Venezia, part III

I'm falling way behind on blog posts here, and we have a bunch of trips coming up so I'm going to attempt to catch up all at once! And I'm stealing all the pictures from this post from by brother Ryan since he was the only one with a camera.

The day after Christmas we decided to hop on the train and take a day trip up to Venice.  Robbie volunteered to stay home with Michael so we didn't have to wrestle him on the train and try to keep him happy as we walked around the city.  Mom also really wanted to visit the island of Murano, famous for the glass-blowing, and a showroom with hundreds of pieces of glass priced in the thousands of dollars didn't seem like a great place to take a one year old.

We arrived in Venice on a cloudy day without much incident. We bought our tickets for the water bus and decided to see Murano first, since I knew how to get there from the train station and figured St. Marks Square would be easy to find from anywhere.  We waited and waited for the boat and it didn't come so I finally went and checked the schedule and the boat to Murano was suspended because of the high tide.  So we set off on foot to walk through Venice and go straight to the square instead.

It's so fun to walk through Venice. It's like a maze and you end up going a different way and seeing new things every time you pass through. We were joking that it would be difficult to live there though because you would have a really hard time giving anyone directions to your house!

About halfway through our walk we got hungry and stopped at a little restaurant that had a reasonably priced lunch--15 euro for a drink, a pasta dish, a meat dish, and a coffee.  I had a lasagna and baked chicken, Mom and Ryan both got a spaghetti with meat sauce and a steak.  The menu was in Italian and there was one special Venice dish that Ryan was going to try without asking what it was as he was trying to get the full Italian experience.  I asked out of curiosity before we ordered and it turned out to be liver. He decided against it and opted for the steak.

I'd heard of Venice flooding, and apparently it's really common in the winter. The tide comes in and all the sidewalks and everything are under inches of water.  Here's a view of one of the walkways near where we ate lunch:

This was the first time I'd seen the flooding. It was bone-dry in the summer! We finally got to St. Mark's Square and it was also under water. They had kind of mini-scaffolding set up above the water like sidewalks to walk around the square without getting wet.  You could also buy big plastic waders for about 10 euros at some of the shops nearby. I kind of wished I had worn my rain boots.

This was the first chance I'd gotten to actually go inside the basilica. The whole front entry way of the church was under water. The salt water can't be good for the marble floors!  We walked on the wooden planks over the water and into the church. It was stunning.  I've seen the mosaic ceilings in Ravenna and the marble mosaic floors in the duomo in Siena, but this was an amazing combination of the two.  The entire ceiling and about 1/3 of the way down the walls was completely covered in glittering, gold tile mosaic.  It was almost too much to look at.  They had the chairs blocked off, but I would have loved to sit in there for a while and take the time to really see all the designs and stories the mosaics were telling.  While the floors in Siena's duomo were depicting certain stories from the Bible, the floors in the basilica in Venice are small geometric patterns.  They were really interesting. I can't imagine the time and skill it would take to lay the floors and ceiling.  You weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but if you're even in Venice make checking out the basilica a top priority!

Once we left the basilica we were walking around the square and were stopped by a guy with a tourist badge who asked if we were interested in going to Murano to see the glass blowers and the galleries.  We told him we had meant to go, but the boats weren't running.  He handed us each a pass for a free water-taxi ride from St. Mark's Square to Murano where we could visit a gallery and see the glass blowers at work.  He said we could take the public water bus (which we already had tickets for) back to the main Island when we were finished.  Before we knew it we were weaving through the crowds on our way to the boat. I was trying to clarify with the guy that the boats were indeed running now (so we could get back), that we weren't obligated to buy anything, and generally make sure we weren't getting totally ripped off somehow. I read the fine print on our ticket, and it all seemed okay. It all happened so quickly and soon we were in a private water taxi headed out to the open water to drive around the main island to get to Murano.

Sitting alone in that boat we all started thinking maybe it wasn't the best idea to just get in a random speedboat while visiting a foreign country.  The special "promotion" made sense to me though, because it was an Italian holiday, the day after Christmas, in the off-season, and the boats hadn't been running to Murano earlier.  So they were probably trying to get people out to the island any way they could.  Ryan (though he'll comment and say he wasn't really that nervous) was sitting across from me, clenching his jaw, saying how stupid it was that we got on the boat, and half-joking that we were on the way to Tunisia to be sold into slavery or something.

Fifteen minutes later we pulled up at a dock in Murano. We were helped off the boat by a man in a suit who whisked us away into the gallery. We spent a few minutes watching the glass-blower who was clearly only there to entertain the tourists and didn't look too thrilled about it.  They showed us the powder they start with and we watched him heat the glass to be red-hot and pliable.

