We had a great tour of the Duomo and the old city, culminating in seeing the beautiful Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci and learning about how it was commissioned, experimental oils used by Leonardo, they importance on the play of light in spotlighting people, why John was painted as soft and feminine... I hadn't known it was a fresco, thought it was a painting. The small church was bombed in WW II but they had the foresight to sandbag the fresco wall...the opposite wall was rubble but only paint chips fell from the Supper. It is now light and temperature controlled...no end to possible troublemakers. It WAS awesome
We left for the one and a half hour train to Verona where we met the Hughes, Slaughters and Rumlers at our outstanding Hotel Firenza! They had scoped out a fabulous restaurant ( this IS Gourmet Group) filled with locals and very reasonably priced.
There is so much to see in Verona that we took the hop on-hop off bus and circled the city. We had wanted to be in Venice for a time before the cruise, so we will want to return to Verona. Clearly there is more to know about it than it is where a Romea and Julliette played out...( AND whether or not they are mythical....depends on who you are talking to...). We got a Taxi to the train station.
After wandering the the station and environs for a while trying to connect with wifi...I gave up. SURELY there will be an expert on the ship...
Met a nice young couple from Vancouver traveling after completing the Swiss Marathon...we must have had an unusual aura about us because we were set upon by a verifiably Ill woman ( think Hamlet and witches..)who paced in front of us hissing an wishing us all manner of ill, I'm sure. But it was in Italian so we just waited her out...took a good ten minutes. We came across the couple several times more...but never the "lady". Never know just who you will meet on a trip...
Nice couple on the train from Canberra. They had been to lake Como and heading to Venice and the Amalfi Coast for the last of their 5 weeks
We navigated the train to Vaporetto transfer and exited at Accademia with specific instructions , a verbal map, if you will, to Ca' San Vio, our Pension in the "hood", albeit the artsy hood. Pulling suitcases on cobblestones is fine, but after the second bridge we allowed as how we might tell our travel agent that we MIGHT be OK with a little less adventure...and THEN a little larger room: this shower was even smaller than the one in the RV. To acess our breakfast table in the morning, we needed to pack our bags and move them to the front desk...nice croissants.
Back to evening...Wandered again, and found a great restaurant to share oso buco and spaghetti in oil and chiles ( actually red pepper flakes--good we were sharing). A small flute of ice cream, lemon and vodka was called dessert. I liked the Pinot Grigio better.
After a fitfull sleep we walked the back canals to San Marco, absolutely over run with the wise tourists that arrived there at 9 AM. We will return another day. On the way there we had seen a Church that was built to Mother Mary after the people of Venice felt she had saved them from the plague: Santa Maria de Salute and then a lovely little Opera House, Firence, to which we returned to watch a little of the rehearsal for Don Giovani. And quite the bawdy rehearsal it was...don't think we will see that scene presented exactly that way at Opera Colorado...it was quite fun.
Returned to retreive our luggage and re-trace our bridge and Vaporetto workout. Headed for the ship
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment