Author Archives: Mama Cormier

Share Your World 2016 – Week 33

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….I haven’t participated for awhile

If you’d like to share your world check out Cee’s blog.

Would you travel into outer space?

Probably not. There are too many places on this Earth that I want to see first.

Which country/city in the world (that you have never been to) would you most like to visit and why?

I’d like to go to Great Britain. One of the main reasons would be because our son and his new wife live in London, England.

What could you do to breathe more deeply today?

I could go for a long walk and I probably will. I have to return a library book anyway and it’s a beautiful day for walking through the neighbourhood. It also gives me a chance to get a closer look at what’s been going on. I noticed yesterday when I was in the car that there are a couple of houses one street over that are undergoing some major additions.
Complete this sentence: This creamy peanut butter sandwich could really use some …

…..sliced bananas

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for a wonderful four days with my oldest daughter at the cottage. This was her first visit this season and she’s planning on another visit next week with her wife. I loved having her up there with me. She just purchased a paddle board and brought it up with her. Luckily it’s an inflatable one so transporting it to the island was easy. Now that it’s inflated it’s staying at the cottage for awhile. I was surprised how solid it is. It doesn’t feel inflated at all.

I’m also grateful for some good weather while we were up there. We drove up in a torrential rainfall but it cleared up before we got to the island so the barge was running and we were able to get the car across. It was cool the first day which was a bit of relief from the heat wave we’ve been experiencing but it was windy and the waves made paddle boarding for the first time challenging. The next day the lake was perfectly calm and it had warmed up again.

While we were at the cottage my neighbour’s brother and his three teenage children were up for a visit. I’ve known this family for over 20 years and it was nice to spend time with them. On Sunday we prepared a meal together and had a great conversation about American politics (they live in the states).

We had planned to leave on Tuesday, which was also my wedding anniversary, but the weather had turned and it poured rain non-stop and the winds were snapping branches from the trees. We were grateful that no tree came down on the cottage. Unfortunately the barge wasn’t running because the waves were too high. We ended up staying one more night.

The next day was beautiful and even though I had to get my daughter back to the city so that she could get to work it was difficult to leave on such a nice day.

I’m also grateful for being able to get together with my other daughter and our granddaughter this week. We drove to Hamilton yesterday and went for a nice long walk to the waterfront. We stayed and had dinner with everyone, including my son-in-law and his mother.

This weekend I’m looking forward to going back up to the cottage for a few more days. Maybe I’ll get some painting done and start on a new book. I’m also looking forward to getting together with some friends when I return next week.

Cheers!

A Few More Shots From Venice

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…. even though we only stayed two days I seem to have many more photos to share

It was hard to squeeze in everything in two days, in fact it was impossible. Taking tours was out of the question. I was just happy to see many of the must see places first hand. On our second day we toured the Grand Canal, San Marco and the Rialto Bridge (under construction). We drank cappuccino at the famous Caffe Florian (inside because it was much cheaper and just as delicious), walked past the Doge’s Palace and the Bridge of Sighs, walked through the Campo Santa Margherita and had lunch at a fabulous bistro, La Zucca, near the Rialto Bridge that specialized in vegetarian and pumpkin dishes.

Piazza San Marco and Caffe Florian

Sites Along the Grand Canal

Rialto Bridge, Markets and La Zucca

WPC – Fun

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….where to begin with this great topic, FUN?

The first photo, although not the best quality, brings a smile to my face because of how gullible people can be. While watching this guy, my husband sarcastically commented on how this trick or optical illusion is done with magnets and he said it loud enough for a few people to hear. Soon after I hear the same people, who had been standing close by, proclaiming that magnets are the explanation for this feat.

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I can laugh now but at the time I didn’t think it was so funny when this guy wanted to charge me 10 euro for posing with me. He accosted me and we used my camera for the pictures. Boy did I feel duped. In the end I gave him 5 euro and learned a big lesson.

Peggy Guggenheim Gallery in Venice

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….one of my favourite art galleries in all of Italy

I guess I shouldn’t have said ‘all of Italy’ when I’ve only seen a small portion of the country. I had never heard of Peggy Guggenheim before this trip. Of course I knew of the famous Guggenheim Museum in New York but I had no idea that there was another Guggenheim in Venice.

Peggy Guggenheim was an avid collector of modern art and in an eight year period she amassed a collection of art by Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Picasso, Calder, Henry Moore, Motherwell and Max Ernst, just to name a few, who represented Cubist, Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist movements in art.

She moved to Venice after WWII and set up a gallery of her collection at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal. In the summers she opened her home to the public and when she died in 1979 she left her estate to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on the condition that the collection would remain intact in Venice and would be recognized as hers. The Foundation assumed responsibility for both the collection and for Guggenheim’s palazzo.

In 2015 a movie of her colourful and controversial life was made. Here is the trailer.

Peggy Guggenheim

I think I enjoyed this collection so much because it was full of modern artists that I admire very much. The Palazzo itself was light and airy and the outdoor sculpture garden was serene and calming. Being on the Grand Canal added another element of vitality and I could just imagine Peggy sitting on the balcony with her dogs observing the gondolas and small water crafts making their way through the green waters of Venice.

Riding the Trains in Italy

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…..I love travelling by train but I’m not so sure I would buy a rail pass again

Travelling by train can be very relaxing and is less stressful than driving a car throughout Italy. Our travel agent booked first class rail passes for six days for us ahead of time. Our first trip from Venice to Florence in first class was wonderful but half of our trips didn’t even have first class compartments. We probably could have saved a lot of money buying tickets as we needed them.

One of the things we learned about travelling by train is that you have to have your tickets validated at the station and you must fill in the dates you travel on the passes. My husband had been filling in the wrong portion of our passes and one kind conductor handed him a pen and instructed him to fill it in properly. He could have fined us each a 100 euro. On our last trip to Rome our son, his new bride and her parents didn’t know that the tickets that they purchased from a machine in Assisi had to be validated in another machine. Unfortunately the conductor on this train was not so forgiving and charged them. They tried to explain that they didn’t read Italian and no one told them about this extra step when purchasing tickets. He thought he was being generous when he reduced the fine to 33 euro but when my daughter-in-law was not happy with the compromise he became quite angry. In the end they paid the fine but we couldn’t help but think that the money was being pocketed by the conductor.