He went to his bench and took some plier-looking things and pinched a few sections of the glass up.  He did it so quickly I didn't think he was actually making anything, just showing us how he could manipulate the glass.  Then he came back over and sat this down in front of us:

It literally took him seconds. We watched him make another little vase, which he smashed as soon as we were done looking at it.  It was really neat to watch.  Then the museum manager took us up to the gallery to show us the amazing chandeliers, and glass art pieces.  Every time we mentioned we liked something he'd say "oh, that one is 10,000 euros.  But we can wrap it up and ship it for free back to America for you."  Some of the pieces were well over $100,000.  They were incredible, but clearly we weren't quite the right audience for those particular pieces. We went back downstairs to the less-expensive, souvenir pieces and picked out a couple of things.  I think all together we spent about 85 euro.  Definitely not the high-roller Americans he hoped we'd be, but I guess it was still 85 euro they wouldn't have gotten otherwise since we didn't think we could get to the island!

We wanted to walk around Murano a little, but were a little anxious about getting back to the train station. It was getting late by this point and we were going to run out of sunlight soon.  We still weren't sure if the water buses were actually running and were worried the "catch" of the whole excursion was that we'd have to pay an arm and a leg to get a water taxi back to the main island. We walked around a little:

Then I saw one of the water-buses coming around and so we hurried to the dock to make sure we didn't miss our chance.  We took the boat to the main island and were relieved that everything with the little Murano excursion ended up being on the up-and-up.  It was a fun little adventure, and we got to see Murano as we had hoped!  We got off the boat on the main island in a weird place we thought was near the square but wasn't.  Then we got a little lost trying to find our way back to something familiar (the train station, the square, a water-bus stop... anything) and walked in circles for awhile, dead-ending into canals on several occasions.  We finally found our way back to the square and got on the water bus back to the train station.

We passed some cool churches and buildings, and were dropped off right in front of the train station where we started the day just as the sun was setting.  A train was heading to Ferrara just in time, and we all enjoyed sitting for a while on the ride back home.  Another successful trip to Venice, seeing things I'd never seen before!

Bolzano Christmas Market

Christmas markets are a big deal in Europe.  Not as much in Italy, but huge in Austria and Germany.  However, Italy still has several of them and we wanted to make it to more than just our little market in Ferrara.  The market in Bolzano, Italy is supposed to be the biggest in the country.  Bolzano is far north--near the Austrian border.  We were so close to Austria that most of the signs were in Italian and German.  It took us about three hours to drive up there, and the views are stunning once you leave the flat farmlands and get closer to the snowy mountains.

We finally got to Bolzano and were even impressed with the parking garage! You know how in parking garages it can get frustrating to find a spot because it's dark, hard to see, and you think you find one only to start pulling in and realize it's a tiny car you didn't see?  This parking garage solved that problem with little green and red lights above every spot.  If the spot was full, the light was red and if it was empty, the light was green.  It was awesome, and we found a spot right away, and of course, took a picture.

Above ground and a short walk away from this parking wonder (ha ha) was the Bolzano Christmas market.  Our first stop was lunch where we got pretzels and hot dogs.  I did the food run and was very impressed that we managed to eat since I had to order the food and follow the directions for where to go to pick it up (in two different places) all in Italian.  We're getting better!

We didn't get to see a lot of the town itself, but what we did see was beautiful. I love seeing all the churches.  Bolzano was surrounded by mountains and you could see the ski lift going up to the top.

Then we spent a some time walking around the market.  While the market in Ferrara has a lot of food and gift type things, this market was mostly decorations (which is what I wanted to see anyway!)  It was also very crowded so we had to push through and file along slowly to see anything.  A common theme is about to emerge in my blog posts involving a cranky baby who isn't in the mood for whatever we happen to be doing, and that was definitely the case today.  We did what we could--speed walked through the market, picked out a couple ornaments for our tree, and tried to see what we could before the full-blown melt-down happened.

Michael loves balloons, and at one point two little girls walked by us and each handed him a balloon advertising a shoe store.  I'm pretty sure this was the highlight of his week, but not quite enough to let him actually enjoy the outing.

There were some neat decorations in the trees of a little courtyard we found:

We found a little playground in kind of a last-ditch effort to get him in a happy mood.  It worked for a little while.  Some other little girls bounced him around on a trampoline thing for awhile, but in the end, we had to call it a day.

We had one last bit of excitement on the way back to the car when the horses came back from pulling a hayride around the city.  Michael liked looking at the horses for a couple of minutes, and then we hopped in the car and made an almost 4 hour drive back home. I think we were in the car about four times longer than we were actually in Bolzano, but at least we got to see a little of our first European Christmas market!

Christmas in Ferrara

Italy is a beautiful place to be in the winter.  For one thing, it's actually fairly cold here so it feels like winter (unlike anywhere else I've lived!)  Just after American Thanksgiving in November, thousands of sparkling icicle lights were hung all around the downtown area of Ferrara.  It's beautiful to walk around and see everything glittering and shining.

There was a carousel set up in the Piazza Municipale that Michael LOVED.  It was so cute watching him ride around and around. We bought more tickets than we probably should have, and Robbie and I had to switch off so we didn't get dizzy holding him on his horse.

The lights all over town were really beautiful.

