturation that I have never experienced before and it takes Venice from the beautiful to the sublime. Venice train station is an intense disappointment however, when you are powering into the city, train on a thin slice land in a landscape of water, it feels like you’re in a scene from Spirited Away. Sorry, I always bring it back to Myazaki – I just can’t seem to help it. When you arrive at the train station it’s like a scene from the Bronx, (or what I imagine anyway) a gritty, ugly, semi modern building plonked unceremoniously next to a mega multi-storied car park – how can this be Venice railway? Inside, a plethora of shops dedicated to cheap trinkets and Murano glass.
Step out and look up the sky was blue, the water reflected the sky and we knew straight away we were lucky and this day was magic! The children were well behaved, which has been an arbitrary thing this holiday, and as our tummies rumbled we turned a corner into a little street with the most fabulous Pizzaria, cheap as chips and the friendliest guy in Italy running it – fantastico. Does it get any better? Well yeah it does - some of you may know I have an absolute passion for Artimesia Gentelesci – since years ago a friend of mine wrote her art thesis on the painter and the story consumed me – she often painted Judith and Holefernes – the story of, representing the head of Holefernes as her rapist – Artemisia’s rape case was one of the first recorded in the Modern world, of which of course Italy was the centre and Venice was a superpower - and although the hoped for outcome was to force the rapist to marry her (which never happened, he was already married) it was still a moment in time where women’s rights moved forward – especially against the Catholic church who made such a big mess of it in the first place. In a free little musical museo with some fabulous classic antique instruments there was hiding at the bottom of a stairwell ‘Judith and Holferenes’ – well I burst in to tears truly cried my eyes out overwhelmed and so very pleased. Like I said before the city is magic.
I felt a real jolt of excitement walking out where I could see the main canal. Venice really is as absolutely incredible as I always suspected and was told. It’s special – that’s all you can say without seeing it yourself – the little streets, the well behaved tourists; yes even us; and just the simple beauty of everything bathed in a sift sunshine!
In many old cities the old begins to sink under a swathe of modern needs, but Venice is well maintained old city and a city on the water to boot. Nothing is built new in Venice the facades have been cared for and the insides addressed – many basements are underwater and this adds to the charm of the pretty city.
I’ll let the photos say the rest but there was one more thing I needed to comment on and that is the incredibly rude overt slight on womanhood I witnessed in Venice. Filling an entire four story wall was the history of ‘The Virgin’ all the way back to ‘Jesse’ there were these huge life size if not larger figures representing all the famous first part of the bible; it took me a moment and I realized there were no women; no other mother besides the virgin existed on this huge dedication to the virgins family tree, to be honest I think she should count herself lucky to be on it at all!
We left Venice a weary but happy bunch on the train home snuggled together and imagining coming back again another day WITHOUT young children.
Venice – the city of love and afternoon sleeps and sunshine and expensive frickin coffee, yes we were sucked in by the Piazza San Marco like molto tourista before us – 27.00 EURO; do the calculations, it was incredibly expensive!
We jumped aboard the train to Venice from Trieste – it’s a two hour train ride along some pretty rugged and beautiful Italian coastline. I attempted to capture this with photos but like most amazing experiences it’s difficult to capture the essence of it when excluding the periphery.
The waters of Venice are blue, beautifully blue and it’s something that really adds to Venice’s spectacular beauty. The Medici’s and their love for art is everywhere, hidden in corners or flouted in the street – it’s a saturation that I have never experienced before and it takes Venice from the beautiful to the sublime. Venice train station is an intense disappointment however, when you are powering into the city, train on a thin slice land in a landscape of water, it feels like you’re in a scene from Spirited Away. Sorry, I always bring it back to Myazaki – I just can’t seem to help it. When you arrive at the train station it’s like a scene from the Bronx, (or what I imagine anyway) a gritty, ugly, semi modern building plonked unceremoniously next to a mega multi-storied car park – how can this be Venice railway? Inside, a plethora of shops dedicated to cheap trinkets and Murano glass.
Step out and look up the sky was blue, the water reflected the sky and we knew straight away we were lucky and this day was magic! The children were well behaved, which has been an arbitrary thing this holiday, and as our tummies rumbled we turned a corner into a little street with the most fabulous Pizzaria, cheap as chips and the friendliest guy in Italy running it – fantastico. Does it get any better? Well yeah it does - some of you may know I have an absolute passion for Artimesia Gentelesci – since years ago a friend of mine wrote her art thesis on the painter and the story consumed me – she often painted Judith and Holefernes – the story of, representing the head of Holefernes as her rapist – Artemisia’s rape case was one of the first recorded in the Modern world, of which of course Italy was the centre and Venice was a superpower - and although the hoped for outcome was to force the rapist to marry her (which never happened, he was already married) it was still a moment in time where women’s rights moved forward – especially against the Catholic church who made such a big mess of it in the first place. In a free little musical museo with some fabulous classic antique instruments there was hiding at the bottom of a stairwell ‘Judith and Holferenes’ – well I burst in to tears truly cried my eyes out overwhelmed and so very pleased. Like I said before the city is magic.
I felt a real jolt of excitement walking out where I could see the main canal. Venice really is as absolutely incredible as I always suspected and was told. It’s special – that’s all you can say without seeing it yourself – the little streets, the well behaved tourists; yes even us; and just the simple beauty of everything bathed in a sift sunshine!
In many old cities the old begins to sink under a swathe of modern needs, but Venice is well maintained old city and a city on the water to boot. Nothing is built new in Venice the facades have been cared for and the insides addressed – many basements are underwater and this adds to the charm of the pretty city.
I’ll let the photos say the rest but there was one more thing I needed to comment on and that is the incredibly rude overt slight on womanhood I witnessed in Venice. Filling an entire four story wall was the history of ‘The Virgin’ all the way back to ‘Jesse’ there were these huge life size if not larger figures representing all the famous first part of the bible; it took me a moment and I realized there were no women; no other mother besides the virgin existed on this huge dedication to the virgins family tree, to be honest I think she should count herself lucky to be on it at all!
We left Venice a weary but happy bunch on the train home snuggled together and imagining coming back again another day WITHOUT young children.
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