They also set up an ice skating rink in one of the little plazas near the castle.  We didn't get the chance to skate but it looked like a lot of fun.

Ferrara also has its own little Christmas market.  There are some stalls set up in the main piazza that sell a variety of gifts, decorations, candy, and food.  We went several times and walked around--we got a Ferrara bulb for our Christmas tree, some candy (a couple of times), and little cups of vin brule, the spiced wine they sell here for the holidays.

We also got our first Christmas tree in Italy. They do things a little differently here.  The trees are smaller and they sell them in a pot.  You buy a tree and decorate it for the holiday, then you can plant it in your garden for the next year, or even return it to the nursery.  I had never really put much thought into the millions of trees that are cut down and die in the US every year for Christmas until we got to Italy and saw you didn't necessarily have to kill your tree. We hadn't brought any of our Christmas decorations with us since we didn't know how much room we'd have and where we'd be living, so we made a quick trip to the store and got some cheap ones to make it look happy and festive.  And the best part of it being on the small-side was that we could easily put it on a table and out of reach of the one year-old who loves to grab anything he can get his hands on!

A couple days before Christmas we got our first visitors--my mom and bother Ryan came to visit! it was really fun to show them Italy.  Michael had a great time opening his presents (this was the first time he really understood what to do with them) and we had a great Christmas with lots of food and a walk around Ferrara.

Merry Christmas (a month or so late)!

Tree Lighting in Ferrara

At the beginning of December we were excited to go down to the cathedral and watch the lighting of the big Christmas tree in the Piazza.  We had heard last year there was a big light show on the side of a nearby building so we were expecting something similar.  We ran into a few friends in the crowd and staked out a spot in front of the tree and waited for the show to start.

What a show!  They had a synchronized light/fire/water show right in front of us that lasted almost 20 minutes.

The music was so loud (you can see we were right near a speaker) and you could feel the heat from the fire every time it went off.  Michael, who has about a 13 second attention span for the things he's most interested in, was captivated the whole time.  As cool as the show was, it was even more fun for me to watch him and his reactions to the colors and water and fire. He kind of wrinkled his nose every time the fire went off. It was super cute.

Towards the end of the show, the tree was lit! And it continued awhile longer (most of the music was instrumental, but at one point they started playing "We are the Champions" by Queen which was funny).

We had one of our friends take a picture of us near the Christmas tree at the end. It was hard to get a good picture in the dark and with all the other people trying to do the same thing.

After the show, we wanted to go out for dinner but still had a few minutes to kill before the restaurant opened.  We let Michael ride on the carousel a few more times, which he thoroughly enjoyed!

It was a really fun evening. I can't wait to see what they do next year!

International Christmas Party

Every year in December, there is a big Christmas party for all the NATO countries represented at the base here in Italy.  They have a Santa for the kids (parents buy presents for their children, then Santa hands them out), and the main attraction is dinner where each country sets up a table of typical foods from their country and everyone walks around to try them all.

We got there a little early to see if the Americans needed help setting up (and I had made three batches of cookies for our table I needed to deliver).  They got everything put out and ready to go before all the festivities started.

For reasons I'm still unclear about, our group decided to make fajitas for our table.  I had imagined something along the lines of turkey, hamburgers, barbecue... Something more American. But they decided on fajitas so we had chicken/peppers, tortillas, guacamole, pico de gallo, sour cream, beans, rice, and margaritas. With an assortment of cookies for dessert.  It was very good!

Once everything got set up, we went to another room for a speech by the commander and for Santa handing out presents to the kids.  They had two Santas and it still took forever. Michael was getting hungry and impatient and was one of the last kids to get his present. By the time his turn came around he was NOT happy about getting put in a stranger's lap.  Especially since that stranger had a beard. He's suspicious of facial hair.  This was  the result:

Poor kid screamed!  It took him a while to recover.  He didn't really care about his present and any glimpse of Santa sent him back into hysterics.

Eventually we took him outside away from all the people and let him open his present in peace (and without that weird Santa guy within eyesight) and he calmed down enough to show some interest in his new drum and instrument set.

After all the gift unwrapping, it was finally time to eat.  We had a good time walking around and trying all of the different types of food. Michael did a great job trying new things--he was so hungry I don't think he even spit anything out! We tried pickled herring, pate, different kinds of meats and cheeses, olives, kebabs, Turkish delight, soups, potato pancakes, pastas, cakes, and cookies.

Finally, after some food in his stomach, Michael was feeling better and started acting like his normal, sweet self again.

While everyone was finishing up eating, cleaning, and talking, they had a magician come and perform for the kids. Michael wasn't very interested so he and I went outside to he could run around with the big kids.  We came back in every few minutes to warm up and check on daddy, and one of the times we saw this:

Robbie got picked to be the magician's lovely assistant. After the magic show it was getting late and Michael was pretty burned out on all the excitement so we headed home to call it a night. It was a good time--maybe next year he'll enjoy it a little more and won't be too traumatized by his interaction with Santa!